“What does a decent society do with people who hurt themselves because they’re human? With people who eat too much, smoke too much, drive carelessly, don’t have safe sex – we don’t put them out to pasture to die because they’ve done a human thing.” – How to Survive a Plague I grew…
Posts By
Caris Adel
The Religious Right: Gays, AIDS, and the Church, Part 3
So where were the Christians? In the midst of all of this death and isolation, when people were the most vulnerable, when there was so much stigma and fear and people were begging for an ounce of compassion and love – where were the people who were supposed to be known for that? “Since…
Fear and Silence: Gays, AIDS, and the Church, Part 2
If you were a conservative Christian girl in the 90s, you probably know the phrase ‘screaming silver-blue eyes’. The Christy Miller Series was almost mandatory reading for our little sub-culture generation. And we tried to emulate this role model of holy femininity. So when Christy journaled, we journaled, and when Christy wrote letters to…
My Story: Gays, AIDS, and the Church, Part 1
The public junior high was nothing but a hotbed of sin. Or so my fundamentalist parent thought. So instead of moving on with my friends, in 6th grade I was inserted into a small church school, where everyone had grown up together. Being the outsider made for a rough year, so in 7th grade…
Incarnation – It Means Something!
Conservative Christianity has not taught me to be a healthy person, and it has not taught me how to raise healthy children. The view I was raised with, the advice I keep seeing handed out, the wisdom I listened to for 90 minutes this morning, basically assumes everything needed for life – even for…
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
“Prosperity breeds amnesia.” You don’t need enough money to be ‘rich’ in order to be prosperous – just enough to pay the bills and then some. Just enough to insulate you from the reality of life for the most. ‘Having enough’ as we think of it means you can pay to cover the miles…
How and Why I Write
A Resurrected Faith
A Three-Faced Liar
This is the human part of the story. There is nothing divine in being betrayed by a friend, denied by your pupil, or deserted by your companions. Jesus now knows the exposed, intimate hurt betrayal brings. All of a sudden everyone knows his friendship with Judas isn’t what they thought. There is a force as…
Blessed are the Form-Fillers?
Jonathan is a new friend; and he has quite an interesting life, and writes fantastic poetry. I’m happy to have part of his story here today. The phone rang, an unknown number. The caller did not introduce himself, yet my wife recognized the voice of someone from a Christian organization. And he got…