Via JMG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Same-Sex Marriage Shows The Genius Of The US Constitution

Speaking on Friday in Philadelphia, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that growing acceptance of same-sex marriage demonstrates the genius of the US Constitution.

"So I see the genius of our Constitution, and of our society, is how much more embracive we have become than we were at the beginning," Ginsburg said in a far-ranging discussion of her work at the National Constitution Center, steps from the nation's founding at Independence Hall. Ginsburg, 80, gave no hint she would wind down her judicial career anytime soon, noting that the fall docket includes such important issues as campaign finance limits and affirmative action. And, despite her sharp ideological differences with some colleagues, including close friend Antonin Scalia, she said their work environment remains cordial.

Last week Ginsburg became the first Justice to officiate at a gay wedding.

Labels: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, SCOTUS, U.S. Constitution

Reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 9, 2013

Fearless

Fearlessness is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to walk into it. When I walk into my fear, practice there, sit upright in the middle of it, completely open to the experience, with no expectation of the outcome, anything is possible. When our circumstances look impossible or terrifying, there is a way.

- Judith Randall, "The Hidden Lamp"

Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through September 10, 2013
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Jóhann Jóhannsson - Free the Mind

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 8, 2013

Get Up Where You Fell Down

In Genjokoan, Dogen writes, 'Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas.' The place where you get to be Buddha, so to speak, is in delusion, and there’s plenty of that to go around. You get up where you fall down. You don’t get up somewhere else. It’s where you fall down that you establish your practice.

- Ryokan Steve Weintraub, "Umbrella Man"

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Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 7, 2013

Every Time a Good Time

A hundred flowers blossom in spring, the moon shines in autumn, there is a fresh breeze in summer, and there is snow in winter. If your mind isn’t occupied with trivial matters, every time is a good time.

- Wumen Huikai, "Zen Basics"

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Via JMG: RUSSIA: President Obama Meets With LGBT Activists In St. Petersburg

The Washington Times reports:

President Obama told Russian gay rights leaders and other activists Friday that fighting for social justice helped him to get elected president. “I got my start as a community organizer,” Mr. Obama said during a meeting with activists in St. Petersburg, Russia. “I got elected president by engaging people at a grassroots level.” Mr. Obama, who has criticized Russia’s new anti-gay laws that outlaw “homosexual propaganda,” met with the director of a Russian LGBT network and others at the conclusion of the G-20 summit. He said the work of such activists is “critically important” to an open society.“I’m very proud of their work,” Mr. Obama said. “Part of good government is making sure we’re creating a space for civil society."

A spokesman for Russia's Human Rights First called today's meeting a "terrific first step."

Labels: activism, Barack Obama, LGBT rights, Russia

Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: NEW MEXICO: Dona Ana County Clerk Requests Donations To Defend Marriage Suit Brought By GOP Lawmakers

 

New Mexico's Dona Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins is asking for donations to help defend the lawsuit brought against him by state GOP lawmakers.  Ellins was the state's first county clerk to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses and since he tipped that first domino, seven other county clerks have joined in, bringing marriage equality to a slight majority of New Mexico's citizens. The "Sharer" mentioned in the above graphic is GOP state Sen. William Sharer, who last week said that gay men should "stop whoring around and marry a woman."  From the above-linked donation site:

For months leading up to his decision, Mr. Ellins and a close circle of confidants conferred with a legal team to make sure that if the decision to issue licenses were challenged, a quick and effective defense could be mounted. Before the first license was issued on Aug. 21, more than $10,000 in legal fees already had been incurred.
Mr. Ellins is mindful that not all of his constituents agree with the principal or the ideology behind his decision, and he has stated his intention not to spend taxpayer funds defending his decision to issue licenses. Legal action has now been filed and legal costs will begin to climb rapidly.
We're asking you to support Mr. Ellins and his daring leadership by making a donation to help cover legal costs already incurred, as well as legal costs that may be lurking in the near future. In the event that we receive more contributions than we need to cover the actual costs, we'll donate the excess to an organization that will continue the fight for equal rights for all New Mexicans in every sense of the word.

I'm kicking in $20 with an added quote from Ellins himself: "Let me put it this way, some people have balls, some people don’t, alright?"

Labels: Lynn Ellins, marriage equality, New Mexico, straight allies

Reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 6, 2013

Everything is Dukkha

A lot of what meditation is teaching, a lot of what Buddhism is teaching, is basically how to acknowledge all of the traumas that are around us. That's what the Buddha was talking about with the word dukkha, that everything is dukkha.

- Mark Epstein, "Tricycle Talks: Buddhism & Psychotherapy"

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Via JMG: BRITAIN: Gay Group Nominates Lively & Robertson For 2013 Bigot Of The Year

 

The British LGBT rights group Stonewall has short-listed Scott Lively and Pat Robertson for their 2013 Bigot Of The Year award.  Gay Star News recaps the three other nominees:

British vicar George Gebauer stunned parents Aimi and Victoria Leggett when he refused to baptize their baby because they both wanted to be named as the child’s mothers. Not only that, he claimed the two moms probably ‘pinched’ the baby and gay people were ‘imbalanced’. UKIP candidate Winston McKenzie is also nominated, for when he said same-sex couples adopting was like throwing ‘children to the dogs’. And historian Niall Ferguson made headlines for saying following the ideas of gay dead economist John Maynard Keynes was to blame for the current recession.

It seems obvious that Lively should be this year's selection.
RELATED: Stonewall's 2012 "winner" was Scotland's disgraced former Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who vehemently opposed same-sex marriage while secretly conducting homosexual affairs with fellow priests. Local Catholic officials demanded that Stonewall's public funding be yanked after they selected O'Brien. That didn't happen. Two major banks also threatened to cease their sponsorship of Stonewall, but that didn't happen either.

Labels: bigotry, Britain, gay death penalty, Pat Robertson, religion, Russia, Scott Lively, Stonewall UK, Uganda

Reposted from Joe

JMG Quote Of The Day - Lynn Ellins

"Let me put it this way, some people have balls, some people don’t, alright? Some of them truly believe that they need direction from on high and they’re not willing to do a constitutional analysis. Some of them are philosophically opposed so they wouldn’t do it unless they were brought to the shed and whacked." - Dona Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins, who started the ball rolling in New Mexico.

UPDATE: I've just been sent the lawsuit filed against Ellins by New Mexico GOP lawmakers.  Note that the first name is state Sen. William Sharer, who last week said that gay men need to "stop whoring around and marry a woman." Read the full lawsuit here.

Labels: LGBT rights, marriage equality, New Mexico, straight allies

Reposted from Joe

Via Tao & Zen Community Forum / FB:

Do not let pleasure distract you from meditation, from the way. Free yourself from pleasure and pain. For in craving pleasure or in nursing pain there is only sorrow. Go beyond likes and dislikes. Free yourself from attachment.

~Buddha,
Dhammapada

Tao & Zen Community Forum
https://www.facebook.com/groups/702381836444150/

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 5, 2013

For Peace

Why do I consider it so crucial to balance the outer aspects of nonviolence and compassion with the inner support of contemplative practice? Because in the end, all politics are local, and we cannot love life and humanity if we do not love each other, one on one.

- Lama Surya Das, "Why Sit?"

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Buteyko Breathing 3 min clip

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Via Global Informer / FB:

Via JMG: Vladimir Putin: I'm Not Homophobic, I've Given Awards To Those People

Vladimir Putin: I'm Not Homophobic, I've Given Awards To Those People

"I assure you that I work with these people. I sometimes award them with state prizes or decorations for their achievements in various fields. We have absolutely normal relations, and I don’t see anything out of the ordinary here. They say that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a homosexual. Truth be told, we don’t love him because of that, but he was a great musician, and we all love his music. So what?" - Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking to the Associated Press.

Labels: Associated Press, LGBT rights, Russia, Vladimir Putin

Reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 4, 2013

On Silence

Silence arrests flight, so that in its refuge, the need to flee the chaos of noise diminishes. We let the world creep closer, we drop to our knees, as if to let the heart, like a small animal, get its legs on the ground.

- Barbara Hurd, "On Silence"

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Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma September 3, 2013

Our Fellow Muddlers

At our best, we muddle ahead together, hoping to get things right occasionally and trying not to do too much damage along the way. It is in the muddling that we find our humanity, and in doing so, if we are lucky, we find each other.

- Andrew Cooper, "Sex in the Sangha . . . Again"

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Via JMG: KEY WEST: Rainbow Flags Fly As Diana Nyad Completes Swim From Cuba

 

Openly lesbian marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, 64, has just finished her swim from Cuba to Key West. Hundreds of people cheered Nyad's arrival as some in the crowd waved rainbow flags.

Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad became the first person to swim the treacherous waters from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage on Monday, arriving in Key West two days after starting her 110-mile trek. Nyad, 64, unsuccessfully tried to swim the Florida Strait four times, mostly recently in 2012. The New York City native’s latest journey began Saturday morning when she jumped from the seawall of the Hemingway Marina into the warm waters off Havana. As she closed in on the Key West shores, a couple of hundred people gathered on the beach to watch her make the final leg of the swim.

Nyad's first notable swim came in 1975 when she swam the 28 miles around Manhattan in under eight hours.

Labels: Cuba, Diana Nyad, gay athletes, Key West

Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Headline Of The Day

Buzzfeed reports:

Following his cancellation of a bilateral meeting with President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Barack Obama may infuriate the Kremlin further by meeting Russian human rights activists, including LGBT rights groups, during his upcoming trip to St Petersburg for the G20 summit. Four Russian non-governmental organizations told BuzzFeed Monday they had been invited to the meeting, scheduled for this Thursday at St. Petersburg’s Crowne Plaza Hotel. The groups include veteran human rights activists Lev Ponomarev and Lyudmila Alexeyeva, legal aid NGO director Pavel Chikov, and Coming Out, a St. Petersburg-based LGBT organization. Another local LGBT group, the LGBT Network, is believed to be attending, though director Igor Kochetkov declined to comment to BuzzFeed, saying that he had been “asked not to say anything.”

This should prove quite interesting.

Labels: Barack Obama, LGBT rights, Russia, Vladimir Putin

Reposted from Joe