The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission is organizing a memorial vigil for murdered Ugandan activist David Kato. The starting point of the procession is not yet determined, but attendees will finish at the Ugandan embassy. I'll post more details as they are known.Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Via JMG: Thursday In Manhattan: Memorial Vigil For Slain Ugandan LGBT Activist David Kato
The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission is organizing a memorial vigil for murdered Ugandan activist David Kato. The starting point of the procession is not yet determined, but attendees will finish at the Ugandan embassy. I'll post more details as they are known.
Via JMG: MINNESOTA: Lesbian Couple Enters School Party To Cheers From Fellow Students
A lesbian couple who successfully fought to attend their Minnesota high school's Snow Days party as members of the royalty court were greeted with cheers from their classmates as they entered the room last night. Sarah Lindstrom and Desiree Shelton wore matching black suits with pink ties and held hands as they entered the Snow Days Pep Fest at Champlin Park High School in Minneapolis' northwest suburbs. The reaction came as a relief to the couple and school administrators. The district has been stung by criticism of its policies toward homosexuality and the alleged bullying of a gay student who killed himself. "It felt amazing," said Shelton, adding that she was too nervous to notice dozens rise to give her a standing ovation as she walked in with Lindstrom. "I think we were too focused on getting to the stage."After the pair was elected to the court, school officials changed the rules that previously had couples enter the party in boy-girl pairs. The new rules required each student to enter accompanied by a parent or teacher. The school relented after lawsuits from the SPLC and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Christiantist activists have worked to prevent anti-bullying legislation in the district.
Via JMG: CALIFORNIA: Vandals Rip Out "Equality" From Gay-Friendly Church Banner
Vandals have literally ripped out equality from the banner of a gay-friendly church in California. Rev. Kathy Cooper-Ledesma, a senior pastor at the church, said church leaders are asking the congregation to pray for those who defaced their banner. "Our belief that hate is not a Christian value remains firm," she said. "And while they can take the 'equality' out of the banner, they can't take it out of our understanding of the Gospel." The iconic church, located on the corner of Franklin and Highland avenues, is over 100 years old, and has been fighting for marriage equality for years, said Chad Darnell, a marketing coordinator for the church. He said this was the second time that a banner was vandalized this month. The first banner was stabbed multiple times and this was the replacement banner.The church has hosted video shoots for the NOH8 campaign. Police are investigating.
(Via - Towleroad)
Via JMG ; Scandal Rumors Fly Around John Boehner
Rumors are flying that the ill-reputed National Enquirer, who actually did get it right about John Edwards, is about to publish a similar adultery scandal about GOP House Speaker John Boehner. Via Stark Reports:
Wonder how well Boehner’s zero-tolerance pledge regarding corruption will hold up when it comes out that several hundred paper-making jobs were lost in his district and he refused to do anything about it at the same time he was sleeping with a lobbyist for the printing industry that was very happy to get their cheap paper from China.Boehner and his wife Debbie have been married for 37 years. If lightning strikes a second time for the National Enquirer, this could be the shortest speakership in history. On the other hand, that rag completely makes shit up all the time. Stand by.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Via JMG: Dubya's Daughter For New York Marriage
The younger Barbara Bush has joined her mother in endorsing same-sex marriage. The New York Times comments on the kids of prominent Republicans:
Ms. Bush is the latest child of a prominent Republican leader to embrace same-sex marriage, long considered anathema to the conservative movement. Gay rights advocates have been quick to seize on the generational split as evidence that the acceptance of same-sex marriage is blind to party affiliation and family values. Meghan McCain, the daughter of John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, has become an outspoken supporter of same-sex marriage, despite her father’s opposition to it. And Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, has forcefully backed it as well — and is widely credited with helping to persuade her father to do the same. In the case of Mr. McCain, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush, it is not just their children who have supported it. So, to varying degrees, have their wives. Laura Bush, in a television interview in May, said, “When couples are committed to each other and love each other” they should have “the same sort of rights that everyone has.”
reposted from Joe
Monday, January 31, 2011
Via JMG: Carol Channing Turns 90
Broadway legend Carol Channing turns 90 today and the three-time Tony winner has granted a rare video interview in which she reminisces about her career and her status as a gay icon. Hit the link for the clip.Sunday, January 30, 2011
Liberalism and Religion - We Should Talk
Liberalism's objections to mythic forms do not apply to formless awareness. Thus liberalism and authentic spirituality can walk hand in hand.There are two major dialogues in the modern world that I believe must take place, one between science and religion, and then one between religion and liberalism.
The way it is now, the modern world really is divided into two major and warring camps, science and liberalism on the one hand, and religion and conservatism on the other. And the key to getting these two camps together is first, to get religion past science, and then second, to get religion past liberalism, because both science and liberalism are deeply anti-spiritual. And it must occur in that order, because liberalism won’t even listen to spirituality unless it has first passed the scientific test. (Showing how that might happen was a major theme of my book, Sense and Soul.)
In one sense, of course, science and liberalism are right to be anti-spiritual, because most of what has historically served as spirituality is now prerational, magic or mythic, implicitly ethnocentric, fundamentalist dogma. Liberalism traditionally came into existence to fight the tyranny of prerational myth and that is one of its enduring and noble strengths (the freedom, liberty, and equality of individuals in the face of the often hostile or coercive collective). And this is why liberalism was always allied with science against fundamentalist, mythic, prerational religion (and the conservative politics that hung on to that religion).
But neither science nor liberalism is aware that in addition to prerational myth, there is transrational awareness. There are not two camps here: liberalism versus mythic religion. There are three: mythic religion, rational liberalism, and transrational spirituality.
The main strength of liberalism is its emphasis on individual human rights. The major weakness is its rabid fear of Spirit. Modern liberalism came into being, during the Enlightenment, largely as a counterforce to mythic religion, which was fine. But liberalism committed a classic pre/trans fallacy: it thought that all spirituality was nothing but prerational myth, and thus it tossed any and all transrational spirituality as well, which was absolutely catastrophic. (As Ronald Reagan would say, it tossed the baby with the dishes.) Liberalism attempted to kill God and replace transpersonal Spirit with egoic humanism, and as much as I am a liberal in many of my social values, that is its sorry downside, this horror of all things Divine. Liberalism can be rightfully distrustful of prerational myth, and yet still open itself to transrational awareness. Its objections to mythic forms do not apply to formless awareness, and thus liberalism and authentic spirituality can walk hand in hand into a greater tomorrow. If this can be demonstrated to them using terms they find acceptable, then we would have, I believe for the first time, the possibility of a postliberal spirituality, which combines the strengths of conservatism and liberalism but moves beyond both in a transrational, transpersonal integration. The trick is to take the best of both, individual rights plus a spiritual orientation, and to do so by finding liberal humanistic values plugged into a transrational, not prerational, Spirit. This spirituality is transliberal, evolutionary and progressive, not preliberal, reactionary and regressive. It is also political, in the very broadest sense, in that its single major motivation, compassion, is pressed into social action. However, a postconservative, postliberal spirituality is not pressed into service as public policy, transrational spirituality preserves the rational separation of church and state, as well as the liberal demand that the state will neither protect nor promote a favorite version of the good life. Those who would transform the world by having all of us embrace their new paradigm, or particular God or Goddess, or their version of Gaia, or their favorite mythology, these are all, by definition, reactionary and regressive in the worst of ways: preliberal, not transliberal, and thus their particular versions of the witch hunt are never far removed from their global agenda. A truly transliberal spirituality exists instead as a cultural encouragement, a background context that neither prevents nor coerces, but rather allows genuine spirituality to arise.
But one thing is absolutely certain: all the talk of a new spirituality in America is largely a waste of time unless those two central dialogues are engaged and answered. Unless spirituality can pass through the gate of science, then of liberalism, it will never be a significant force in the modern world, but will remain merely as the organizing power for the prerational levels of development around the world.
Material in this column appears in One Taste: The Journals of Ken Wilber, from Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston. © Ken Wilber, 1998.
The way it is now, the modern world really is divided into two major and warring camps, science and liberalism on the one hand, and religion and conservatism on the other. And the key to getting these two camps together is first, to get religion past science, and then second, to get religion past liberalism, because both science and liberalism are deeply anti-spiritual. And it must occur in that order, because liberalism won’t even listen to spirituality unless it has first passed the scientific test. (Showing how that might happen was a major theme of my book, Sense and Soul.)
In one sense, of course, science and liberalism are right to be anti-spiritual, because most of what has historically served as spirituality is now prerational, magic or mythic, implicitly ethnocentric, fundamentalist dogma. Liberalism traditionally came into existence to fight the tyranny of prerational myth and that is one of its enduring and noble strengths (the freedom, liberty, and equality of individuals in the face of the often hostile or coercive collective). And this is why liberalism was always allied with science against fundamentalist, mythic, prerational religion (and the conservative politics that hung on to that religion).
But neither science nor liberalism is aware that in addition to prerational myth, there is transrational awareness. There are not two camps here: liberalism versus mythic religion. There are three: mythic religion, rational liberalism, and transrational spirituality.
The main strength of liberalism is its emphasis on individual human rights. The major weakness is its rabid fear of Spirit. Modern liberalism came into being, during the Enlightenment, largely as a counterforce to mythic religion, which was fine. But liberalism committed a classic pre/trans fallacy: it thought that all spirituality was nothing but prerational myth, and thus it tossed any and all transrational spirituality as well, which was absolutely catastrophic. (As Ronald Reagan would say, it tossed the baby with the dishes.) Liberalism attempted to kill God and replace transpersonal Spirit with egoic humanism, and as much as I am a liberal in many of my social values, that is its sorry downside, this horror of all things Divine. Liberalism can be rightfully distrustful of prerational myth, and yet still open itself to transrational awareness. Its objections to mythic forms do not apply to formless awareness, and thus liberalism and authentic spirituality can walk hand in hand into a greater tomorrow. If this can be demonstrated to them using terms they find acceptable, then we would have, I believe for the first time, the possibility of a postliberal spirituality, which combines the strengths of conservatism and liberalism but moves beyond both in a transrational, transpersonal integration. The trick is to take the best of both, individual rights plus a spiritual orientation, and to do so by finding liberal humanistic values plugged into a transrational, not prerational, Spirit. This spirituality is transliberal, evolutionary and progressive, not preliberal, reactionary and regressive. It is also political, in the very broadest sense, in that its single major motivation, compassion, is pressed into social action. However, a postconservative, postliberal spirituality is not pressed into service as public policy, transrational spirituality preserves the rational separation of church and state, as well as the liberal demand that the state will neither protect nor promote a favorite version of the good life. Those who would transform the world by having all of us embrace their new paradigm, or particular God or Goddess, or their version of Gaia, or their favorite mythology, these are all, by definition, reactionary and regressive in the worst of ways: preliberal, not transliberal, and thus their particular versions of the witch hunt are never far removed from their global agenda. A truly transliberal spirituality exists instead as a cultural encouragement, a background context that neither prevents nor coerces, but rather allows genuine spirituality to arise.
But one thing is absolutely certain: all the talk of a new spirituality in America is largely a waste of time unless those two central dialogues are engaged and answered. Unless spirituality can pass through the gate of science, then of liberalism, it will never be a significant force in the modern world, but will remain merely as the organizing power for the prerational levels of development around the world.
Material in this column appears in One Taste: The Journals of Ken Wilber, from Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston. © Ken Wilber, 1998.
Via JMG: Quote Of The Day - Dan Cathy
"In recent weeks, we have been accused of being anti-gay. We have no agenda against anyone. At the heart and soul of our company, we are a family business that serves and values all people regardless of their beliefs or opinions. We seek to treat everyone with honor, dignity and respect, and believe in the importance of loving your neighbor as yourself. We also believe in the need for civility in dialogue with others who may have different beliefs. While my family and I believe in the Biblical definition of marriage, we love and respect anyone who disagrees. [snip]"Chick-fil-A's Corporate Purpose is 'To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us, and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.' As a result, we will not champion any political agendas on marriage and family. This decision has been made, and we understand the importance of it. At the same time, we will continue to offer resources to strengthen marriages and families. To do anything different would be inconsistent with our purpose and belief in Biblical principles." - Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy, claiming to have ended his company's support of the anti-gay marriage movement.
RELATED: The New York Times covers the controversy.
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