Yep. If someone’s a jerk, being taught that god is on their side and everyone who disagrees with them is going to hell is not going to make them a nicer person.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself. Unless they are colored, for the colored thou may hate freely.”

Imagine the shock of being a father and getting blindsided by hearing one of your kids using racial slurs like that. Totally out of the blue.

Church camp is where my husband felt his first boob. He also witnessed a blowjob. My children are NEVER going to church camp.

You say that as if the parents were actually trying to teach their kids a lesson or something, just getting it wrong.

My guess is the parents had a role in shaping this behavior.

The biggest bullies towards my sister and me in school were the Jesus-iest girls ever. They attended all church services, youth activities, retreats, etc. And these girls made damn sure to let us know, especially when adults weren’t around, that our entire family would rot in hell for all eternity. Another girl told…

girls, you could have avoided all this by simply not being racist fucks.

Yea, no shit! It’s a private school so I am assuming at the beginning of the year, EVERY YEAR you and your shitty kid have to sign a contract saying that you are a representative of that school and if your child violates a code of conduct they can be expelled.

The parents of the girls either want both of them to be reinstated in the private school

In September, 32 girls in Chicago went on a religious retreat together. By November, their text message chain was riddled with racial slurs that got five of them suspended or expelled from their high school

Kelly, this series is amazing! Thanks so much for diving into this much maligned, much misunderstood genre.

I’ve been reading romance novels for twenty years now. The first one was pretty old school - I think it was published in the 1980's and I thought I was being all naughty reading it. I went on to study English literature at uni and read and studied the classics, but always on the side I had a romance novel on the go.…

I like a wide variety of literature genres, but I always like my fiction to have a little romance. Even if it’s just smoldering looks and lingering touches - gimme something. So I’m glad there’s so much of it available.

Yes! Lord of Scoundrels. It did the thing I love, which is it captured my attention at page one and didn’t let go.

My gran Fanda divorced her abusive husband in 1970, though that legal decree was years in the making. These books saved her innermost self afterwards. She told me that after almost 20 years of daily assaults, that she felt when she left him that her body was a thing god made specifically for punishment. She didn’t…

Romance novels are why I wanted to visit Scotland.

Thanks for all of these wonderful articles about romance novels and their history!

The lineups at major houses are still dominated by straight, white women. Buoyed by successes in self and indie publishing, gay romance with male leads has flourished in recent years

Growing up, I remember my mother devouring every single Kathleen Woodiwiss, Danielle Steele, Debbie Macomber (even Sidney Sheldon) book as soon as they were released. We must have had hundreds of those paperbacks in our house. This was the same woman, btw, who went through our entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica…