Via JMG: IOC: All Future Olympics Host Cities Must Agree To LGBT Discrimination Protections

The International Olympic Committee today announced that future Olympics host cities must sign a contract with an added clause vowing to protect LGBT participants and attendees from discrimination. Via press release from All Out:

“This is a significant step in ensuring the protection of both citizens and athletes around the world and sends a clear message to future host cities that human rights violations, including those against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, will not be tolerated,” said Andre Banks, co-founder and executive director of All Out, the global movement for love and equality. “This is a particularly important moment for the world’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens who face discrimination and persecution not only in Russia but in countries all over the world. We will continue working to make sure this change is powerfully enforced - these new rules must prevent a replay of Sochi.”

According to IOC Sports Director, Christopher Dubi, the new clause will include “the prohibition of any form of discrimination, using the wording of Fundamental Principle 6 of the Olympic Charter." This clause will ensure that future host cities must abide by international human rights standards in order to host the games, including the protection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens and athletes. “By adopting a non-discrimination clause into its host city contracts, the IOC is showcasing its own realization that we must protect the rights of every athlete to live free and openly,” said Hudson Taylor, Executive Director of Athlete Ally. “The Principle 6 campaign sought to shed light on the responsibility of host countries to uphold the olympic values, and this action validates all of the hard work by organizations and individuals across the world who’ve engaged in the fight for LGBT equality.”

RELATED: The 2016 Summer Games will be held in Rio De Janeiro, where robust LGBT protections already exist. The 2018 Winter Games will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where homosexuality is legal, but anti-discrimination laws do not exist.

Labels: IOC, Olympics, Sochi Olympics, sports

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: HRC Head Chad Griffin: Obama Should Consider LGBT Successor To Eric Holder

"Some Attorneys General wait for history, others make history happen. Attorney General Holder made history for the LGBT community. He was our Robert F. Kennedy, lightening the burden of every American who faces legal discrimination and social oppression. We owe him a profound debt of gratitude for his legacy of advocacy and service. President Obama faces a historic opportunity in light of Attorney General Holder's departure. The President has expressed a commitment to appointing a cabinet that reflects the full diversity of the American people, and there are many richly-qualified candidates available to serve as the first openly-LGBT cabinet secretary. It would be a natural extension of this administration's enduring commitment to equality to send a message of visibility and inclusion by nominating such a candidate to serve in this historic role." - Human Rights Campaign Chad Griffin, via email.

Labels: Barack Obama, Chad Griffin, DOJ, Eric Holder, HRC, LGBT rights, Obama administration, Obama cabinet

Reposted from Joe Jervis

JMG Headline Of The Day

The Daily Beast today published a lengthy accounting of the The Gathering, a secretive meeting of anti-gay right wing activists that starts in Orlando today. An excerpt:

The Gathering is an annual event at which many of the wealthiest conservative to hard-right evangelical philanthropists in America—representatives of the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Green, Maclellan, Ahmanson, Friess, plus top leaders of the National Christian Foundation—meet with evangelical innovators with fresh ideas on how to evangelize the globe. The Gathering promotes “family values” agenda: opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights, for example, and also a global vision that involves the eventual eradication of all competing belief systems that might compete with The Gathering’s hard-right version of Christianity. Last year, for example, The Gathering 2013 brought together key funders, litigants, and plaintiffs of the Hobby Lobby case, including three generations of the Green family. The evangelical right financial dynasties and foundations that meet each year at The Gathering dispense upwards of $1 billion a year in grants. But even that is overshadowed by the bigger sums that The Family and The Gathering have managed to route from the federal and state government to fund their movement via the Faith-Based Initiative program, USAID, PEPFAR and other multibillion-dollar programs.

Many of the anti-gay hate groups involved will be familiar to you. Definitely hit that link.

Labels: Alliance Defending Freedom, Christianists, Daily Beast, Family Research Council, Focus On The Family, hate groups, religion, The Gathering, Tony Perkins, Truth Wins Out

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: Christian Group: Homosexuals And Gossips Both Deserve The Death Penalty

 

"We aren't just defending marriage - whether we call it natural marriage or traditional marriage or Biblical marriage - because it's the way we've always done things. We have a much more firm foundation than tradition. We affirm marriage in the way that God himself intended it. The church is not a Christian congress or Supreme Court. The laws of God cannot be overruled or deemed unconstitutional. Of course, we ALL break those laws and being a homosexual doesn't make a man a sinner any more or less than being a gossip. Both crimes deserve the death penalty, and only the one who relies on the righteousness of Christ can escape it." - Chris Johnson, writing for the American Decency Association, which notes on its Facebook page that it is the former Michigan chapter for the American Family Association.

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: The American Decency Association declares that while they totally hate that homosexual Michael Sam, they are not the group by the same name that called for protesting Dallas Cowboys games. The American Decency Association calls for a boycott of Target and for Christians to mail their destroyed charge cards to company headquarters. The American Decency Association says the DOMA ruling was as bad as the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Labels: American Decency Association, Christian Love, religion

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: Hate Groups Launch Joint Campaign: Don't Vote For Pro-Gay GOP Candidates

Posted yesterday on NOM's blog:

Three of the nation's top pro-family groups have announced an unprecedented campaign against three top Republican candidates for federal office because the candidates are supporters of same-sex 'marriage' and abortion. The National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council Action and CitizenLink announced they will urge voters not to support Republican House candidates Carl DeMaio (CA-52) and Richard Tisei (MA-6), and will urge Oregon voters not to support US Senate candidate Monica Wehby. "The Republican Party platform is a 'statement of who we are and what we believe.' Thus, the platform supports the truth of marriage as the union of husband and wife, and recognizes the sanctity and dignity of human life. This is what Republicans believe," said Brian S. Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). "It is extremely disappointing to see Republican leaders in Washington help push the election of candidates who reject the party's principled positions on these and other core issues. We cannot sit by when people calling themselves Republicans seek high office while espousing positions that are antithetical to the overwhelming majority of Republicans."

CitizenLink is an arm of Focus On The Family.

Labels: 2014 elections, Brian Brown, Carl DeMaio, Focus On The Family, FRC, GOP, hate groups, marriage equality, Monica Wehby, NOM, religion, Richard Tisei

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: It's Time for the Freedom to Marry

Flower of the Day: 09/26/14

“Once we become independent, we may or may not end up helping to sustain our parents, but we need to observe who in us is doing this. Where does our sense of responsibility come from: guilt or love? Do we want to help because our heart is open, or because we feel guilty? Many people help their parents out of a sense of obligation, but they will later expect 'compensation,' even charging 'interest' and 'inflation adjustments.' Rather than being monetary, this compensation comes in the form of emotional pressure. One actually ends up subtly humiliating one’s parents, taking revenge for having been hurt in the past.”

Sri Prem Baba

 

Read the complete text>

Via Dialy Dharma

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The Things That Matter | September 26, 2014

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If you’re not really what you stand for, then the things that matter the most are always going to be at the mercy of the things that matter the least. 

 

- Cheri Maples, "She's Got the Beat" 

 

Flower of the Day: 09/25/14

“Gluttony is related to sexual repression. There is a subtle channel that connects the tip of the tongue to the sexual organ. You cannot fulfill the objective of life without looking at sexuality. Once you are able to free yourself from repression, your whole body can relax and an internal space will open up. An awareness springs, which also helps bring one’s eating habits into balance.”

Sri Prem Baba

Read the complete text>

Via Daily Dharma

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Hanging Off a Rock | September 25, 2014

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Hanging off a rock is an exaggerated experience of facing the unknown. It is exhilarating, scary, and completely vibrant. When we can’t find a foothold, the mind falls into an open stillness—the same brief pause we encounter in any situation where we lose our familiar reference points. If we have the wherewithal to relax, we find our way. 

 

- Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, "Open Stillness" 

 

Via NYT Opinion: ‘I Do’ Means You’re Done

In and around Rome, the talk is of Pope Francis’ sage acceptance of the 21st century, of his empathy, of his departure from the stern moralizing on matters of the heart that his predecessors engaged in.

In Montana, a gay couple who have been together for more than three decades have been told that they’re no longer really welcome in the Catholic parish where they’ve been worshiping together for 11 years.

This happened last month, in the town of Lewistown. By all accounts, these two men, one of them 73, the other 66, had done no one any harm. They hadn’t picked a fight. Hadn’t caused any particular stir. Simply went to Mass, same as always. Prayed. Sang in the church choir, where they were beloved mainstays.

There was only this: In May of last year, without any fanfare, the men had traveled to Seattle, where they had met and lived for many years, to get married. And while they didn’t do anything after to publicize the civil ceremony, word eventually leaked out.

So in early August, a 27-year-old priest who had just begun working at the parish summoned them to a meeting, according to local news reports. And at that meeting, he told them that they could no longer be choir members, perform any other roles like that or, for that matter, receive communion.

If they wanted those privileges restored, there was indeed a remedy, which the priest and other church officials spelled out for them over subsequent conversations. They would have to divorce. They would have to stop living together. And they would have to sign a statement that marriage exists only between a man and a woman.

Translation: Renounce a love fortified over 30 years. Unravel your lives. And affirm that you’re a lesser class of people, barred from the rituals in which others blithely participate.

With those little tweaks, the body of Christ can again be yours.

In one sense there’s nothing revelatory here. For all the changes afoot in enlightened countries around the world, the church remains censorious of same-sex marriage — fervently so, in many instances — and Catholic teaching still forbids sexually intimate relationships between two men or two women.

But there are details to note, rue and reject. One is the hypocrisy (or whatever you want to call it) of punishing a same-sex couple for formalizing a relationship that was already obvious, as these men’s partnership was.

Such punishment has befallen many employees of Catholic schools or congregations since the legalization of same-sex marriage in many states allowed them civil weddings. Teachers long known to be gay are suddenly exiled for being gay and married, which is apparently too much commitment and accountability for the church to abide. Honesty equals expulsion. “I do” means you’re done.

I reached the Montana couple, Tom Wojtowick and Paul Huff, on the phone Tuesday, and Wojtowick expressed befuddlement. “We’re just two old men,” he said, and their relationship was no secret. “We’re only 5,900 people in this town, and Paul and I are really well known.”

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Flower of the Day: 09/24/14

“The deepening of a loving relationship cannot be forced. At times a person needs variety, which may even be the remedy for healing their repression. They may need variety because they aren’t ready to look at certain pages of the book of their life yet. There is nothing wrong with this. These are just moments along the journey. We must not fall into the trap of the idealized self which expects us to give what we don’t have to give. The idealized self is a cruel tyrant who demands that we be something we are not. It asks us to surrender ourselves to a relationship, even if we are not ready for that.”

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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Addiction to Thoughts | September 24, 2014

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When it comes to addiction we’re usually talking about alcohol or substance abuse, but there can also be an addictive quality to our thinking.

 

- Robert Chodo Campbell, "Just Shut Up" 

 

Flower of the Day: 09/23/14

“I know that many people who are with me are praying for others who are ready, that they may wake up. This is a spiritual current for awakening. It is a vigil happening around the globe. This vigil is made up of current of souls that are mature enough to understand that they need to pray for their brothers and sisters.”

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

Touch the Core of Time | September 23, 2014 Through spiritual practice we can go beyond our egoistic point of view. We can touch the core of time, see the whole world in a moment, and understand time in deep relationship with all beings. Then we cannot be isolated and cold people. We become beautiful and warm people, appreciating and helping all beings. - Dainin Katagiri, "Time Revisited"

Flower of the Day: 09/22/14

“The remedy for all wounds is understanding why you had to go through a particular situation that hurt you. Emotional wounds are like thorns stuck in the flesh, and sometimes they get infected. This infection is when bitterness and skepticism develop regarding the possibility of being happy. This bitterness can sometimes turn into revenge, and can activate vicious circles that act in different ways, but always generate suffering and destruction. However, the wound should be seen as a teacher, because it is always teaching you about the mystery of life: it is teaching you to forgive.”

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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A Never-departing Shadow | September 22, 2014

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All experience is preceded by mind,
Led by mind,
Made by mind.
Speak or act with a peaceful mind,
And happiness follows,
Like a never-departing shadow. 

 

- The Buddha, "'We are what we think." 

 

Via Daily Dharma

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A Tree Needs Roots | September 21, 2014

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In Buddhism, we study and reflect on the dharma; and then, fully blending what we have understood with our mind, we practice resting evenly in meditation. In the beginning, a tree needs strong roots. Similarly, what is most important for meditation is calm abiding. 

- Ogyen Trinley Dorje, "Calm Abiding"

Via Daily Dharma

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If We Could Let Go| September 20, 2014

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The very act of clinging causes mental distress—have you ever noticed that longing hurts? Moreover, the exertions are futile since grasping cannot extend the life of pleasure, not even by a nanosecond. As for unpleasant sensations—in truth, they disappear in a moment, too. But when you feel averse to them, the pain doubles. It’s like trying to remove a thorn in your foot by piercing the skin with a second thorn. If we could let go, the mind wouldn't suffer. 

 

- Cynthia Hatcher, "What's So Great About Now?"