Via JMG: HomoQuotable - Dan Savage

"I'm against making people feel uncomfortable or unsafe in their own homes. Even bigots. And staging protests outside people's homes is a tactic usually employed by rightwing anti-abortion activists and the KKK back in the day. I don't think this is a tactic that gay rights movement should endorse or adopt.

"To bring this down to a personal level: I say a lot of shit that pisses off the religious right. I don't want rightwing anti-gay haters turning up on the sidewalk outside my house, annoying my neighbors, and, most importantly, making my son feel unsafe in his own home. (Honestly sometimes I'm surprised that they haven't; I'd even go so far to express my gratitude—yes, to the haters—that they haven't.) Protesting outside people's homes? I don't think they should do that to us, any of us, and I don't think we should do that to them, any of them. Not Tony, not Maggie, not these florists." - Dan Savage, responding to the protest outside of the home of an anti-gay Canadian florist.

Labels: Canada, Dan Savage, HomoQuotable

reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Quote Of The Day - Randy Thomasson

"This shows that you cannot trust the Democrat legislators, the homosexual agenda people at all, and you cannot trust the teachers unions -- the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers boldly and brashly supported this bill in committee. They want children in the classrooms statewide to be taught that they can be homosexual or bisexual or transsexual -- or they ought to be -- and that they'll enjoy it." - Save California spokesbigot Randy Thomasson, responding to a bill that requires that LGBT people be depicted positively in public school textbooks.

The bill, sponsored by openly gay state Sen. Mark Leno, advanced out of a Senate committee last week.

Labels: California, education, LGBT youth, Mark Leno, Randy Thomasson, Save California

reposted from Joe

Thank you! 34000 visits! Obrigado! 34.000 vistantes!

Thank you folks for coming by to see what I have been reading and doing... we have streaked past 34000 visits... I am so very honored!

Obrigado pessoal por terem vindo para ver o que tenho lido, feito, e continuo fazendo. Hoje temos mais que 34.000 vistantes... Eu estou muito honrado!



Daniel

Via HimalayaCrafts: I think I have here...

O seu trabalho é descobrir o seu trabalho, e depois, com todo o seu coração, doar-se a ele. ~ Buda

Your work is to discover your work
And then with all your heart
To give yourself to it. ~ Buddha

Namaste 

Via JMG: A Pastor Sees The Light

Pastor Murray Richmond says he used to preach against homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but not anymore.

Why had we singled out homosexuality as a litmus test for True Christianity in the first place? Why had it become such a lightning rod for self-righteousness? One reason, I think, is that it's easy to condemn homosexuality if you are not gay. It is much harder than condemning pride, or lust or greed, things that most practicing Christians have struggled with. It is all too easy to make homosexuality about "those people," and not me. If I were to judge someone for their inflated sense of pride, or their tendency to worship various cultural idols, I would feel some personal stake, some cringe of self-judgment. Not so with homosexuality. 



Now I am wondering why, if two gay people want to commit their lives to one another, they should ever be denied that chance. No church or pastor should be forced to perform those ceremonies, and they can choose not to recognize gay marriage for their adherents. But the constitution of the Presbyterian Church does not explicitly forbid a pastor from being a thief, a murderer, or an egotistical jerk. It is not designed to do these things. It does prohibit a gay person from becoming a pastor. All I can ask is: Why?

Read Richmond's full essay at Salon.com.

Labels: LGBT rights, marriage equality, religion

reposted from Joe

Via JMG: NETHERLANDS: Ten Years Of Marriage

Ten years ago this week, the Netherlands become the world's first nation to legalize same-sex marriage. Veteran reporter Rex Wockner was in Amsterdam's City Hall that night and today he reposts this excerpt from his report on the proceedings:

Amid an international media frenzy, the weddings took place at City Hall as the law became effective at the stroke of midnight. Mayor Job Cohen officiated. As Cohen finished his opening remarks at 11:58 p.m., the audience in the City Council chambers began syncopated clapping as they waited for the room's clock to click over to 12:00. When it clicked, cheers erupted.

Wocker notes: "In the intervening 10 years, 14,813 of the Netherlands' 55,000 gay couples have gotten married, according to Statistics Netherlands. Of those couples, 7,522 were female and 7,291 were male. There have been 1,078 same-sex divorces, 734 of them by female couples."

RELATED: Canada legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2005 in a ruling that made legal a gay wedding that had taken place in January 2001. Call it "ten years with an asterisk."

Labels: LGBT History, marriage equality, Netherlands, Rex Wockner

reposted from Joe

Mile-high madness with Richard Simmons! #RICHROLL

Michele Bachmann Saves America Ep. 1: What a God Wants

Via JMG: Matt Damon On Kissing Michael Douglas

"I never thought I would get to kiss Michael Douglas. I kind of think of it in algebra terms, back to my high-school days. It's like the transitive property - by kissing Michael Douglas, I am making out with Catherine. I was actually kind of upset that I never got to kiss Catherine. But now I get to kiss Michael. I thought it would have been better if I could have at least kissed them both." - Matt Damon, on his kissing scenes with Michael Douglas in the upcoming Liberace bio-pic.

Labels: Liberace, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, movies

re posted fromJoe

Via JMG: HomoQuotable - Bruce Bawer

"In 1989, thousands of gay activists, angry at the Vatican for preaching abstinence instead of safe sex, rallied outside a church in New York, some of them actually going inside and disrupting a worship service. In 2011, faced with far worse provocations by a faith that, unlike Roman Catholicism, poses a mortal threat to gays, gay-rights groups in London not only decided to remain silent lest they 'offend' Muslims, but in addition chose to turn on their own, denouncing fellow gays as 'racists' and 'Islamophobes' for feeling obliged to stand up — even if in the meekest of ways — to people who would, without question, murder them if they had the power to do so.

"No, the officers of London’s gay-rights organizations, and the commenters at Pink News, aren’t the only people in West who have responded to Muslim bullying with cowardly toadying. But British gays should damn well understand, at this point, that there’s no place for them in the sharia-run Britain to which millions of British Muslims openly aspire and that the Archbishop of Canterbury has already accepted as inevitable. If they’re so desperate not to offend Muslims, they’d better kill themselves pronto — for, as they still somehow fail to grasp, their very existence is an offense to these people." - Bruce Bawer, writing for the right-wing Pajamas Media about London's "Gay-Free Zone" controversy.

Labels: Bruce Bawer, homocons, HomoQuotable, Islam, London, religion, UK

reposted from Joe