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Elizabeth Bukey, an intern at the UUA Washington Office for Advocacy, responded to William F. Schulz’s essay “What Torture Has Taught Me” on her blog, “No One Shall Compel Them.” “If it is neither true that ‘everyone’ has inherent worth, or that ‘no one’ does, we’re left with a sticky ‘some people do, and no one can tell who.’ This seems to be where Schulz is going when he says, ‘I oppose the death penalty not because I believe that every one of those lives carries inherent worth. . . . I oppose the death penalty because I can’t be sure which of them falls into which category’” (ebindc.blogspot.com, December 4).
Members of the “Chalice Circle” LiveJournal community responded to Susan M. Smith’s essay, “The Truth About Santa.” Adina_atl questioned the morality of encouraging belief in Santa: “[T]he real question is whether ‘Santa’ is a useful story. The basics of the story is ‘good (moral) people get material goods,’ which so easily equates to ‘those who get material goods are good people’” (chalice_circle.livejournal.com, December 18).
The Rev. Kit Ketcham, on her blog “Ms. Kitty’s Saloon and Road Show,” also wrote about Christmas, commenting on UUs’ reluctance to donate gifts to the poor. “[W]e are self-conscious about privileged white liberals doing something nice for the underprivileged. We’ve been tarred with that brush a little too often.” (mskittyssaloonandroadshow.blogspot.com, December 27).
At “Unitarian Universalists in the Media,” uuworld.org’s weekly news blog, Sonja L. Cohen tracks stories about UU people and congregations (uuworld.org/news/blog.php).