Moderates are more naive than the visionaries if they think tinkering around the edges will solve systemic problems in our democracy and economy. It’s time to rewrite the social contract, not manage decline.
. . . that we let go of all that
restricts and holds us back
and open ourselves to all
that inspires and nurtures us
in becoming what we
most desire to be.
On Wednesday . . . the House Democratic leadership will try and formally censure Rep. Ilhan Omar – a black Somali-American Muslim woman who came to the United States as a refugee, and who, in recent days, has been compared to the 9/11 terrorists by Republicans in West Virginia and described as “filth” by an adviser to the president – for saying that she wanted “to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Her fellow congressional Democrats have said little or nothing about the aforementioned and shameful Republican record of anti-Semitism, but many have joined the pile-on against Omar. One of them – Rep. Juan Vargas – went out of his way to insist, rather revealingly, that “questioning support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is unacceptable.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar isn’t backing down as she deals with attacks from both Republicans and members of her own party.
On Sunday, the freshman Congresswoman rejected resurgent accusations of anti-Semitism against her as nothing more than attacks manufactured to silence her criticism of Israel’s right-wing government and occupation of Palestinian territories – as she also grappled with assassination threats and Islamophobic attacks against her character.
In a series of tweets, 37-year-old Omar responded to outrage from her critics over comments she made at an event last week about groups that “push allegiance to a foreign country,” which the Democratic chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee characterized as a “vile anti-Semitic slur.”
“I am told every day that I am anti-American if I am not pro-Israel,” she tweeted. “I find that to be problematic, and I am not alone. I just happen to be willing to speak up on it and open myself to attacks.”
We need to be clear: It is not anti-Semitic to support Palestinian rights, demand a change in U.S. policy towards Israel, expose the kind of pressure that the pro-Israel lobby brings to bear on elected officials, or call out Israel's violations of human rights and international law. False accusations of anti-Semitism are used to undermine Palestinian rights, violate the First Amendment and demonize social movements. They also serve as a powerful diversion from the urgent task of combating the real thing.
False accusations aren't made equally against all critics of Israel and supporters of Palestinian rights. They are far more likely to be deployed against people of color, especially Black and Arab intellectuals, as we've recently seen with Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired by CNN following complaints about his Palestinian rights speech at the United Nations. Angela Davis was awarded the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's prestigious Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award in her hometown, only to have the award revoked because of her support for Palestinian rights (In response to massive public pressure, the Institute offered to renew the offer, but Davis instead chose to participate in a public event that included solidarity with Palestine). Michelle Alexander, whose extraordinary New York Timescolumn rooted support for Palestinian rights squarely in the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., faced charges of “sneaky anti-Semitism.”
Most of all, at this moment, we see the targeting of some of the new cohort of amazing brave young women of color now in Congress for the first time. When Rep. Ilhan Omar (D.-Minn.) called out AIPAC and the Israel lobby earlier this month for using money to win support in Congress—as every lobby worth its donors does—she was not condemned and threatened just because of what she said, but because of who she is when she said it. She is a Somali-born former refugee, a Black Muslim woman who wears her hijab in the halls of Congress. And for some in Congress, in the White House and in the media and in too much of the country, such a person does not belong in Congress.
If Omar had written a formal statement instead of a tweet, if she had issued a serious analysis of how every lobby, including the pro-Israel lobby led by AIPAC, directs funds to ensure support from members of congress, rather than casually quoting the Puff Daddy line that it's “all about the benjamins, baby,” the response would have been the same. Because it's far more about who she is than what she said.
The most important point regarding the House Democrats’ resolution to “rebuke” Omar is this: the resolution includes a long list of comments which it denounces as anti-Semitic – many, if not most, of which are indeed anti-Semitic – which Ilhan Omar never said or even implied. That’s the fraud at the heart of what Democrats are doing: they’re purporting to denounce Omar by enacting a resolution that condemns a series of comments about Jews that she never uttered.
Unlike Haim Saban, Tom Friedman, and various AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] lobbyists, she never accused Jews of having allegiance to Israel. She never remotely insinuated that Jews are not or cannot be patriotic Americans. She never blamed Jews for anything, let alone “justif[ied] the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology.”
Indeed, it’s grotesque to associate Omar with comments of this sort. In fact, the irony here is glaring: what is actually bigoted, the real bigots, are those who are exploiting Omar’s status as a black Muslim and Somali immigrant to link her to a series of anti-Semitic sentiments that she has never expressed, and that have nothing whatsoever to do with the critiques she’s voiced about US/Israel policy since entering Congress.
All of this is being accomplished by a deceitful sleight of hand that conflates The Israeli Government and its American supporters (the group that Omar has actually criticized) with Jews (a group that Omar has never criticized). Again, the irony here is glaring: what’s actually anti-Semitic is to conflate the Israel Government and those who support it with Jews: that’s something being done by Democratic House leaders, not by Congresswoman Omar.
“Supporters of Israel” is not synonymous with “Jews.” It’s actually offensive to suggest that’s the case, but that’s the premise of the Democrats’ House resolution, those denouncing Congresswoman Omar and those distorting her comments.
. . . That AIPAC – along with the NRA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley – is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, and works to ensure that members of Congress act favorably toward Israel, is so obviously true that no person in good faith could dispute it. A film about the Israel lobby produced by Al Jazeera but subsequently self-censored was leaked to Electronic Intifada and it contains multiple scenes of AIPAC and other pro-Israel activists boasting of how they use money and lobbying power to force Congress to serve Israeli interests.
None of this is remotely controversial to anyone who knows how Washington works – which includes, first and foremost, all the cowards in the House about to formally denounce Omar, yet again, for the crime of telling this truth.
Indeed, countless prominent Jewish writers, including supporters of Israel, have long said exactly what Omar is accused of having said: that the key goal of the Israel Lobby is to indue, cajole and force U.S. politicians to maintain loyalty to this foreign country. Long-time Israel supporter and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote in 2011 something far more extreme than anything Congresswoman Omar has ever said: a standing ovation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the U.S. Congress, Friedman wrote, was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” Friedman mocked Mitt Romney’s views on Israel by writing: “America’s role is to just applaud whatever Israel does, serve as its A.T.M. and shut up. We have no interests of our own.”
Allegations of conspiratorial internationalism and transnational loyalties have followed Jews since the earliest period of the Jewish diaspora. But in a strange twist, allegiance to Israel by contemporary American Jews, often euphemized with phrases like “unwavering support,” is deemed good. To be accused of such loyalty is to suffer a rhetorical anti-Semitic attack, while to personally exhibit it is commendable.
Omar did not actually accuse any Jewish person of dual loyalty. She asked why she herself, as an American legislator, should be unable to criticize the violent and discriminatory policies of the Israeli state. She did this without the careful distancing that so many Americans—especially within the liberal Jewish milieu—engage in any time Israel does something particularly egregious, which is lay it at the feet of the notoriously corrupt and politically right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu, as though he represents some kind of radical break from the country’s policies of the past 60 years.
. . . [A]s the repeated failures of a negotiated settlement have revealed what we were taught to think of as an abstract tragedy to be a deliberate policy of oppression, younger generations—and younger generations of Jews in particular—have grown increasingly disillusioned with Israeli politics and culture, as well as the policing of any discourse that draws attention to the country’s dependence on American military and financial support.
Because Israel’s staunchest political allies in America are not even American Jews, but rather right-wing Evangelical Christians who view the Jewish State through the prism of religious prophecy, the egregious and now deadly growth of a genuinely terrifying anti-Semitism on the political right has been soft-pedaled, while hysterical over-reactions to leftist criticisms of Israel become weeks-long national scandals requiring Congressional action.
I find Omar’s rhetoric tone-deaf, but haven’t seen compelling evidence that she has any real animus toward Jews. The more likely explanation for these statements is that she’s an inexperienced politician who arrived at the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia at age 12 and probably came of age in left-wing circles where vocal opposition to Israel was the norm, and there wasn’t a lot of thought given to words that Jews consider anti-Semitic dog whistles. Once the outrage crested last week, she could have shown a little sensitivity to people’s concerns and backed down. But I have trouble blaming her for not doing so.
First, this week arguably demonstrated her broader point. She gave a talk about how accusations of anti-Semitism tend to silence critics of Israel. In response, she was swiftly called a “Jew hater.”
Second, there’s the sheer hypocrisy factor. Many of the Republicans attacking Omar now have shown little if any concern about their own party’s use of anti-Semitic tropes. And as Omar points out, they also haven’t shown much concern about the Islamophobic attacks or death threats that have come her way.
Then there’s the substance of the matter. In recent years, Israel’s most conservative backers (the vast majority of whom are not Jewish) have taken steps that unfortunately blur the distinction between supporting a country and showing loyalty to it. Welcoming Netanyahu to Washington in 2015 was one example. Boehner made the unprecedented decision to invite the Israeli prime minister without first informing the White House, to ensure that “there was no interference” from the administration. Some suggested the move may have been unconstitutional.
. . . The raging fight over the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement — or BDS — is a more recent and clear-cut example where Israel’s backers have placed its interests above those of their countrymen. Supporters of BDS — including Omar and her colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib —are trying to borrow a page from the anti-apartheid playbook by economically isolating Israel so it will be forced to make a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel’s backers see BDS as inherently anti-Semitic, in part because they believe it is an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state’s existence and because other countries aren’t facing boycotts for their human rights abuses. (There aren’t a lot of campus activists protesting China’s decision to throw the Uighurs in re-education camps, for instance.) It’s a complicated issue, but pushed by pro-Israel activists, at least 25 states have come down hard on it by passing laws aimed at barring businesses and individuals from government contract work if they take part in BDS. A speech pathologist is currently suing the state of Texas because she allegedly lost her job after refusing to sign a contract promising not to support a boycott of Israel.
What do you call a law that prioritizes the economic well-being of Israel over the free speech rights of individual Americans? Is it a “loyalty oath,” as Glenn Greenwald referred to it? Is it a pledge of allegiance? You can debate whether those phrases are appropriate. But to many observers, it clearly comes close enough.
It should be “okay” for Americans who want their country to have a close alliance with a foreign power to form political organizations that advance their views. The problem with AIPAC is not that it pushes American lawmakers to show deference to the interests of another country. The problem is that it pushes them to show deference to a country that practices de facto apartheid rule in much of the territory it controls. If there were a lobby pushing Congress to put the humanitarian needs of Bangladesh over the immediate economic interests of Americans – by imposing a steep carbon tax and drastically increasing foreign aid to that low-lying nation – would the left decry the idea that such lobbying was “okay?” Of course not. Because progressives aren’t hypernationalists. And I don’t think Omar is either. So she shouldn’t frame her opposition to the Israel lobby in nationalist terms. The problem isn’t Congress’s “allegiance to a foreign country,” but its complicity in Jewish supremacy in the West Bank, an inhuman blockade in Gaza, and discrimination against Arab-Israelis in Israel proper.
With that stipulated, let’s put this gaffe in its proper context. Speaking extemporaneously – in her second language — Omar (by all appearances, unintentionally) said some words that could be interpreted in an anti-Semitic fashion. Meanwhile, virtually all of her colleagues routinely say — in prepared remarks, as a matter of principle – that America should continue to abet the race-based oppression of Palestinians in Israel.
For over half a century now, Palestinians in the West Bank have been living under an illegal military occupation — one that provides their Jewish neighbors with the franchise and basic civil rights, while providing them with neither. In recent years, this de facto apartheid rule has been shading into the de jure variety. In 2017, the Israeli Knesset (i.e., parliament) enacted a law that instructs its army to confiscate privately owned Palestinian land, and transfer it to Israeli settlers. As Michael Sfard observed in the New York Review of Books, “This law is not only a naked sanction of land theft; it is also an unprecedented imposition of Knesset legislation on Palestinians who have no parliamentary representation.”
For over a decade, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been living under an Israeli blockade that restricts their access to basic goods, their ability to fish for sardines (their fishing industry’s “most important catch”), and their capacity to export agricultural products. Israel justifies this blockade in the name of security, as Gaza is currently ruled by the terrorist group Hamas. In reality, many of the blockade’s most damaging provisions merely serve Israel’s parochial economic interests.
. . . Omar’s true offense – in the eyes of her party – was not evincing a bigoted attitude toward a vulnerable minority group. The Democratic leadership clearly has no problem with such bigotry, so long as it is directed at a minority like the Palestinians (i.e., one that lacks political power in the U.S.). As stated above, Omar remarks were, in my view, insensitive. But in the Washington Establishment’s view, her true sin is that her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict are not bigoted enough. Unlike the vast majority of her colleagues, Omar has the temerity to insist that Palestinians are full-fledged human beings, entitled to political freedom and equality before the law. This makes many Democratic donors (and voters) uncomfortable. And so, when she says something that could be plausibly interpreted in an anti-Semitic light, the Democratic leadership treats her momentary insensitivity as a terrible scandal.
. . . Omar’s remarks about Zionists were insensitive and counterproductive. But her colleagues’ enthusiastic support for the subjugation of Palestinians is something much worse. And when we criticize the former – without acknowledging the latter – we do precisely what Omar feared; we suppress “the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine.”
Above: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) waves to supporters at an election night party on November 6, 2018 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Above: Ilhan Omar with her spouse Ahmed Hirsi and their three children in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Image: Photographer unknown)
Brothers and sisters: We're going to win this election not because we have a super PAC funded by billionaires. We're going to win this election because we will put together the strongest grassroots coalition in the history of American politics.
Donald Trump wants to divide us up by the color of our skin, our country of origin, our gender, our religion and our sexual orientation. We are going to do exactly the opposite. We are going to bring our people together – black, white, Latino, Native American, Asian American, gay and straight, young and old, men and women, native born and immigrant.
We are going to bring our people together for an unprecedented grassroots effort, which, I am happy to tell you, already has over one million people signed up as volunteers.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of legendary pop/soul singer Dusty Springfield (1939-1999), widely considered one of the greatest female vocalists of the twentieth century.
My interest in and admiration for Dusty is well documented here at The Wild Reed, most notably in Soul Deep, one of my very first posts. Other previous posts worth investigating, especially if you're new to Dusty, are Dusty Springfield: Queer Icon, which features an excerpt from Laurence Cole's book, Dusty Springfield: In the Middle of Nowhere; Celebrating Dusty (2017), which features an excerpt from Patricia Juliana Smith's insightful article on Dusty's "camp masquerades"; Celebrating Dusty (2013), which features excerpts from Annie J. Randall's book, Dusty!: Queen of the Postmods; and Remembering Dusty, my 2009 tribute to Dusty on the tenth anniversary of her death.
And, of course, off-site there's my website dedicated to Dusty, Woman of Repute (currently only accessible through the Internet archive service, The Way Back Machine).
My website's name is derived from Dusty's 1990 album Reputation, and as I explain in Soul Deep, it was this album that introduced me not only to Dusty's music but also to her life and journey – much of which resonated deeply with me. Indeed, my identification with aspects of Dusty's journey played an important role in my coming out as a gay man.
Above: Stills from the music video for the title track of the 1990 album Reputation. (For my recollections on seeing this video for the first time, click here.)
In honor of Dusty’s life and legacy, I share today (with added images, videos, and links) that part of Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock that focuses on Dusty. Of course, the problem with a lot of these types of books is that they rigidly group and confine artists into distinct eras. For an artist like Dusty, that's neither accurate nor helpful. Her career, after all, spanned four decades, yet it's often reduced to the 1960s, when she was most prolific. The following excerpt from Trouble Girls, though well-written and insightful, unfortunately does just this. (For a more comprehensive review of Dusty's career, click here and here.)
_____________________________
The one pop singer of the ['60s] era who really had it all – humor and insight, finesse and deep, deep soul – was Dusty Springfield. Born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in London, Dusty changed her name around the time she started singing with her brother Tom in a folk trio called The Springfields. By 1963 she had gone solo, and her first hits – "I Only Want to Be With You," "Stay Awhile" – were boisterous, glamorous hip-shakers that threw her in with the British Invasion. Even when she was singing dippy material like "Wishin' and Hopin'" (one of Bacharach-David's rare, tedious gaffs), it was clear that Dusty had an exceptional voice: a low, husky alto that could pick spot-on high notes practically out of thin air. A lot of listeners took her to be black, and the "black" sound of her voice was considered [in Britain, at least] rather exotic at the time.
But there was something else exceptional about her. Try as she might, Dusty just couldn't settle for life as a common pop star. "I don't want to be an entertainer doing a lot of silly things on stage like wearing hats and dancing," she said on the back of Dusty, her second [U.S.] album. In December 1964 she became the first British singer to visit South Africa with an anti-apartheid stipulation in her contract. When she defied regulations and performed in front of a racially mixed audience, the South African government threw her out of the country.
As the sixties wore on, Dusty shed her sweetheart image and began exploring serious emotions. In 1967 she brought a shoulder-to-shoulder intimacy to Bacharach-David's casually sensual "The Look of Love," and tightrope walked the fragile rail of sadness in Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today."
These laid the groundwork for what would be the one true masterpiece of late-sixties female pop singing, Dusty in Memphis. Signed to a new [U.S.] contract with Atlantic, home to Aretha Franklin, Dusty headed south to record with the American Sound Studio's session band and producers Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd, and Arif Mardin. Instead of forcing a rigid R&B agenda on her, musicians, producers, and singer collaborated in a gorgeous, genre-defying blend of deep soul and orchestral pop. Only the best songs from the best writers were used: Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "I Can't Make It Alone," Newman's "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore," Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's, "Just a Little Lovin'." To each of these compositions the American Studio's band added supple backbeats, guitar fills, organ colorations, and bass lines that were never obvious, but always securely felt. On top of all of that, Dusty sung like an angel. Her phrasing were plaintively expressive yet technically astounding, and she delivered each line with tender abandon. She made exquisite use of her upper register, finding a vast repertory of shadings in her falsetto range. There's not a hard note sung or played on the album.
Dusty in Memphis wasn't a huge hit at the time, although its single, "Son-of-a-Preacher Man" did go to Number Ten. Perhaps audiences just weren't expecting serious art from a beehived, overly eye-shadowed British girl singing deep soul music against a Southern band's backdrop. More to the point, they weren't expecting it from the fluffy female pop genre. Dusty was singing about some of the most difficult and intimate female emotions – loneliness, shame, vulnerability, the inability to survive without a man's validation – and she brought to them a conviction that has seldom been managed by any female singer, except maybe Billie Holiday.
Dusty didn't put a cute happy face on heartbreak or dress it up in snazzy high-heeled boots, she confronted it for the messy, self-annihilating trauma it really is. In "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore," the singer learns of her lover's unfaithfulness from cheap neighborhood gossip. In "Breakfast in Bed," she's playing the other woman herself – an unfaithful lover is better than no lover at all. By the last song, she's literally breaking down, begging a lover to take her back. Who else can I turn to? she sings, Oh baby, I'm begging you / Won't you reach out for my dying soul / And let me live again?
Today, Dusty in Memphis is regarded as a classic, although it still remains something of a cult favorite. It's rarely mentioned in its proper context: alongside albums like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, and other great treatises of emotional disarray. People think that because Dusty didn't write her own songs or play her own instrument she doesn't deserve equal credit for her work. But she does. She lived every broken minute.
Yes, Republicans, Michael Cohen [left] is a thug, a mob figure, a greedy slime-bag who lies. . . . And he used all those traits as Donald Trump's right-hand man for ten years. You cannot have it both ways: The president employed this guy, used him as his fixer and his deal maker, for precisely the reasons you now find reprehensible. No other president in modern history would even know someone like Michael Cohen, let alone make him his personal lawyer and his Executive Vice President for ten years. Everyone associated with Trump is dirty; they are all liars and crooks, because Donald Trump is a liar and a crook. Mob bosses don't employ honest people and honest people don't work for mob bosses.
We have a criminal president who presided over a criminal campaign and continues to head a criminal enterprise. I stand by my now year-old prediction that this crime boss will resign in disgrace to avoid, not impeachment, but multiple criminal indictments of himself and his entire brood of common crooks. Trump's a mobster who managed to con his way into high office, just like Spiro Agnew or some East Coast mayor or state senator. And that is a very good thing: Federal and state prosecutors – unlike the U.S. House if it were to impeach him – can force him to admit his guilt, shut his mouth, and go away quietly or face watching his children grow old in prison while he slowly dies in a penitentiary hospital bed. Stay tuned. Things are going to start moving faster.
Today is the 74th anniversary of the birth of the late, great American singer and actor Carl Anderson (1945-2004), whom I've been honoring throughout February – the month of both his birth and death.
This honoring continues today with both a quote from Veth Javier, who attended Carl's February 28, 2004 memorial service at Agape Spiritual Center in Beverly Hills, California, and a beautiful tribute video by Daniela Spaziani which highlights Carl's celebrated association with Jesus Christ Superstar and which was first posted on YouTube this time last year on the 73rd anniversary of Carl's birth.
Carl was so loved and he gave so much of himself. He took so many people under his wings. . . . There was so much love.
– Veth Javier
NOTE: The song that's sung by Carl and used in this tribute video is “Sarah,” from the musical The Civil War. It's available on the 2-disc CD, The Civil War: The Complete Work (1999). About the song: Corporal William (Bill) McEwen from Minnesota writes a letter to his wife Sarah from the battlefield. He tells her how much he loves and misses her, that every time he closes his eyes, he imagines memories of being with her and, even now, his heart is there. Immediately after, Sarah receives a black-bordered condolence telegram; Bill has died in battle. She vows that she will struggle on to raise their son and survive in the midst of tragedy for "The Honor of Your Name."
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
