Join Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet in Supporting 'Bondings 2.0'

Today marks 3 and 1/2 years since New Ways Ministry started this blog.  It’s amazing how much we have grown in that time, especially in readership.

While we are proud of all of our readers, we recently learned about a particular reader who we would like to highlight.   Do you watch ABC-TV’s Modern Family? It’s an Emmy-award-winning sitcom which explores contemporary family issues, including a gay couple with an adopted child.

We recently learned that Eric Stonestreet, the actor who plays Cam, one of the gay fathers, has taken notice of Bondings 2.0. Stonestreet, who himself has won two Emmy awards for the show, was recently interviewed on HuffPost Live, and in the course of his conversation, he mentioned a topic that was featured on our blog. To illustrate, the HuffPost Live producers showed our blog post on the screen while Stonestreet spoke of the content.  How exciting to see Bondings 2.0 featured so prominently on such an influential news show!  You can catch the visual and Stonestreet’s comments by clicking here, and scrolling to the 7:50 minute mark and watch and listen for about a minute or so.

We know that Stonestreet had seen the story on Bondings 2.0 previously because the actor had tweeted the link to our blog post to his followers on the same day we published it, about a week before the HuffPost Live interview.The post that caught Stonestreet’s eye was the May 16, 2015, item when we reported on a Vatican official praising Modern Family for its realistic depiction of contemporary issues.

While we are proud to know that Stonestreet likes us, we are even prouder of our readers, subscribers, and commenters who are regularly a part of what makes this blog a respected source of news and opinion on Catholic LGBT issues. Journalists, researchers, scholars, and advocates have all told us that they turn to Bondings 2.0 to learn about the evolving relationship between the Catholic Church and the LGBT community.

What gratifies us most are the many comments we receive in notes, emails, phone calls, and personal conversations from the great mass of readers who tell us that this blog helps them keep up with the news and provides them with some things to reflect on for their spiritual journeys.  Many folks have told us that reading this blog has become an important part of their morning ritual. Truly, all of these messages are incredibly encouraging for us, and we are grateful for the opportunity to be helpful.

Every six months, on the anniversary of the blog (November 28) and the half-year anniversary (May 28), we make an appeal to our readers for financial support for the blog.  If you are able to send a gift to help New Ways Ministry keep this project vibrant, we would greatly appreciate it.  We don’t ask for contributions at any other time of the year.

You can donate by clicking here, and you will be brought to New Ways Ministry’s website donation page.  When you fill out the donation form online, please type “blog” in the comments section of the form so that we know that is why you are contributing.   You can also mail a check made out to “New Ways Ministry” to our offices at 4012  29th Street, Mount Rainier, MD  20712.  Or call us during business hours at 301-277-5674, and we can take your credit card donation over the phone.  However you decide to contribute, your donation is tax-deductible.

Another way you can show your support is by telling your friends about the blog and encouraging them to subscribe by entering an email address in the “Follow” box at the top of the right hand column of the blog page and clicking the button.  If you yourself are not a subscriber, you might want to do the same.  As a subscriber, you will receive an email every time the blog is updated, usually once a day.  That way, you will never miss out on the latest news.

Thank you in advance for your support.  We wouldn’t be a blog without the great community that we have out there.  Thanks for all that each of you is doing, in your own ways, big and small, to build bridges between the Catholic Church and the LGBT community.

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry