Via JMG: LGBT Business Group Lauds Tim Cook

Via press release from Out Leadership:

Out Leadership, a strategic advisory firm dedicated to cultivating LGBT and ally senior leaders to create global business opportunity and drive equality forward, congratulates Apple CEO Tim Cook on the occasion of his coming out publicly.

“While Tim Cook chose to publicly identify himself as gay for the first time yesterday, he and Apple have long been allies to the LGBT community,” said Todd Sears, Out Leadership’s Founder. “We particularly applaud his choice to use this moment to underline the business case for diversity and the value of out leaders in the boardroom.”

“Though Cook may not consider himself an activist, the fact that the leader of the world’s most valuable company is proud to be gay will no doubt reverberate globally,” Sears continued. “Apple is admired and emulated worldwide, including in many places that have historically been unwelcoming to LGBT people and professionals. Today it’s going to be a bit harder to both love your iPhone and be a homophobe.”

The above-linked press release includes quotes from the CEOs of Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs.

Labels: Apple, business, coming out, Tim Cook

posted by Joe Jervis

Flower of the Day: 11/01/14

"The meetings and farewells of life are forms that love uses to purify us from the distortions and projections that cloud our perception of love itself. Such projections make us feel like a victim, and a victim is always laden with expectations, whims, points of view and demands. As long as we are still undergoing purification, true gratitude cannot manifest, since we project these distortions onto the Divine itself. These projections are what turn our relationship with God into a negotiation, a bargaining. The healing work love is performing is constantly squeezing us until the only thing left is our very essence.”

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

A Positive Attitude | November 1, 2014 Just as a flash of lightening on a dark, cloudy night, For an instant, brightly illuminates all; So, in this world, through the might of the Buddhas, A positive attitude rarely and briefly appears. -Shantideva, “But for a Moment”

Flower of the Day: 10/31/14

 “There is a sacred aspect to our individual wounds. It is a messenger, a teacher that has come to give us the most delicate of lessons: forgiveness. There are messengers that are received with joy, because they are delivered in the form of happy situations and blessed encounters involving prosperity and achievement. But other messengers come in the form of sadness and challenging situations such as loss, illness, and failures. In these circumstances, our tendency is to close ourselves up to the message. However, certain karmas only get dissolved through difficult situations. Some of these circumstances are even predetermined before birth. They are like sacred agreements made with the objective of preventing the human entity from falling asleep, thus losing the opportunity to learn in this life.”

 

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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Fearlessness | October 31, 2014

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The fearlessness of the great spiritual teachers like Moses, Jesus, Saint Theresa, Buddha, and Bodhidharma was the fearlessness of the spiritual warrior. Different from stoicism, naïveté, or arrogance, this fearlessness is selfless, generous, and compassionate. Fearlessness is not a matter of ignoring fear, but of really acknowledging it and being empowered by it. 

 

- John Daido Loori Roshi, "Between Two Mountains" 

 

Via JMG: Satan's Favorite City Wins World Series

 

UPDATE: JMG reader Kned sends us a photo from the celebration in the Castro.

 

UPDATE II: Another Kned photo, this time from the Mission.

Labels: baseball, San Francisco, sports, World Series

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: Tim Cook: I'm Proud To Be Gay

 

"While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me. Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple." - Tim Cook, coming out formally at last in an essay published by Business Week.

Labels: Apple, business, coming out, Tim Cook

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: Tweet Of The Day

Labels: God, Halloween, religion, Twitter

Reposted from  Joe Jervis

Via JMG: Sen. Ted Cruz: Being Gay Is Tim Cook's Personal Choice But I Love My iPhone

The Hill reports on Sen. Ted Cruz' reaction to today's coming out by Apple CEO Tim Cook:

"Those are his personal choices. I’ll tell you, I love my iPhone," Cruz said. "Listen, Tim Cook makes his personal decisions, and that is his life. My focus is on the constitutional question of who has the authority to make decisions," he later added. Cruz said that marriage is a "question for the states" because of the country's federalist system. "This is something we’ve seen over and over again, which is the federal government and federal courts deciding they don’t trust the people," Cruz said. "They look down on the people, they don’t trust us to make judgments about our own lives, so the federal government and federal courts are going to step in and impose their own policy preferences."

Labels: Apple, assholery, business, coming out, crackpots, GOP, Tea Party, teabaggers, Ted Cruz, Tim Cook

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: Bill Clinton Congratulates Tim Cook

Labels: Apple, Bill Clinton, coming out, Tim Cook

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Flower of the Day: 10/30/14

“Sometimes one needs to withdraw. When we are going through a healing process and doing a self-study, we need to sustain a prayer field. If we go out into the world, we may get identified and fall, so we must allow ourselves to be alone for some time. At some point, we must also go back out into the world and relate to others. The key here is being prepared to give of ourselves and wanting others to be happy. The question is whether or not we are able to embark on a higher level of study by being a channel of generosity, sharing our silence and love with others – even if they don’t know it.”

 

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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The Right Pitch | October 30, 2014

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Cultivating skillful effort, we learn to distinguish the 'right' amount of effort. Not too little. Not too much. Just right. In tune. When we find the right pitch, our practice flourishes. 

 

- Peter Doobinin, "Skillful Effort" 

 

Via Dialy Dharma

Humanized Once More | October 29, 2014 We must realize that modern civilization is thoroughly oriented towards dehumanizing humanity in every possible way; that is to say, we are fast turning into robots or statues with no human souls. Our task is to get humanized once more.    - D. T. Suzuki, "Humanized Once More"

Flower of the Day: 10/29/14

“You can only renounce what you already have. It is not possible to give up something you don’t have. Renunciation needs to be truthful; otherwise, when you are facing the ocean you may look back and see that you still want to be a river. You don’t want to give up certain things because you are stuck in your need to be recognized and loved. You don’t want to give up your story, your name or your body. This process brings you to the source of the inner split where there are two opposing forces acting inside of you. It is precisely this tug-of-war that causes suffering.”

 

Sri Prem Baba

Via JMG: Together - We Are Stronger | Moovz

Via press release:

People from all around the world took part in the gay selfie project released by the global gay social network Moovz. This project was meant to show the faces of the global gay community, with people from different cultures, with different colors, appearance and races and that speaks different languages. From South to North America and from Europe to as far as Asia - people uploaded their pictures and agreed to be exposed in order to send a message to the world and prove how united is the global gay community. This is probably the first time that gays from all around the world did something together to send a message that empowers their whole community. Many gay influencers also took part in this project, such as Amanda Lepore, Davey Wavey, Chris Salvatore, Colby Melvin, Matthew Lush, Willam Belli and many other global and local gay leaders from different regions who are following this initiative that gathered the entire gay community into one place.

Apple CEO Tim Cook Speaks at Alabama Academy of Honor induction

Alice in WeHoLand - a public safety announcement

Via JMG: Michael Stipe On 20 Years Of Being Out

"In 1994, most people had a largely binary perception of sexuality – the message was complicated for them. I am thrilled to see how much this has changed in those 20 years. The 21st century has provided all of us, recent generations particularly, with a clearer idea of the breadth of fluidity with which sexuality and identity presents itself in each individual. Gender identification, and the panoply of sexuality and identity are now topics that are more easily and more widely discussed, debated and talked about openly. It’s thrilling to see progressive change shift perceptions so quickly.

"What I feel we have arrived at with all this, is that queerness – as I am happy to call an all-embracing, foundational tenet – is really a state of mind brought about by an understanding: it is understanding difference, accepting your own truth, desire and identity, and lovely, lovely choice. It is the final, completely obvious contemporary acceptance and understanding that this enormous world of beauty, sexuality, identity, lust, feeling, excitement, and love isn’t just black and white, or simple, at all – it is literally every shade and gradation of the rainbow. It doesn’t just lie in one of two camps. It includes accepting and supporting positions that you may not even completely understand; and to arrive at that conviction is so, so beautiful, and to quote my great friend Casey Legler: 'Fierce!'

"These 20 years of publicly speaking my truth have made me a better and easier person to be around. It helped develop the clarity of my voice and establish who I would be as an adult. I am proud to be who I am, and I am happy to have shared that with the world." 

- REM frontman Michael Stipe, in an essay for the Guardian. Next month REM will release an 11-disc vinyl box set collection of its singles, titled 7IN – 83–88, which will include reproductions of all their IRS Records singles from those years, including the original sleeve art. (Tipped by JMG reader Mike)

Labels: coming out, gay artists, Michael Stipe, pop music

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Please Don't Vote - A Message From The Republican Party