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I
see that a lot of us are just running around in circles pretending that
there's ground where there actually isn't any ground. And that somehow,
if we could learn to not be afraid of groundlessness, not be afraid of
insecurity and uncertainty, it would be calling on an inner strength
that would allow us to be open and free and loving and compassionate in
any situation.
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Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs (WLC) have filed a class action lawsuit against Walmart, charging the retail giant with discriminating against employees who were married to same-sex spouses by denying their spouses health insurance benefits. The Complaint was filed this morning in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and can be read here.The couple has been together for 33 years.
The lawsuit, Jacqueline Cote, et al. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the first class action filed on behalf of gay workers since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, and alleges that Walmart violated Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act by discriminating against Jaqueline Cote based on her sex. The action seeks to demonstrate how existing federal law can be used to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) workers.
The class representative, Jacqueline (Jackie) Cote, works in Walmart's Swansea, MA store, and was denied spousal health insurance for her wife, Diana (Dee) Smithson. Dee has battled ovarian cancer since 2012. Due to Walmart's sex discrimination, Dee lacked health insurance to pay for her treatment and has racked up a minimum of $150,000 in uninsured medical expenses.
The world has made "extraordinary progress" against AIDS, slashing the rate of new infections by more than a third and saving nearly 8 million lives since 2000, a new report finds. Fifteen years of work to make sure more people get drugs that can keep them healthy and keep them from infecting others has had spectacular effects on the pandemic that has killed nearly 40 million people, the United Nations AIDS agency UNAIDS says in its report. Distribution of condoms has averted around 50 million new HIV infections since the HIV pandemic started in the 1980s, and other programs to educate people about how HIV spreads and to encourage safe sex have helped, also. "The world has delivered on halting and reversing the AIDS epidemic," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.But temper your celebrations because more than a million are still dying every year. (Tipped by JMG reader David)
We are the sum total of our experiences, which is to say that we are burdened by our pasts. When we experience stress or fear in our lives, if we would look carefully, we would find that the cause is actually a memory. It is the emotions which are tied to these memories which affect us now. The subconscious associates an action or person in the present with something that happened in the past. When this occurs, emotions are activated and stress is produced.
It is important to clear Karmic patterns with your clients before you start working with them, so that you don’t activate old stuff between you. Perhaps you shouldn’t be working with that person at all. Only the Divinity knows. If you work with a person and it isn’t your business, you can take on the person’s entire problem and everything associated with it. This can cause burnout. The Ho’oponopono gives the tools to prevent that from happening.
We’ve been led to believe for so many years that we are disempowered, that we live at the whim of circumstances around us. No doubt external factors – the loss of a job, our health or an important relationship – can affect our outlook. Yet there are some basic ideas from Hawaiian culture that we can reclaim to tap into a sense of empowerment, peace, Pono.As someone who was blessed to live and work with individuals that embodied the best of the Hawaiian culture, I can enthusiastically support this crazy simple wisdom. I hope we all practice it collectively more often, no matter our cultural background.
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When
you have a deep, deep friendship with someone, you don’t only care, “Is
this good for me?” You care for them naturally. I believe it’s
completely natural to have such love, compassion, and kindness. . . .
This feeling transcends lay and monastic communities. It is vital to
developing the deep heart of lovingkindness in the context of dedication
to dharma.
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| For over three decades, anti-gay groups created this false image of the gay community. |
The Huffington Post's Alvin McEwan characterizes the ACP as "a sham group camouflaging religious right distortion as legitimate research" and cites University of Minnesota professor Greg Remafedi, who claims the group has "distorted his work." And in fact, the list of scientists whose research has been distorted to support the religious right's bigotry against the LGBT community is staggering.It was pretty cool to be cited and obviously the young lady read my online booklet, How They See Us, because she cited info from page 10 regarding the list of researchers whose work have been distorted by the anti-gay right.
