Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 19, 2011

Meditation is never one thing

Meditation is never one thing; you’ll experience moments of peace, moments of sadness, moments of joy, moments of anger, moments of sleepiness. The terrain changes constantly, but we tend to solidify it around the negative: “This painful experience is going to last the rest of my life.” The tendency to fixate on the negative is something we can approach mindfully; we can notice it, name it, observe it, test it, and dispel it, using the skills we learn in practice.

- Sharon Salzberg, "Sticking with It"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Me Respeita!

Este filme foi realizado na disciplina de Documentário, do curso de Jornalismo, na Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, durante o 2º semestre de 2011.

NSFW: Top 5 Reasons People Choose 2 B Gay

Top 5 Reasons People Choose 2 B Gay from FCKH8.com on Vimeo.

Via JMG: California LGBT Rights Group Approved To Gather Prop 8 Repeal Signatures

California LGBT rights group Love Honor Cherish has been approved to begin gathering signatures to place a repeal of Prop 8 on the 2012 ballot. They now have until May 14 to collect 807,615 voter signatures.

Love Honor Cherish submitted the proposed initiative in October after Equality California, the state's largest gay rights group, said it was not prepared to lead a campaign to overturn Proposition 8. In 2008, the measure's supporters and opponents spent $83 million campaigning for and against the amendment, making it the most expensive political race on a social issue in the nation's history.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has been reviewing a lower court's decision from last year that struck down Proposition 8 as a violation of the civil rights of gay and lesbian Californians. Watson said that if the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds that ruling and lifts its injunction barring same-sex couples from marrying, the repeal initiative would no longer be needed.

But if neither the 9th Circuit nor the U.S. Supreme Court reinstate marriage rights for same-sex couples early next year and instead seek to keep the ban in place while the case works its way through the legal system, Love Honor Cherish would move forward with trying to qualify the repeal measure and campaign for its passage, Watson said. .

Labels: LGBT rights, Love Honor Cherish, Proposition 8

reposted from Joe

U.S. judge mulls overturning federal marriage law

 

U.S. judge mulls overturning federal marriage law

www.vancouversun.com

 

A U.S. judge appeared sympathetic to a lesbian federal employee's bid to strike down a law denying health-insurance benefits to her spouse, in the first hearing since the Obama administration decided to quit defending the statute.

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Viam JMG: Which Ban?

Via JMG: MINNESOTA: GOP Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch Resigns in Adultery Scandal

Defender of marriage and Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch (R) has resigned her post in disgrace after allegations of an affair with a Senate staffer. Koch, who is is married with one child, was one of the proponents of Minnesota's 2012 anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment. [Update below]

At a Capitol news conference Friday, Sen. Geoff Michel (R-Edina) said Senate staff recently brought up allegations of an “inappropriate relationship between Majority Leader Koch and a Senate staffer.” "We sit here with a lot of humility, sadness, and shock,” Michel said. Michel said multiple staffers reported allegations to Senate leaders. He said he doesn’t know how long the relationship was going on and legally cannot discuss the name of the Senate staffer involved with Sen. Koch. The Edina senator could only specify that it was “inappropriate” a “conflict of interest” and created an “unstable work environment for staff.” On whether or not the relationship was sexual, Michel said "I think there's only two people who could fully characterize that,” but GOP leaders said they never heard the word “sexual” used when the allegations surfaced.

And another anti-gay hypocrite bites the dust! Below is a bit of the May vote to place the anti-gay amendment on the 2012 ballot. UPDATE: Late this afternoon the media learned that while Koch has stepped down as majority leader, she may continue as a state senator. She did say that she will not seek reelection in 2012. Koch was the first female majority leader of the Minnesota Senate and her tenure was the shortest in its history.

Labels: adultery, bigotry, GOP, hypocrisy, liars, Minnesota, sanctity of marriage, scandal

reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma December 17, 2011

True Vision, True Understanding

The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.

- Bodhidharma
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

JMG Asshat Of The Day - Michael Brown

"[Hillary Clinton's] speech, which was hailed by gay activists worldwide, was an exercise in hypocrisy, not to mention an insult to several billion people worldwide. Mrs. Clinton had the audacity to compare religious or cultural objections to homosexual practice to 'the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning, or female genital mutilation,' as if the religious and moral objection to men having sex with men is somehow equivalent to the Muslim practice of honor killings or the Hindu practice of burning widows. [snip]

"She stated that 'opinions [on homosexuality] are still evolving', just as opinions evolved over time with slavery, and 'what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.' In other words, if you have an issue with the lewd sexual displays at your city’s gay pride parade, or if you’re not comfortable with a man who dresses as a woman using the ladies bathroom, or if you don’t want to see a kid raised by two lesbians and thereby deprived of having a father, or if you believe that God made men to be with women, then you are the moral equivalent of a slave trader or a slave owner." - Michael Brown, writing for Town Hall.

Labels: asshattery, bigotry, Hillary Clinton, LGBT rights, Michael Brown, religion, theocracy

Rerposted from Joe

Via JMG: STUDY: Gay Marriage Improves Health?

A just-published study indicates that gay men who live in states with legalized same-sex marriage may have fewer health problems.

During the 12 months after the 2003 legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, there was a significant decrease in medical care visits, mental health visits and mental health-care costs among gay and bisexual men, compared to the 12 months before the law changed. This led to a 13 percent reduction in health-care visits and a 14 percent reduction in health-care costs. The health benefits were similar for single gay men and those with partners. No reduction was seen in HIV-related health visits by HIV-positive men, which suggests that those in need of HIV/AIDS care continued to use needed health-care services, the researchers said.

Labels: gay health, marriage equality, Massachusetts

reposted from Joe