Letter to PA Human Relations Commission

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission is considering guidance clarifying that discrimination against LGBTQ people in Pennsylvania would be treated—and investigated—as a form of sex discrimination. This guidance, which follows precedents set in federal courts and by federal agencies, would be a huge step towards helping ensure LGBTQ Pennsylvanians are able to live their lives free of discrimination.

There is a public comment period that ends in a couple of days (you can find information on the linked website). Here is the letter I sent. Please, if you live in Pennsylvania and support equal opportunity protection for LGBTQ people, send your own letter of support.  I don't doubt that they will receive plenty of comments that lean in the other direction!

Memories XII: Joy, Sorrow, Time

Of all the pictures we have of Miriam (Eli) as a young child, this is probably my favorite.

It's an autumn evening, some time before Miriam's first birthday.   I've just got home from work - maybe four straight hours of teaching math to Oxford students - good work but demanding.  And I have not even had time to take my tie off before I'm swamped by the waves of joy coming from this strong-willed little person.  (To the right of the picture my guitar awaits - Miriam loved music.)

Bret Stephens, Alan Jacobs, and climate change

Alan Jacobs (via amazon.com)

My aggregator list has about 30 different blogs on it.  All of them represent voices that I found interesting and important when I added them; many have now fallen silent, and I regret that, and wonder whether I should remove them or whether they might, perhaps, come back to sparkling life.  One blog that is very alive and  consistently fascinates me is Alan Jacobs' Text Patterns.

Jacobs is currently a distinguished professor at Baylor and before that was at Wheaton College.  He wrote a fine biographical study of C.S.Lewis - one of the best, I think - and more recently has published a history of the Book of Common Prayer - I'd love to read that as the BCP has been a steady guide to me in my Christian journey.

He also writes a wide-ranging blog which right now is revolving around two aspects of our present age which are both loudly announced (by some people) and which seem to be mutually contradictory: on the one hand, that this age is the dawn of the Anthropocene, the age when the human race is getting "big" enough to become the central influence on our planet's ecology; and on the other hand that it is also the dawn of the posthuman, the era when human beings are transcended and (according to some) superseded by machines that are faster, stronger, more agile, precise and intelligent that we are.   "Ours; not ours", writes Jacobs. "It is in the light of this twofold reality that theology in our time should be done."