Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Via JMG: MARYLAND: Marriage Bill Clears House Committee By 25-18 Vote
The bill had to survive the usual bullshit poison pill amendments from the GOP, including one that would require parental consent before teachers could mention "non-traditional" families. The full chamber will debate and vote later this week. And if you're counting, that's THREE big honking wins for the good guys this week. And it's only Tuesday.Labels: marriage equality, Maryland
Via JMG: NEW YORK CITY: Gay Couples Wed Atop Empire State Building For First Time
Via JMG: UGANDA: Government Raids And Shuts Down Secret LGBT Rights Conference
Acting on the orders of Minister for Ethics & Integrity Simon Lokodo (left), the Ugandan government has raided and shut down a secretly organized conference on LGBT rights. The two week conference organised by Freedom and Roam Uganda, an association that lobbies for the recognition of same sex relationships in Uganda ended prematurely when the minister ordered them to disperse. "I have closed this conference because it's illegal. We do not accept homosexuality in Uganda. So go back home," Minister Lokodo told the participants. Hotel staff had been asked by the organisers not to direct anyone to Elgon hall where the conference was taking place unless the person had been cleared. This would have required a phone call from the organisers. The Minister said the hotel’s management apologized for hosting the event.Minister Lokodo ordered the arrest of the conference organizer, but according to the above-linked news story, she escaped. That conflicts with another account reported by Box Turtle Bulletin, which states that the organizer was apprehended, but later released. Lokodo is a former Catholic priest who was defrocked last August when he disobeyed Vatican orders to drop his pursuit of a political office.
IMPORTANT: Box Turtle Bulletin's Jim Burroway notes that contrary to Lokodo's statements to the press, Uganda's "kill the gays" bill is still very much on the table. The genesis of that bill came during visits to Uganda by American evangelicals such as Scott Lively.
Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma February 14, 2012
An Open Heart
As we become more inwardly free from our conditioning and our fears, the love and connection that are possible in relationships tend to flow through us more naturally. As our defenses are lowered, our heart opens, and there is a natural desire to give from the generosity of the heart. We discover that genuine happiness in relationships is not a product of having our expectations met or getting what we want but rather it is the consequence of freely giving in order to bring happiness to another. |
- Ezra Bayda, "Giving Through Relationships"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Via AmericaBlogGay: What’s next for California couples waiting to marry?
Both sides in the legal fight over the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 expect the matter to eventually be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. If the court decides to take the Prop 8 case, Justice Anthony Kennedy could be the swing vote in a close decision. Until then, a stay of the appellate court decision remains in place, meaning same-sex couples will not be able to marry in California for the time being, though attorneys will fight to lift the stay. “There's no reason that people ought to be deprived of their constitutional rights now that those rights have been affirmed by the court of appeals,” said David Boies, who’s arguing the case on the side of marriage equality supporters.
Via AmericaBlogGay: Washington state couples close to winning freedom to marry
A bipartisan vote in the Washington State House this week sent a marriage equality bill to the desk of Gov. Christine Gregoire, who is expected to sign it into law Monday. The law could become effective in June unless opponents can gather the signatures necessary to force the issue onto a statewide ballot. The final House debate featured testimony from openly gay lawmakers including Rep. Jamie Pedersen, who told his colleagues "I would like our four children to understand...that their daddy and their papa have made that lifelong commitment to each other."
Tricycle Daily Dharma February 12, 2012 | |||
Inhabit Your Body
- Jill Satterfield, "Meditation in Motion" Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection | |||
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Friday, February 10, 2012
Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma February 10, 2012
No Magic Solutions
If there’s one lesson that runs through pretty much every Buddhist tradition, it’s this: there are no magic solutions. Our belief in magic solutions that may happen some day in the future keeps us from doing what we really need to do right here and right now. |
- Brad Warner, "A Minty Fresh Mind"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection
Via Sean Chapin: 8 Is Unconstitutional... Imagine
The moment when we found out Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. 9th District Court of Appeals on the steps of the court house in San Francisco, February 7, 2012.
The speech was given by Kelly Rivera Hart during a celebration rally that evening at the San Francisco LGBT Center.
Video: Sean Chapin More
Via AmericBlog Gay: President Obama’s remarks at a gay fundraiser this evening
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________
February 9, 2012
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT CAMPAIGN EVENT
Private Residence
7:09 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, Laura, for the wonderful introduction -- the best introduction that a Cubs fan has ever given me. (Laughter.) The rivalry is fierce in Chicago
And I want to thank Karen and Nan for opening up their incredible home. (Applause.) To all of you, and to everybody who helped put this together, thank you so much. I am very grateful.
I’m going to be very brief at the top, because I want to -- usually in these things I like to spend most of my time in a conversation. I do want to acknowledge that I have as good a Cabinet as I think any President in modern history has had. And one of the stars of that Cabinet is sitting right here, Kathleen Sebelius. (Applause.)
All of America
The good news is that we're moving in the right direction. And when I came into office, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, and this past month we gained 250,000 -- that’s a million job swing. (Applause.) And for the last 23 months, we've now created 3.7 million jobs. And that’s more than any time since 2000 -- or, yes, since, 2005 -- the number of jobs that we created last year, and more manufacturing jobs than any time since the 1990s.
So we're making progress on that front now, but we've still got a long way to go. Today, we announced a housing settlement, brought about by our Attorney General and states attorneys all across the country. And as a consequence, we're going to see billions of dollars in loan modifications and help to folks who are seeing their homes underwater. And that’s going to have a huge impact.
In my State of the Union, we talked about the need for American manufacturing -- companies coming back, insourcing, and recognizing how incredibly productive American workers are; and our need to continue to double down on investments in clean energy; and making sure that our kids are getting trained so that they are competing with any workers in the world, and are also effectively equipped to be great citizens and to understand the world around them.
And we talked about the fact that we've got to have the same set of values of fair play and responsibility for everybody -- whether it's Wall Street or Main Street
And it also means that we ensure that everybody in our society has a fair shot, is treated fairly. That’s at the heart of the American Dream. For all the other stuff going on, one thing every American understands is you should be treated fairly; you should be judged on the merits. If you work hard, if you do a good job, if you're responsible in your community, if you're looking after you family, if you're caring for other people, then that’s how you should be judged. Not by what you look like, not by how you worship, not by where you come from, not by who you love.
And so the work that we've done with respect to the LGBT community I think is just profoundly American and is at the heart of who we are. (Applause.) And that’s why I could not be prouder of the track record that we've done, starting with the very beginning when we started to change, through executive order, some of the federal policies. Kathleen -- the work that she did making sure that hospital visitation was applied equally to same-sex couples, just like with anybody else's loved ones. The changes we made at the State Department. The changes we made in terms of our own personnel policies. But also some very high-profile work, like "don't ask, don't tell."
And what's been striking over the course of these last three years is because we've rooted this work in this concept of fairness, and we haven't gone out of our way to grab credit for it, we haven't gone out of our way to call other folks names if they didn’t always agree with us on stuff, but we just kept plodding along -- because of that, in some ways what's been remarkable is how readily the public recognizes this is the right thing to do.
Think about -- just take "don't ask, don't tell" as an example. The perception was somehow that this would be this huge, ugly issue. But because we did it methodically, because we brought the Pentagon in, because we got some very heroic support from people like Bob Gates and Mike Mullen, and they thought through institutionally how to do it effectively -- since it happened, nothing's happened. (Laughter and applause.) Nothing's happened.
We still have the best military by far on Earth. There hasn’t been any notion of erosion and unit cohesion. It turns out that people just want to know, are you a good soldier, are you a good sailor, are you a good airman, are you a good Marine, good Coast Guardsman. That's what they're concerned about. Do you do your job? Do you do your job well?
It was striking -- when I was in Hawaii
Now, here's the thing. I didn’t even know whether they were gay or lesbian. I didn’t ask -- because that wasn’t the point. The point was these were outstanding Marines who appreciated the fact that everybody was going to be treated fairly.
We're going to have more work to do on this issue, as is true on a lot of other issues. There's still areas where fairness is not the rule. And we're going to have to keep on pushing in the same way -- persistently, politely, listening to folks who don’t always agree with us, but sticking to our guns in terms of what our values are all about. What American values are all about.
And that's going to be true on the issues that are of importance to the LGBT community specifically, but it's also going to be true on a host of other issues where we're just going to have to make persistent steady progress. Whether it is having an energy policy that works for America; whether it is having an immigration policy that is rational so that we are actually both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants; whether it's making sure that as we get our fiscal house in order we do it in a balanced way where everybody is doing their fair share to help close this deficit. It's not just being done on the backs of people who don't have enough political clout on Capitol Hill, but it's broadly applied and everybody is doing their fair share.
On all these issues, my view is that if we go back to first principles and we ask ourselves, what does it mean for us as Americans to live in a society where everybody has a fair shot, everybody is doing their fair share, we're playing by a fair set of rules, everybody is engaging in fair play -- then we're going to keep on making progress.
And that's where I think the American people are at. It doesn’t mean this is going to be smooth. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be bumps in the road. It's not always good politics -- sometimes it's not. But over the long term, the trajectory of who we are as a nation, I believe that's our national character. We trend towards fairness and treating people well. And as long as we keep that in mind, I think we should be optimistic not just about the next election, but about the future of this country.
Thank you. (Applause.)
END
7:20 P.M. EST
Thursday, February 9, 2012
JMG UPDATE: Washington House Passes Marriage Equality Bill 55-43
With all due respect to the governor (and today's victory WAS really her doing), that "civil, respectful debate" included many grotesqueries like quotes from Leviticus (abomination!) and all the other insulting Christianist arguments that characterize gay people as less than fully human. But fuck all that noise, really, because WE WON.JMG Legislation Of The Day
Oklahoma state Rep. Constance Johnson (D) tried to sink an anti-abortion "personhood" bill with the above amendment. We bow and giggle at the same time.
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