Dr. Barry Kerzin on compassion (Part 1: What is happening in the mind and heart?)

TEDxPhoenixvilleSalon - Barry Kerzin - Happiness

Via https://pixabay.com/ and FB:

Via JMG: ISRAEL: 16 Year-Old Girl Stabbed At Jerusalem Pride Dies Of Her Wounds

Haaretz reports:

Three days after being critically wounded by an ultra-Orthodox man that went on a stabbing rampage at Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade, Shira Banki, a 16-year-old Israeli teen succumbed to her wounds Sunday afternoon. Five other people were wounded in the attack. Police confirmed that the suspected stabber is Yishai Schlissel, a Haredi man from Modiin Ilit who stabbed three participants in the 2005 Gay Pride march. He was recently released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence. Banki was a high-school student from Jerusalem, studying at the Hebrew University High School. She took part in Thursday's parade to show solidarity with her LGBT friends. She is survived by her parents and three siblings; her family decided to donate her organs.

Shira's family has issued a statement.

"Our magical Shira was murdered because she was a happy 16-year-old – full of life and love – who came to express her support for her friends' rights to live as they choose. For no good reason and because of evil, stupidity and negligence, the life of our beautiful flower was cut short. Bad things happen to good people, and a very bad thing happened to our amazing girl. The family expresses hope for a less hatred and more tolerance."

Labels: hate crimes, Israel, Jerusalem Pride, religion

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via The Advocate Magazine / FB:

New Order- Restless (Official Audio)

JMG ISRAEL: Rallies To Be Held Nationwide In Aftermath Of Jerusalem Pride Stabbings

Via Haaretz:

Rallies to protest Thursday's stabbing attack at Jerusalem's Gay Pride parade and the arson attack in which a Palestinian child was killed will be held in major Israeli cities on Saturday night. A rally in Tel Aviv already planned to mark six years since two people were killed in a shooting at Bar Noar, a Tel Aviv gay youth center, will be turned into a protest against violence following Thursday's stabbings. At 7:30 P.M a Peace Now rally will be held at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, and from there the participants will march to Gan Meir, where another rally is scheduled to take place. Opposition leader and Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog is scheduled to speak at the Rabin Square rally, as well as Meretz leader Zehava Galon, Zionist Union MK Amir Peretz, former Shin Bet chief Carmi Gilon and more. The Jerusalem rally will begin at 9:30 P.M. in Zion Square. A protest will also take place at 8:00 P.M. in the northern city of Haifa, and at 8:45 P.M in the southern city of Be'er Sheva.

During yesterday's arraignment the deranged attacker declared that he does not recognize the authority of Israel's legal system as he was acting under orders from God.

RELATED: Yesterday the New York Post published an op-ed which denounces the resurgent claims of "pinkwashing" that appeared on social media after Israeli politicians and religious leaders unanimously expressed outrage about the attack. An excerpt:

Their voices arrived this week both loudly and swiftly, often cloaked in the veil of “pink-washing” — the academically vogue assertion that Israel uses its pro-LGBT record to obscure its Gaza blockade and West Bank occupation. Transgender activist Pauline Park declared Thursday on Twitter: “Jerusalem LGBT PrideParade attack by Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Assailant undermines Zionist Pinkwashing Propaganda.” “Will the Zionists continue their pinkwashing campaign?” asked another on Twitter.
Indeed, across the #pinkwashing spectrum, posters insisted that Israel is actually unsafe for its LGBT citizens, that it’s far from a liberal haven and that Netanyahu’s good wishes are merely political showmanship. As with most socio-political-cultural conflicts, the truth is at once far simpler — and more complex. Indeed, much as in other Western democracies, Israel’s open society can cultivate extremists who may act out with violent results. Yet despite their horror, these egregious examples do not render those societies fundamentally violent.

Labels: gay Pride, hate crimes, Israel, Jerusalem, religion

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via JMG: Anti-Gay Texas AG Ken Paxton Indicted On Multiple Counts Of Securities Fraud

Via the New York Times:

Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and a former state legislator, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of securities fraud and of failing to register with the state securities board, officials said. The grand jury in the northern Dallas suburb of McKinney handed up a three-count indictment against Mr. Paxton on Tuesday, the officials said. The indictment is to be unsealed on Monday, when Mr. Paxton is expected to turn himself in to the authorities at the Collin County Jail. The charges — two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register — are tied to Mr. Paxton’s work soliciting clients and investors for two companies while he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives, before he was elected attorney general in November.

RELATED: Several days after the Obergefell ruling, Paxton declared that county clerks were allowed to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

Labels: GOP, Ken Paxton, scandal, Texas

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via Sri Prem Baba: Flor do Dia- Flor del Día - Flower of the Day 02/08/2015

“Uma das chaves fundamentais para a sustentação do êxtase, é não nos apegarmos a um desfecho determinado para as situações. É aprender a se mover na sabedoria da incerteza, ou seja, libertar-se de toda e qualquer expectativa. Isso significa abrir mão do controle, e entregar-se para o fluxo da vida. Permitir que Deus nos leve. Desde as coisas mais simples até as mais complexas.”

“One of the fundamental keys to sustaining ecstasy is not to cling to any particular outcome of a situation. The key lies in learning how to move in the wisdom of uncertainty by freeing ourselves of any expectations. This means giving up our control and surrendering to the flow of life. We allow God to lead us – from the simplest of circumstances to the most complex.”

Today's Daily Dharma: The Love Available to Us

The Love Available to Us

There is far more love available to us in any given moment than we might be aware. And there is much, much more love in our hearts than we as adults have been conditioned to believe is appropriate to express.   - Kate Johnson, "Making the First Move"

Read More

Gay marriage in the year 100 AD

Gay marriage sounds like an ultra-contemporary idea. But almost twenty years ago, a Catholic scholar at Yale shocked the world by publishing a book packed with evidence that same-sex marriages were sanctioned by the early Christian Church during an era commonly called the Dark Ages.

Illustration of Serge and Bacchus, in a same-sex union

John Boswell was a historian and religious Catholic who dedicated much of his scholarly life to studying the late Roman Empire and early Christian Church. Poring over legal and church documents from this era, he discovered something incredible. There were dozens of records of church ceremonies where two men were joined in unions that used the same rituals as heterosexual marriages. (He found almost no records of lesbian unions, which is probably an artifact of a culture which kept more records about the lives of men generally.)

Bolstered by this evidence, Boswell published a book in 1994, the year before his death from AIDS, called Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. The book comes out next month for the first time in a digital edition. It was an instant lightening rod for controversy, drawing criticism from both the Catholic Church and sex pundit Camille Paglia. Given the Church's present-day views on gay marriage, these detractors argued, Boswell's history seemed like wishful thinking.

Make the jump here to read the full article

Via WGB: Leslie Jordan Throws Coffee At Men Screaming Antigay Slurs Inside WEHO Starbucks

"A trio of homophobes learned the hard way this week why you should never enter a West Hollywood Starbucks and start hurling antigay slurs at customers.

“You will die, fucking faggots!” one of the men allegedly announced to the entire store.

Joseph Daniels, who was waiting in line at the time, told WEHOville, “It was very scary and unexpected.” But he wasn’t going to let a group of d-bags get the best of him. He walked over to the men and told them their behavior was “rude.”

Then the manager came along and told them to get the hell out.

The thugs refused to leave and proceeded to call everyone in the store “faggots.” And that’s when things got really heated. Because unbeknownst to the homophobes, Leslie Jordan happened to be there.

Yes, the Leslie Jordan." Full story here!

WGB: I love Leslie Jordan and wouldn't mess with him. Those guys picked the wrong queen to fuck with! Love you Leslie!!!

A Salute to Sissies

Via Sri Prem Baba: Flor do Dia- Flor del Día - Flower of the Day 01/08/2015

GURU SHARANAM HARI SHARANAM SACHCHE SHARANAM PRABHU SHARANAM ~ Estou sob a guiança e a proteção do Mestre, da Verdade e de Deus ~
“Isso é entrega, isso é redenção. Para verdadeiramente entregar-se, se faz necessário muita confiança. Entregar significa se tornar livre do peso que você carrega. Você entrega e deixa que o mestre leva para você. Você entrega seus problemas e não pensa mais neles. Porque se você diz que entregou, mas continua preocupado ou não aceita a solução que lhe é oferecida, existe aí um autoengano. Significa que o ego ainda está tentando controlar o destino da embarcação, porque não confia que será levado para um lugar seguro. Mas afinal, o que é seguro? As referências do ego dizem respeito apenas a satisfação do corpo, e isso é muito limitado.”

GURU SHARANAM HARI SHARANAM SACHCHE SHARANAM PRABHU SHARANAM ~ I am under the guidance and protection of the master teacher, of truth and of God. ~
“This is surrender; this is redemption. In order to truly surrender, a lot of trust is needed. Surrendering means becoming free of the weight that we carry. We surrender when we let the master teacher take this weight from us, and surrendering our problems means that we no longer think about them. If we say we have surrendered but continue to worry and do not accept the solution our teacher has offered, then there is still some self-deception happening. This means that the ego is still trying to control the fate of its vessel, because there is still mistrust that this vessel will be led to a safe port. In the end, what is safe? The references that the ego knows only involve corporeal satisfactions, and this is a very limited perspective.”

Today's Daily Dharma: The Light Is Always There

The Light Is Always There

Drawing attention to stillness, silence, and spaciousness shifts your focus from feeding the insecurity of the ego to connecting with pure being. Anytime you identify with a sense of 'I' "'I feel something'; 'I have lost some­ thing'; 'I am lost'" you are identifying with the wrong person. You are identifying with the ego, with your pain body, not with your true nature.   - Tenzin Wangyal, "The Light Is Always There"

Read More

Via Humanity's Team / FB:

Via JMG: COLOMBIA: Top Court Considers Marriage

J. Lester Feder reports at Buzzfeed:

Colombia’s top court held a day-long hearing on Thursday on whether it should interpret its constitution as giving marriage rights to same-sex couples — framing the debate in a wider discussion about whether international standards now dictate that marriage equality is a fundamental right. The hearing comes five weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to allow marriage equality, in a move that reverberated around the world. Unlike the U.S. Supreme Court, Colombia’s Constitutional Court weighs foreign precedent and international human rights law in its decisions. To discuss the question of marriage equality in Thursday’s debate, the Court’s judges invited a broad range of international opinions, including representatives of the United Nations’ human rights office, the U.S.-based conservative legal group the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Albie Sachs, the former chief justice of South Africa’s Constitutional Court who authored a 2005 marriage equality ruling.

A decision is expected by the end of the summer.

RELATED: Elsewhere in South America same-sex marriage is legal in Argentina, Brazil, French Guiana, and Uruguay. Civil unions are legal in Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador. A same-sex marriage lawsuit is pending before the Venezuelan Supreme Court. Homosexual acts remain illegal in Guyana, but nowhere else on the continent.

Labels: Colombia, marriage equality, South America

Reposted from Joe Jervis

JMG Quote Of The Day - Henry Rollins

"In a nation of hundreds of millions of people, there is one man born to lead. A man who stands head and shoulders above the rest. A lone alpha who burns incandescent in a vast wasteland of darkness. When asked to serve in Vietnam, he said no and took a deferment. He took a few of them, actually, because he is his own man. He got married. The merger didn’t work. She was fired. So was the next one. It’s business, not personal — like America! He has overcome adversity. Like bankruptcy. And with an almost Michelangelo-like genius, he conquered the K2 challenge of his hair. He is what America needs. A man with so much self-confidence that, if you put him in the Oval Office, some of it will no doubt trickle down to you. Who is this man who will put all other world leaders in their place? The same man who just read a cellphone number, allegedly Lindsey Graham’s private line, out loud so the world could hear. (Hey, I laughed.) This man is America. So bend over, relax and hold onto something solid, because here he comes — here comes Donald Trump 2016. And when he puts it in, you’ll know who your daddy is." - Henry Rollins, writing for LA Weekly.

Labels: 2016 elections, Donald Trump, Henry Rollins

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Via Sri Prem Baba: Flor do Dia- Flor del Día - Flower of the Day 31/07/2015

“Guru não é um corpo, é um poder que se manifesta através de um corpo. É o poder de Deus que te levanta e te coloca no estágio além da mente; te tira da sombra e te coloca na luz. Guru é uma palavra pequena, mas seu significado está além das palavras.”

"Gurú no es un cuerpo, es un poder que se manifiesta a través de un cuerpo. Es el poder de Dios que te levanta y te coloca en un nivel más allá de la mente; te saca de la sombra y te coloca en la luz. Gurú es una palabra pequeña, pero su significado está más allá de las palabras"

“The guru is not a body: the guru is a power that manifests itself within a body. It is the power of God that elevates us and puts us in a state beyond the mind. This power takes us out of the darkness and places us in the light. ‘Guru’ is a small word, but its meaning is beyond any words.”