Not limited /
By language,
/ It is ceaselessly expressed;
/ So, too, the way of letters /
Can display but not exhaust it.
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According to the Facebook group, online oddsmakers are giving It's Raining Men a 5/1 shot at being number one in Britain next week. Former Weather Girls vocalist Martha Wash finds the flap rather amusing. From an email passed along by JMG reader Wayne:
A Facebook campaign has been launched to get 80s classic ‘It’s Raining Men’ to number one in the UK charts after a UKIP councillor claimed the recent floods were a result of legalising same-sex marriage. Thousands of people have joined the social media campaign following UKIP party member David Silvester’s controversial remarks. "We believe that that show of strength to get a song to Number 1 will create a huge spotlight on our campaign for equality as a whole," explains the Facebook group. For decades now, this song has been used as a gay anthem, we thought it fitted all the better based on UKIP’s comments regarding storms and floods being caused by LGBT people and gay marriage. Let’s get It’s Raining Men to Number 1 to show the power and community of gay people pulling together is stronger than his idiotic views of us, as well as also celebrating the new laws being passed on equal marriage in the UK very soon."
First of all I don't know anything about David Silvester, but I did read the article about him and his comments and concluded that as a straight woman who supports the LGBT community, he is totally Daft (as the British would say). While he is entitled to his opinion, I feel he is out of touch with reality. To say that "storms and floods were caused by LGBT people and gay marriage".....Really? He sounds like someone living in the 80's when it was said HIV/Aids was caused by "gay people". I think some people need to buy a clue and realize that everything wrong or bad or catastrophic is not caused by gay people. I support same-sex unions or marriages (depending on where you live) and feel it should be equality for ALL!!! BTW I'm a Christian also and the God I serve is ALL LOVE for ALL People. HE knows who he created. In regards to using It's Raining Men to support this campaign, I have no problem with it. I'm flattered that after all these years, the song is still relevant (even if it is for "storms and floods")!! Lol XO Martha Wash
The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the sole sponsor of Bostic v. Rainey, the federal constitutional challenge to Virginia’s discriminatory Marriage Amendment, issued the following statement regarding U.S. District Court Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen’s order seeking Status Reports from all parties in the case regarding whether oral argument on the issues presented is warranted or whether the Court should rule promptly on the briefs without a hearing: “Every day these discriminatory laws remain in effect is another day gay and lesbian Virginians and their families are harmed and treated as second-class citizens,” said AFER Executive Director Adam Umhoefer. “We urge Judge Allen to proceed immediately to judgment and find Virginia’s laws banning marriage for gay and lesbian couples unconstitutional." The Judge’s order was issued following the compelling Notice from the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia that the Attorney General concluded that Virginia's laws denying the right to marry to same-sex couples violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. If a hearing is deemed necessary, oral argument will be heard at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday, January 30, 2014.Bolding is mine. Zoom, zoom, zoom?
Rather
than seeking a sense of peaceful satisfaction with the unfolding of
experience, the goal of [preliminary] practice is to produce a state of
mind that is highly judgmental, indeed judging this world to be like a
prison. This sense of dissatisfaction is regarded as an essential
prerequisite for progress on the Buddhist path. Far from seeking to
become somehow 'nonjudgmental,' the meditator is instructed to judge all
the objects of ordinary experience as scarred by three marks:
impermanence, suffering, and no self.
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Life is precious, for it is only life—particularly the condition of human life—in which one can attain enlightenment.
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Poverty
still persists today because we have lost the moral perspective as the
polestar of public policy. Instead we follow the law of the jungle,
content to abandon the poor to their own devices, demanding that they
marshal resources they simply do not possess. And the reason we have
moved in this direction, drifting away from the high ideals of the Great
Society era, is because the vision and values of corporate capitalism
have gained ascendency over those of human solidarity and mutual
responsibility. To eliminate poverty, this trend must be reversed. The
individualistic vision must give way to one that stresses our essential
unity; competition must be balanced by mutual assistance and respect.
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I am deeply grateful for the support of the Russian people who have welcomed and accepted me in their country ever since I first visited in 1979. On my last visit, in December 2013, I wondered whether the new legislation banning “homosexual propaganda” might have changed that. It hadn’t. I still felt the same warmth and welcome from the audiences that I have felt every time I have been in Russia. [snip;Read the full statement.
It was very clear to me that, although foreigners like myself who are visiting Russia are not affected by this new law (and President Putin has recently confirmed this), it is a very different story for those living inside the country. As Maria Maksakova told her fellow Russian MPs last month: “We are seeing extremely negative consequences as a result of this law, with the growth of hate crimes.” President Putin asserts that this was not the intention, but it is undoubtedly the effect that this law has had by promoting misunderstanding and ignorance. In particular, it is very disappointing that the law explicitly links homosexuality with child sex abuse, which countless studies have shown to be conclusively wrong.
The people I met in Moscow were decent, kind, patriotic men and women who had no thought of forcing their sexuality on anyone. Whatever the intention of Russia’s homosexuality and paedophilia propaganda laws, I am absolutely clear from my own personal experience that it is proving deeply dangerous to the LGBT community and deeply divisive to Russian society. I would welcome the opportunity to introduce President Putin to some Russians who deserve to be heard, and who deserve to be treated in their own country with the same respect and warm welcome that I received on my last visit.
A
person devoid of ego functions would be self-destructive: either a
beast with uncontrolled impulses, or a neurotic, repressed automaton
with no mind of her own, or an infantile monster thrashing erratically
between these two extremes. Anyone who tried to abandon ego functioning
would arrest his psychological growth and lose all hope of becoming a
mature, responsible, trustworthy adult. And as we know, self-destructive
people don’t destroy only themselves. They can pull down many of the
people and places around them.
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Imagination
draws its energy from a confrontation with desire. It feeds off desire,
transmuting and magnifying reality through desire's power. Fantasy does
the opposite; it avoids desire by fleeing into a crude sort of
wish-fulfillment that seems much safer. Fantasy might be teddy bears,
lollipops, sexual delights, or superhero adventures; it also might be
voices in one's head urging acts of outrage and mayhem. Or it might be
the confused world of separation and fear we routinely live in, a
threatening yet seductive world that promises us the happiness we seek
when our fantasies finally become real. Imagination confronts desire
directly, in all its discomfort and intensity, deepening the world right
where we are. Fantasy and reality are opposing forces, but imagination
and reality are not in opposition: Imagination goes toward reality,
shapes and evokes it.
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