RIP Scott McKenzie - San Francisco

Via Enough Is Enough: the blog page:

Via JMG: T-Mobile Endorses Marriage

Washington state based mobile phone giant T-Mobile today endorsed marriage equality. HRC has the good news:

The Bellevue-based wireless carrier joins REI, Microsoft, Starbucks and a growing list of other employers in supporting the efforts of Washington United for Marriage. “Our support of this issue is a reflection of our culture, how we do business, and our belief in the fair and equitable treatment of all employees,” said Jim Alling, interim chief executive officer and chief operating officer. HRC applauds T-Mobile for this positive step on its journey toward LGBT inclusion. More than 4,800 T-Mobile employees live and work in Washington state, according to the company.

RELATED: T-Mobile is the U.S. subsidiary of Germany's Deutsche Telekom. Last year a sale of the company to AT&T was thwarted after fierce resistance from the U.S. federal government.

Labels: cell phones, marriage equality, Washington state

Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Michelangelo Signore To FRC President Tony Perkins: Let's Talk About Hate

Michelangelo Signorile has penned an open letter to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and invited him to a debate on his SiriuxXM show. An excerpt:

Perhaps you recall that in July 2008, a man armed with a shotgun went on a shooting rampage inside a church in Knoxville. The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, like many Christian churches and denominations across the country, is welcoming of LGBT people. The gunman killed two people and severely wounded several others. Police said that the killer's motive was to target gays and liberals. "This isn't a church, it's a cult," the killer wrote in a four-page letter he had left behind. "They embrace every pervert that comes down the pike.... [T]he only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets, kill them where they gather."

I wouldn't claim, as you did with regard to the SPLC, that the FRC gave that killer a "license to shoot." No one knows what's inside the mind of a premeditated killer. But I would ask: Where do people like this killer get the distortions and ugly mischaracterizations that convince them that gay people are evil? More so, where do others who wouldn't engage in gun violence but who do harm to LGBT people in other ways -- firing them from their jobs, throwing them out of their homes, bullying them in schools -- get their misinformation about gay people? They get it from a wide array of sources that contribute to a culture that demonizes LGBT people. And you and the Family Research Council are among those who feed into that culture.

Read the full letter.

Labels: FRC, hate groups, Michelangelo Signorile, Tony Perkins

Reposted from Joe

Via FB:

Via FB / Global Secular Humanist Mov:

Via JMG: Matt Nathanson - Modern Love

Lots of cute gay couples and scenes of the city from San Francisco pop-rocker Matt Nathanson.



(Tipped by JMG reader William)

Labels: pop music, San Francisco

Reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 20, 2012

Aligning with the Cosmic Order

Buddhist practice, in its traditional context, is to align oneself more and more deeply with the cosmic order. Transcendence occurs when that coming into alignment is complete.

- Linda Heuman, "What's at Stake as the Dharma Goes Modern?"

Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection through August 22nd, 2012
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Via Gay Marriage Oregon's photo / FB:

Via FB:

JMG Billboards Of The Day

The above two billboards will be positioned near each of the convention sites in Tampa and Charlotte. World Net Daily's commenters are ever so pissed, but they have exactly zero to say about the thousands and thousands of Christian billboards that promise eternal damnation in an unending lake of fire.

Labels: advertising, atheism, Charlotte, Democratic convention, hypocrisy, religion, Republican convention, Tampa

Reposted from Joe

Via Truebook.org / FB:

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma August 19, 2012

Skillful Speech

Silence offers us, and those around us, the spaciousness we need to speak more skillfully. When we speak with greater skill, our true self—our compassionate, loving self—emerges with gentle ease. So before you speak, stop, breathe, and consider if what you are about to say will improve upon the silence.

- Allan Lokos, "Skillful Speech"

Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection through August 21st, 2012
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Via FB:

Via AmericaBlog Gay:

Guy who routinely calls us "pedophiles" wants an end to "reckless rhetoric"

I've already posted ample evidence as to why the Family Research Council was officially designated a hate group - it's not their policy positions per se, it's their strategy of willfully and systematically lying in order to defame, and discriminate against, an entire class of American citizens -...

Read the whole entry »

Via So You Think I'm a Lefty Liberal Looney? Thanks

Grandparents

Two from Gay Politics Report: What’s a "hate group"?

• LGBT groups decry shooting at anti-gay organization
   
• Dozens of national and state LGBT organizations issued a joint statement this week condemning a shooting at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, an advocacy organization that has long opposed LGBT equality measures on religious grounds. FRC President Tony Perkins said he appreciated the statement, but added the shooter “was given a license to do that” by groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which includes FRC on its list of hate groups. The suspect reportedly said he opposed the organization’s politics before shooting a building employee in the arm. The Washington Post/Guest Voices (8/16), Talking Points Memo/Muckraker (8/16), Washington Blade (Washington, D.C.) (8/15), Politico (Washington, D.C.) (8/17)   

• What’s a "hate group"?: Right Wing Watch details why the Southern Poverty Law Center included the Family Research Council on its annual list of hate groups, explaining SPLC considers the group’s rhetoric about gays and lesbians “false and demonizing.” Right Wing Watch (8/16)   

Via Gayoutdoors.org: New Brokeback Mountain Type Movie Being Filmed

Private Life, has begun shooting. The story is a little bit Brokeback Mountain, a little bit Boys Don't Cry. It's a short film, a fictionalized re-telling of an actual hate crime the writer/director read about nearly a decade ago that really terrified him. A gay couple, backpacking through the Appalachians, was shot at eight times sniper style while making love in a secluded mountain meadow. Check out his website, tell all your friends and SHARE it will all your Facebook friends. >>View Website

The film was written and directed by Greg Williamson, a grad student at the cinema school at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

In addition to the gay-interest theme, there is also a huge outdoors theme. Two-thirds of the story takes place out in the mountains on a backpacking trip. They have been scouting outdoor locations for months! [He’s really enjoyed being able to go on so many hikes to scout the locations.]

The film tells the story of a gay couple, struggling in their relationship, who end up forging a deeper connection while on a backpacking trip out in the great outdoors. Private Life is a story about a broken sort of person, who is scared and trying to hide from the world and how he ultimately learns that only by opening up and making himself vulnerable can he can truly begin to heal.

Greg added, “Even after coming out I spent a lot of time judging others—too gay, too effeminate, too shallow, too political or just too into escaping their troubles with drugs and alcohol and drama. Being gay is a large and complicated conversation and my place within it has never been much more than tenuous. It wasn’t until I started figuring out what this story means to me that I felt like I had anything to contribute to the conversation. To really open myself up to another person makes me feel vulnerable to them shutting me down, walking away and not returning it. It makes me feel that what I’m sharing might be judged as offensive or immoral or wrong or selfish and met with hostility, anger, rage or violence. It makes me feel vulnerable to feelings of embarrassment and humiliation and that’s really scary to me. Fear of vulnerability I think is a universal part of the human experience—a necessary instinct for survival. But there’s so much more to life than just surviving it. Making this film is a way to confront my own fears about what it means to me to come out and be vulnerable.” We will try to put together a screening in Boston once it’s complete.