Dear Honorable Members of the US House of Representatives,
Back in the fall of 2012, I visited the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Mafraq, Jordan, near the Syrian border, and I met a Syrian family that left a lasting imprint on my heart. I spent hours talking with them, asking them questions about their former life in Syria and about the current situation in the camp. The father, Anas, described the day that his uncle and two nieces were murdered during a protest in his hometown of Daraa. He then told me about the day Assad's forces broke into his brother's home and took him away.
Paralyzed, I then asked Anas, if he had one message to the United States, what it would be. Without hesitation, he responded: "We want the United States and the international community to help us. We need your...
Lifestyle
To the Falwell Family, Liberty University Faculty and Student Body,
I do not endorse candidates. I embrace truth, endorse principles and encourage prayerful, informed participation in the election process. I want to commend you for inviting Gov. Romney to speak at Liberty University. No doubt as evangelical Christians we have theological differences -- very significant differences with Mormon beliefs. I pray this open letter to your family, faculty, board members, students and all Americans encourages you in your decision and provides additional strength to endure misunderstanding and harsh criticism.
It is obvious many Christians do not fully understand the importance of some things Jesus said. This is especially true in areas we find difficult to comprehend. When Billy Graham...
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Dear Guido Barilla,
I am writing to you today under unfortunate circumstances. When I woke up this morning, I certainly didn't expect to end my day by writing a letter to the chairman of a pasta company, but here we are. I am writing to you in regards to your recent statements about my family. I know you don't know my actual family, because, you know, we aren't close, you and I. So, let me introduce you. My wife and I have been married, legally, for nearly 10 years. We have a 4-year-old daughter together. She calls us Mommy and Mama. We eat dinner at our table together every night. We work hard. We love even harder.
We are the gay family that you don't agree with.
I'm not really sure how you can disagree with a family structure, honestly. We love each other. We're not doing...
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Dear Extrovert,
First, let me start by thanking you for being in my life. You are the yang to my yin. You get me out more, meeting new people, having new experiences and stretching my comfort zone. You help color my external world with a vast richness that I would never find on my own. In return, hopefully, I show you the vibrant colors that exist inside you. I am an expanding being partly because of you and I am eternally grateful.
But there are some things I need to get off my chest. Because I care deeply about you, I'm afraid that if I tell this to your face, I will see the hurt in your eyes and end up taking back what I really meant or making up half-truths to soften the blow. I'm afraid you won't understand and my feeble verbal attempts to explain it will only make it sound...
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Dear Brokenhearted,
I am so very sorry for your loss. I know your pain all too well. Six weeks ago tonight, my father was killed in a mass shooting in Pennsylvania. He was merely attending a township meeting with his neighbors. Little did I know that a phone conversation I had with him only two hours earlier -- he had called to wish my oldest daughter a happy 10th birthday -- would be our last.
My father, someone who was always the life of the party and the light of our lives, had his light extinguished in a senseless act of violence in Ross Township on Monday, August 5th. It is still difficult for me to type those words, let alone say them out loud, but alas, this is our new reality.
Unfortunately, this too is your new reality. Even more frightening is that news of gun violence...
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Dear Future Me,
I see you smiling, sitting so peacefully; you are simply in awe. You are looking at me, the younger, more naïve, more determined, more self-righteous self; you have nothing but love and gratitude for me. You watch me cry on my living room floor, completely bored and unmotivated by life. You see that I am depressed at how large my body has become; you see me struggle daily. You see the pain I carry around in my heart, and you watch me avoid mirrors because I hate what I see.
You see my struggle, you see me have momentary outbursts and cry in fits of rage; and you see that I make it through. You see that I am okay. My pain, my struggles, my issues are not what define me. You see that I make it through this rough patch, and you know that I come out stronger, smarter and...
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Dear Sarah,
As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing.
This is not about disrespecting your private beliefs. But you have a huge conflict of interest here by running for office and you can't have it both ways (see Jesus' words in John 2:15).
You have not been honest about the most important thing about you: the fact that you are a born-again, literal Bible-believing, fundamentalist Christian.
Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus. It's clear...
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Dear Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong,
In November of 2011, the Human Rights Foundation invited Dr. Chee Soon Juan -- one of your well-known critics and one of Singapore's most visible opposition leaders -- to speak at the 2012 Oslo Freedom Forum, taking place May 7, 8, and 9 in Norway. The forum is an annual gathering for promoting democracy, human rights, and justice.
Yesterday, we learned that Dr. Chee's application to leave Singapore to participate at the Oslo Freedom Forum was "not approved." I enclose a copy of an April 10 missive from Lydia Loh of the Insolvency and Public Trustee's Office -- an agency of your government -- denying Dr. Chee permission to exit Singapore and travel to Oslo.
Your government's travel ban on Dr. Chee is but the latest in a series of instances...
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Dear Daughter (or Son),
Some people are concerned that I am sharing too many details about you and the way you came to be in my public writings. They worry that knowing too much about your biological father, or knowing too little about him, or having an openly gay mother, or two, will cause you unnecessary pain. I have considered their input and decided to write an open letter to you about all this. I begin by acknowledging that there will be difficulties in your life; everyone has things with which they will struggle. And the world we live in is cruel and unfair and riddled with inequalities you will come to know only too well, because of, but not limited to you being Black, and the child of a lesbian immigrant, a loudmouth, a rabble-rouser, and a dissenter of sorts. Your life will...
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Dear Governor Deal (and Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole):
As a Catholic moral theologian (and a former corrections officer and reserve police officer), I wish to go on record in requesting that you grant a stay of execution (and commute her sentence) for Kelly Gissendaner, who is scheduled for execution in Georgia on Monday night, March 2nd. In my past experience in law enforcement and in lay ecclesial ministry, I knew first hand murderers, victims of murder, and families of the murdered. As a Catholic theologian, I agree with the teaching of recent popes and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the death penalty.
Sixteen years ago, while visiting St. Louis, Pope John Paul II--now Saint John Paul--asked then-Governor Mel Carnahan of Missouri to commute the death...
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