I have to say that I’d be all for journalist, media critic, activist, and author Norman Solomon being President Joe Biden’s ghost writer!
Solomon actually recently dabbled in this position (albeit uninvited) and the results, in my view, are spot-on.
NOTE: Norman Solomon’s Biden speech was first published May 16, 2023 at Common Dreams.
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With poll numbers frighteningly low and the stakes astronomically high, here’s what the president should say as he assesses his 2024 run.
My fellow Americans:
I’ve changed my mind. With a heavy heart, I am announcing that I will not seek or accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2024.
The poll numbers indicate that I would be a burden on the party’s national ticket next year and would also have problematic effects on many down-ballot races. It’s time to face grim political realities – however unfortunate they may be.
While I appreciate the loyalty of so many Democrats in Congress who would like to run for the 2024 presidential nomination but would not consider running against me, I now realize that my insistence on seeking re-election has had important negative effects. And the longer I delay in announcing a change of course, the less time they’ll have to build their own national campaigns.
The specter of a second Donald Trump presidency is just too cataclysmic to allow any personal political ambition on my part to serve as an enabler to that fascistic demagogue.
I must acknowledge the fact that my capacities to defeat Trump are greatly diminished – perhaps first and foremost because, seeking re-election, I would be representing a status quo that so many Americans are now telling pollsters they believe is on the wrong track. I have come to question the claims of my friends and boosters that I’m best positioned to defeat Trump in 2024 because I did so in 2020. To be frank, that’s malarky.
I won in 2020 largely due to big turnouts from African Americans and young people, voting for me in lopsided numbers. But, sadly, since then my support among black voters has dropped, and more than 90 percent of young Democrats told pollsters last summer that they wanted a Democratic nominee other than me.
In recent months, three of my administration’s decisions – for oil drilling in the Arctic, a hefty boost for liquified natural gas exports, and extensive oil leasing in the Gulf of Mexico – have further eroded my standing among environmentally minded voters and young voters in particular. I’ve been told that these decisions have disappointed many Democratic activists and seemed to show a cavalier attitude toward the climate crisis that I have repeatedly labeled as “existential.”
I now believe that an open contested primary is the best path forward for Democrats as we look toward the 2024 election. I will no longer stand in the way – which should encourage Democratic aspirants to step forward and help assure a truly open presidential primary process. Such a process of debate, and then party unity, helped us to defeat Trump in 2020. Such a process can and should do the same in 2024.
I am known for being verbose to the point of becoming stumbly and sometimes even unfathomable, so I’ll leave it there. More than a year and a half remains in my presidential term. During that time, I will concentrate on doing the best job as president that I can.
It has been reported by many journalists that I am a great believer in fate. I will not deny it. But I have come to realize that fate should not be understood as fatalism or passivity. The Democratic Party will be running against an extreme MAGA Republican Party next year. It is time to discard illusions and get on with that monumental task.
“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”
– Pope John XXIII
The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from an article by Peng Roden Her on “true awakening.” This article was first published in the December 2022 issue of The Edge.
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A true awakening is messy. It’s raw, honest, vulnerable, profound, and not as wonderful/blissful as many make it out to be. . . . It’s a complete take down of the identity you’ve constructed for others to see, in the exchange for who you were meant to be. [It’s a “you” at one with] a higher purpose, a higher calling, a deep and profound awakening.
A true awakening is not changing who you are, but a process of discarding who you are not. . . . It’s a process of unbecoming to become. It is a process of aligning who you are (currently) with who you are meant to be (divinely) – the highest self, divine-self, ideal-self, or eternal self.
. . . No one has the ability to choose you [to be awakened] but you. Your daily actions, habits, and routines determine your capacity for the calling. You choose you (daily) through removing habits which aren’t in alignment with your highest self.
– Peng Roden Her Excerpted from “Ready for Your Awakening?” The Edge December 2022
Rather than take any responsibility for their huge tax cuts for the very wealthy, plus foreign wars that should never have been fought and obscenely wasteful military spending, the GOP wants to take aim at the average American’s pocketbook in order to fix the problem.
They have no idea where money comes from.
That which stimulates people’s productivity and creativity – from education to healthcare to culture to a healthy environment – stimulates the economy.
That which depresses people – from lack of access to education or healthcare, an unhealthy environment and lack of economic opportunity – then depresses the economy.
The same people who resist over and over again any efforts to actually help people live better lives, now complain that we are running out of money therefore we need to cut any spending that would even help them survive.
No way. The problem is not how just much money this country spends. The problem is who and what we spend it on.
Another place. Another killer. Another scene of mass death. Another example of the horror in which we live.
Each mass shooting has its own narrative, its own variables, its own arc of devastation. But there is also that common denominator: guns, guns, guns, guns.
Typically these aren’t just any guns, but rather weapons of war loaded with magazines full of bullets designed to kill enemies without remorse. But in America, [military-style] weapons are turned on children at a mall or in school, families on the street, concertgoers, parade watchers, grocery shoppers, people dancing, basically anyone just busy living.
And that means it can happen anywhere. At any time. To any of us.
These are not natural disasters. We are powerless to stop earthquakes but not mass carnage from guns. Fatalism is a favorite tool for those who peddle in death under the pretext of the “Second Amendment.”
This is not about guns for hunting or self-defense. It is not about responsible gun ownership. It is about a Wild West mentality in which there are more laws for opening an ice cream stand than carrying a firearm.
Barbara Anne Kozee is a queer Roman Catholic and a doctoral student in Theological Ethics at Boston College. Her research focuses on sexual and family ethics, queer feminist theology, and political ethics.
As a regular guest contributor to New Ways Ministry’s always insightful and inspiring blog, Bonding 2.0, Barbara shares today her thoughts on experiencing the Divine both in Catholics’ “trinitarian identity” and in what she calls “queer time.” It’s a very thought-provoking and hopeful piece, one that’s reprinted in its entirety below.
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The liturgical time between Easter Sunday and Pentecost is one of my favorite periods because of its mystery, liminality, and incompleteness. As a community, we have joyfully witnessed to the resurrection, and we wait in anticipation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Our trinitarian identity is in the process of becoming – what could be more queer!
Equally as mysterious are the readings that we return to during this time, which are not always chronological. For example, in today’s Gospel reading, we return to Jesus’ last discourse in the Gospel of John, his final messages before the beginning of the Passion narrative. In this way, we actually return to Jesus’ comforting words to his fraught disciples before his death and resurrection. In them, Jesus stresses that he will be known to them, and to us as Christians, in a new way, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. These readings show us that liturgical time in our church is not linear or progressive.
I think this “neither here nor there,” non-linear approach to time has important meanings for how we are to live as Catholics, and I think that Queer Catholics are particularly knowledgeable of this way of living.
Sandra Schneiders, IHM, a renowned scripture scholar, writes that knowledge in the Gospel of John is not intellectual or informational, but rather it is the kind of knowledge one has of a friend that makes one say, “We know each other intimately.” So, in today’s Gospel, Jesus asks of his friend, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” In this question, Jesus is pained by not being recognized by his closest friends. He struggles to comfort them, impaired by language’s limitation in describing divine insights about the Spirit-filled world that is to come.
Queer Catholics can resonate with this type of struggle to articulate divine insights to those around us about our lived experiences and ways of being in the world. Why do we stay in the church? What does believing mean, and is it compatible with queer identity? Like many, I am always struggling to find ways to better relate answers to these questions so that others in our church can come to know about queer faith and life.
Queer time celebrates the lifetimes that exist in single moments and the beauty within counter-cultural timelines, outside of time defined by our productivity or efficiency. Memory, justice, and embodiment become especially important community values for this reason. Likewise, in this in-between and non-linear liturgical time, in the already of the resurrection and the not-yet of the dispensing of the Spirit, I invite us to reflect on and celebrate the ways in which we are always on pilgrimage together. We journey to know what it means to be a trinitarian church, a community that celebrates the in-dwelling of the Spirit and the continued, mysterious presence of the resurrected Jesus. We are never fully complete, always in liminal motion.
Queer theorist José Esteban Muñozwrites that we can feel queerness “as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.” I look toward the queer horizon within our Catholic Church, glimpses of which are possible within the current synodal process. Yet, I am also beholden to the radical present moment and the queer people around me, whose spiritual knowledge reminds me that the Spirit is always already at work in our daily lives. Jesus in our Gospel today does not want us to miss his message about the abiding nature of God all around us and in each other.
Jesus is on queer time, and our Catholic liturgy invites us to be there with him, too.
Ed Simon, executive director of Belt Media Collaborative and the editor-in-chief for Belt Magazine, has written a fascinating piece for Aeon in which he advocates for a “new paganism,” a revitalization of our relationship with nature by which we can more fully “immerse ourselves in the wonders of the universe.” Following, with added images and links, is an excerpt.
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There is something romantic in the idea of paganism, of embracing the ocean and atmosphere, the day and the night, the Sun and the Moon. An acknowledgement not of abstractions, but of that which one is capable of seeing and hearing, of touching and tasting. Regardless of our own supposed dominion over the environment, we’re ultimately still very small when compared with the grandeur of nature. Because of that clear fact – which is neither doctrine nor axiom but simply observable reality – nature deserves some portion of our pious supplications. There is a spiritual perennialism of genuflecting before something in the Universe so much bigger than yourself, of offering your prayers towards something so tangibly visible. Because of that, even if I’m not a pagan, often I think that I’d like to be. I’d like to consider which spiritual values are conveyed across centuries of time, and what might be enduring about something like paganism.
First, this requires us to define what exactly the word “paganism” means – no easy matter. In the classical world, paganism was contrasted with Judaism and Christianity; it originally constituted the polytheistic folk religions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but to which later definitions would expand to include cultures as disparate as the Egyptians and the Celts, the Norse and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. There is a natural flattening in this regard, a reductionism that merges together a tremendous diversity of cultures and belief systems into one homogeneous whole: pagan. Yet there is paradoxically a risk in not acknowledging the similarities as well, in not identifying what is distinctive about the ruptures, first of Christianity, and then its child – modernity.
. . . “It is crucial to stress right from the start that until the 20th century people did not call themselves pagans to describe the religion they practised,” writes Owen Davies in Paganism: A Very Short Introduction (2011). “The notion of paganism, as it is generally understood today, was created by the early Christian Church . . . a label that Christians applied to others, one of the antitheses that were central to the process of Christian self-definition.” Where Christianity was abstract, paganism was concrete; the former marked by rationality, the later by emotionality; the first defined by scripture and doctrines, the second by sensuality and rites. To be a Christian was to be connected to an eternal beyond, while the pagan dwelled within the mucky particulars of the natural world.
All of this, of course, is gross simplification, which was the intent of those Church Fathers in the early centuries of Christianity who drew such a distinction, ignoring the intrinsic sensuality implicit within the death sacrifice of the gospels, as well as the philosophical foundations of the Greco-Roman religion. Most importantly, however, was that Christianity understood humanity as separate from an intrinsically fallen nature, and that we are tasked with dominion over the fish of the sea and the beasts of the field. All of creation was intended for us. This way of approaching the natural world predates the scientific and industrial revolutions, though those later developments supplied the technological means of finally establishing that desired dominion. But the justification for that dominion itself was always implicit within those much older Western religious ideals. Now, as our envionments fail, precisely because of that noxious belief in our supremacy over nature, how much more shattering is the perceived failure of meaning we now face? In our present epoch, what then would it mean to reject that rejection, to re-embrace a variety of paganism? Not necessarily the worship of some arcane, dead pantheon, but to supplicate before a seamless nature of which we’re an integral part? Most importantly, a nature that we can observe with our own eyes?
Over the past two centuries – and perhaps longer – there has been an epistemological and cultural shift that has been referred to as disenchantment. Whereby our reality once thrummed with a glowing meaning – where every rock and stream, tree and animal, was endowed with a sense of the sacred – it became drained of transcendent significance, it became disenchanted. Left behind was what the Church understood as a fallen world, and which today positivist philosophy interprets as an inert material one, but the result was the same, what the 18th-century philosopher Friedrich Schiller called the “de-divination” of the world, and what the 20th-century German sociologist Max Weber (who is most associated with the concept) called “de-magicisation.” The political theorist Jeffrey Greendescribes disenchantment as marking the “retreat of magic and myth from social life through processes of secularisation and rationalisation.”
But in this “Just So” story of when the gods made their flight, it can be difficult to identify who is at blame. One version blames positivist interpretations of science that reduced all of experience to base materialism, but the Protestant Reformation is often seen as the beginning of such disenchantment (especially by Weber). A good claim could be made that Christianity itself was responsible. There is a story in Plutarch that an Egyptian mariner once heard an echoing declaration that “The great god Pan is dead!” For the Church Fathers, this legend has long been associated with the birth of Christ, but it’s also a convenient allegorical illustration of the ways in which the new faith cleaved previous relationships between divinity and nature, humanity and the environment. Disenchantment at its core is depaganisation.
Though depaganisation included the muting of the oracles and the smashing of idols, in the broader sense it meant the loss of a direct human connection to the divinity of nature. When the term “paganism’ comes to mean only a particular set of stereotypical associations – Dionysian rites and Orphic mysteries, Astarte columns or Druidic stone circles – it can serve to obscure some of the metaphysical import that those things more deeply represent. For my purposes, we can define paganism even more inexactly, but paradoxically with more utility.
What paganism most broadly imagines is a particular relationship between immanence and transcendence within nature, and this relationship generates a certain enchanted meaning of which there is a deficit in the contemporary world, at least among those supposedly worldly, educated, secular and agnostic folks such as myself. In an experience of transcendence, a person is able to connect themselves to a unity above and beyond our reality; with immanence they comprehend the divinity within the material world. What this union offers is a synthesis of the sacred and the profane, what Michael York in Pagan Theology (2003) describes as the abolition of “any true hierarchy between the temporal and the permanent, between the physical and spiritual, between this-world and the otherworld.” Such paganism rectifies the very philosophical doubts and scepticisms that engendered disenchantment in the first place. After all, one can hardly be an atheist when it comes to the Sun, the Moon, the wind, the rain, the ocean, the soil.
To be clear, paganism need not be read literally here as referring to acolytes in the Temple of Artemis or pilgrims to Delphi (though it certainly doesn’t preclude those examples either). One could be a pagan Christian, a pagan Jew, a pagan Muslim, a pagan atheist. When I use the word “pagan” in this context, it refers less to whatever arbitrary deity you supplicate before, or indeed if you bow towards any god at all, than it does to an approach of worshipfulness towards enchanted reality itself. In this regard, paganism is an approach to observable experience, a manner of psychologically re-enchanting materiality, physicality and nature with a divine significance. If scientific positivism and religious fundamentalism both find a concreteness in abstraction, by assuming a unitary reality, whether it’s God or physical law, then paganism rather finds abstraction in concreteness, seeing the very essence of spirit in the sound of a babbling brook, the moss on the side of a tree, or a sunset over Manhattan.
. . . Today, where a crisis of faith manifests in those cursed siblings of meaningless nihilism and fervent fundamentalism, and humanity’s relationship to nature is so inequitable that our economy, technology and industry threatens ecological apocalypse, how useful would it be to have a pagan theology, a new expression of divinity and the sacred commensurate with our current ruptures and crises?
– Ed Simon Excerpted from “A New Paganism” Aeon
May 1, 2023
The announced “end” of the public-health emergency doesn’t mean the COVID-19 pandemic is really over. Thousands of people are still dying from it, while 20% of those who had it are experiencing some form of long COVID and many elderly and immunocompromised Americans continue to feel unsafe. Nor, by the way, does that announcement diminish a longer-term, slow-burning public health crisis in this country.
Early in the pandemic, Reverend William Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, warned that the virus was exploiting deeply entrenched fissures in our society. Before the pandemic, there had already been all too many preconditions for a future health calamity: in 2020, for instance, there were 140 million people too poor to afford a $400 emergency, nearly 10 million people homeless or on the brink of homelessness, and 87 million underinsured or uninsured.
Last year, the Poor People’s Campaign commissioned a study on the connections between COVID-19, poverty, and race. Sadly, researchers found the fact that all too many Americans refused to be vaccinated did not alone explain why this country had the highest pandemic death toll in the world. The lack of affordable and accessible health care contributed significantly to the mortality rate. The study concluded that, despite early claims that COVID-19 could be a “great equalizer,” it’s distinctly proven to be a “poor people’s pandemic” with two to five times as many inhabitants of poor counties dying of it in 2020 and 2021 as in wealthy ones.
As Beltane comes, roughly translated as “bright fire,” the fire within all is growing – the fire of vitality, passion, action, growth and creation.
Light, warmth and heat return and our days expand just as the petals, leaves and medicine also unfurl.
There is a deep calling that the increased light brings, there is a new energy and inspiration within many as we witness blossoming, vibrant greens and beauty . . all around us.
Just as a spinning dancer must keep returning
his eyes to a given point to maintain his balance,
so you must keep returning your focus to me.
I’ve previously mentioned that a spiritual resource that many of my Christian patients find meaningful is Sarah Young’s devotional, Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence. It’s a collection of daily reflections written as if Jesus is speaking directly to us. They are words of encouragement, comfort, and reassurance based on Jesus’s own words of hope, guidance, and peace within Scripture.
Recently, one of the book’s readings particularly spoke to me. I should also say that I’m drawn to understand and envision the speaker of these words as “the Beloved,” one of any number of names we can use when seeking to describe our experience of the loving and transforming Presence within and beyond all things. These names include “Holy One,” “Divine Presence,” “God,” “Jesus,” “Living Light,” “Great Spirit,” “Sacred Mystery”. . . the list goes on.
Following is my slightly-adapted version of the April 25 reading from Jesus Calling, one that is inspired by Hebrews 12:2 and Psalm 102:17.
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Make me the focal point as you move through this day. Just as a spinning dancer must keep returning his eyes to a given point to maintain his balance, so you must keep returning your focus to me.
Circumstances are in flux, and the world seems to be whirling around you. The only way to keep your balance is to fix your eyes on Me, the One who never changes.
If you gaze too long at your circumstances, you will become dizzy and confused. Look to Me, refreshing yourself in My Presence, and your steps will be steady and sure.
If, like me, you’ve ever donated to a Democratic candidate then you no doubt received at least three text messages on your phone today – one from President Biden, one from Vice-President Kamala Harris, and one from First Lady Jill Biden. All were asking for a financial contribution to the president’s 2024 reelection campaign which he launched earlier today.
At this point I’m choosing not to support Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign. Why? Because I don’t believe his agenda is the one needed to both defeat whoever the Republican presidential candidate is in 2024 and lead the country in the direction it needs to go in the years ahead.
Biden likes to talk a lot about “battling for the soul of America.” This battle is rightly understood as being between democracy and the threat of a Republican party infected by the fascist ideology of Trumpism. I’m sure Biden means well, but I’m choosing to support the Democratic candidate who not only literally wrote the book on “healing the soul of America,” but who offers the platform of transformational politics necessary for such healing. That candidate is author and activist Marianne Williamson.
Earlier today, Marianne appeared on The Hill TV’s Rising program where she offered her take on Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign, his “out-of-touch” pitch to the American people, and the efforts of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to stifle the democratic process by ignoring or marginalizing any Democratic challenger to Biden so as to “shoehorn” him into the nomination.”
Rising’s interview with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamsom is well worth checking out.
Unlike the DNC, I stand for democracy everywhere, not just as a goal but as a process. . . . There should be a debate. It should be RFK Jr. It should be myself. It should be the president. And it should be anyone else who joins. We need to discuss what is the right agenda and who is the right person to take on the Republicans in 2024. This should not be a decision that is just dictated by the establishment elite at the DNC. . . . The people should decide, not the DNC. They should not be trying to shoehorn this president into the nomination. . . . I think that I’m a far more serious candidate for this moment in our history than the president is. . . . Right now, I’m planning on winning the nomination.
– Marianne Williamson
Also today, Marianne appeared on Fox News’s Tonight program where she schooled the host on the real state of the nation and on how her platform differs from President Biden’s. I should also say at this point that I think it’s pathetic that a right-wing network is prepared to give Marianne Williamson’s progressive platform a respectful listen when so-called liberal outlets like MSNBC, CNN, and NPR continue to ignore her candidacy.
I conclude this post by sharing the latest from Marianne’s substack, Transform. It’s also the latest in her “Notes from the Trail” series.
President Biden made it official this morning that he’s running for re-election. Here is the statement I put out shortly after watching his video:
For those of us committed to Democrats winning the White House in 2024, the president’s campaign announcement today was concerning.
His remark that he has fought so that everyone "is given a fair shot" contradicts his refusal to fight for a higher minimum wage, permanentize the child tax credit, or side with railroad workers trying to negotiate for sick pay.
His saying that he “knows America” doesn’t seem to include his knowing the 39% of Americans who report skipping meals to pay rent, the one in four Americans living with medical debt, or an entire generation concerned that the tepid efforts of his administration to fight the climate crisis will rob them of a habitable planet.
His saying that this is “not a time to be complacent” about threats to our democracy does not seem to include standing for the democratic process when it comes to choosing the Democratic nominee. The Democratic Party establishment has indicated it is planning to subvert the primary process by shoe-horning Biden into the nomination, and Americans most concerned about our democracy must not let this happen.
With over 50% of Democrats, and 70% of all Americans making it clear they wish to see someone other than Biden run against the Republicans in 2024, it is imperative that the voters hear from all candidates running in this primary – not just the President.
I look forward to a robust debate with Joe Biden, as I present to the American people my platform of fundamental economic reform as a far better way to win the White House in 2024 than the president’s incremental approach to governing. At such a critical time in our country, neither the President nor the DNC has the right to determine who and who is not a serious candidate. That is the right of the people alone.
Then, as the day went by, politician after pundit after politician lined up to endorse the president. I admit I was pretty sad to see Bernie Sanders not only announce he would not be running and that he endorses Biden, but that he “discourages any other high-visibility progressives from doing so either.”
My sadness gave way pretty quickly, however, to an even deeper commitment to keep walking in the direction I’ve been walking.
It’s pretty astonishing to me the way people fall in line in a situation like this. It’s a primary, for God’s sake! No one is spoiler here! It’s a primary. But be that as it may, as my mother used to say . . .
Someone needs to take a stand for universal health care. Someone needs to take a stand for cancelling the entire college loan debt. Someone needs to take a stand for tuition free college (which we had until the 1960’s). Someone needs to take a stand for free childcare. Someone needs to take a stand for paid family leave and guaranteed sick pay. Someone needs to take a stand for a guaranteed livable wage.
With 39% of Americans now reporting they skip meals in order to pay for rent, someone needs to take a stand for an economic u-turn in America.
The positions I support are considered moderate in every other advanced democracy, and they should be in ours as well.
So I’m going to continue being that someone, and I hope you will support me. Let’s not forget that the majority of Americans actually agree with my positions, but have been so beaten down as to not expect any more than they have. Americans have been trained to expect far too little.
Last night I spoke to a full house of young people at Michigan State University. Today I met with Stop Cop City activists in Atlanta, and tomorrow night I’m speaking at Emory University. After that I’m off to Charleston to begin another swing through South Carolina. It’s all quite grinding, in case you’re wondering, but very exhilarating as well.
I’m in it to win it, because the American people deserve so much more.
Much love from the campaign trail. And thank you so much for your support.
– Marianne Williamson “Notes from the Trail” Transform
April 25, 2023
Above: Agribusiness Management senior Mateo Ponton takes a selfie with Marianne Williamson, a Democratic candidate for the 2024 presidential election, who spoke about her agenda at MSU's Broad College of Business on April 24, 2023. (Photo: Sonya Barlow)
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
