"The
Democratic Party under the leadership of Barack Obama has dramatically
improved the lives of millions of lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual
Americans and at no cost to anyone else. In college, I thought I was
the only guy in the world who liked other guys. Later I found there was
someone else like me, our 26-year-old resident tutor. He and I never
talked about it at the time. No one talked about being gay back then.
People killed themselves over being gay. Tragically, some kids still do.
"Now
we know that when the leftists attempt to push a 'gay fascism bill' in
politically conservative areas, our response must be to create
controversy to draw public attention to the bill so that the people wake
up and realize there’s a problem. Throw out the old playbook of acting
nice and trying to persuade the public officials through reason. They
think they are smarter than you all anyhow and have already made up
their minds. They need to see angry crowds with tar and feathers in hand
coming to run them out of office! Indeed, the Mayor of Springfield
complained to the media that he was extremely bothered by threats of
recall by the citizens.
Dana Loesch is outraged: "Because nothing says 'respect women; like wearing a giant slut button. Respect women, even when they reduce themselves to nothing more than vaginas in a craft project gone horribly wrong and advocate for female genocide. Who's declaring a war on whom?"You just have to laugh.
Great news via press release from Ireland Marriage Equality:Today Marriage Equality welcomes the news that Dublin City Council has passed a motion in support of civil marriage for same sex couples. Two motions in support of marriage equality were put forward - by councillors from Labour and Sinn Féin - and passed at last night's council meeting, having been considered jointly. Dublin City Council joins Cork City Council and Belfast City Council, who passed similar motions in June, as well as Omagh, Down, Moyle and Magherafelt District Councils who passed motions during the summer months.The vote was 38-4!
"This is a wonderful step by Dublin City Council to raise awareness of this important issue at a local level. We'd like to thank the councillors from both Labour and Sinn Féin for their initiative, and our supporters in Dublin who spoke to their councillors over the last few months about raising the issue," said Marriage Equality Director Moninne Griffith. "Marriage equality is not just a national issue, it's a local one. It's about respecting and protecting loving couples and families who are part of our communities and treating them as equal. That is why putting the issue on the agenda at local level is so important."
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Don’t
try to do anything at all except what you’re doing, which will seem
like nothing to most observers. Little do they know! Even if what you’re
doing is being distracted and hating sitting on your cushion
accomplishing nothing—just do that. Don’t try to be anything other than
who and what you are.
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The
idea of naturalness is that no-working is true working. It’s the
understanding that things don’t happen due to your own calculation and
effort. You don’t sit there thinking, 'All right now, if I’m able to
follow the eightfold path and do everything the right way, then I will
attain awakening.' That’s your own deluded, ego-based effort. I did this, I am able to do that—the
moment you start thinking that way, your ego mind comes into play. Yet
when the karmic conditions are right, when your causes and conditions
come together, you can progress along the path.
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We
need to see the primordial potential in all of our experiences in the
same way a doctor sees the health and well-being in his patients. If a
patient didn’t possess a fundamental well-being, what would be the point
of prescribing such antidotes as medicines, exercise, or new diets?
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For the first time ever, a Brazilian court has granted paternity leave to a gay man who just adopted a child with his partner. Normally Brazilian fathers are only given five days off work after becoming parents, while mothers receive four months off, but a Brazilian court found that it was discriminatory for a gay couple to receive less combined parental leave than a heterosexual couple. As a result Lucimar da Silva will become the first Brazilian man to receive the same parental leave as a woman. Brazil’s social security agency has agreed to honor the decision. ‘However unusual it may seem to grant maternity leave to a male person … this hypothesis is possible when the father takes care of the newborn,’ the agency told Brazilian TV network O Globo.Unfortunately this decision does not set precedent and future applicants will also have to go to court to earn paternity leave.
"I
can’t support Scott Brown. I just can’t do it. I found out Scott is
anti-union and I’m a Teamster guy. I found out he’s also against gay
marriage and I say if you love someone you should have the same rights
no matter who you are." - Boxing legend Micky Ward,
retracting his endorsement of Sen. Scott Brown, who was about to appear
at Ward's gym for a photo op. Mark Wahlberg played Ward in the
Oscar-winning movie The Fighter.Tricycle Daily Dharma September 1, 2012 |
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Accepting Thoughts
- Sayadaw U Tejaniya, "Observing Minds Want to Know"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection through September 3rd, 2012
For full access at any time, become a Tricycle Community Supporting or Sustaining Member
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If
you work hard at something but find that too many obstacles prevent you
from accomplishing it, you may have to give up. In that case, you
shouldn’t get depressed. Conditions aren’t right. Perhaps this will
change, perhaps it won’t. You are not a failure. Becoming upset only
causes suffering.
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The state Senate on Thursday sent the governor a bill that would prohibit so-called sexual-conversion therapy for minors, aimed at changing their orientation from gay to straight. Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) proposed the measure based on concern by medical groups involving psychologists and psychiatrists that the therapy is not based on sound scientific principles. "The entire house of medicine has rejected this phony and sham therapy. It really is junk science,’’ Lieu told his fellow Senators. "The American Psychiatric Assn. says it poses great risk to individuals including feelings of guilt, self-hatred, shame. Some people commit suicide having gone through this.’’ The bill was approved with a 22-12 party line vote, with Republicans objecting to the state telling parents and teenagers what kind of therapy they can pursue.The bill is vigorously opposed by PFOX, NARTH, the Catholic Church, and other hate groups that enjoy brainwashing and torturing gay children.
The
Commandant of the Marine Corps says that he's not heard of any problems
related to the repeal of DADT. Michael Lavers reports at the Washington Blade: “I don’t think there is a problem,” said Commandant Gen. James Amos during a National Press Club luncheon in downtown Washington. “I don’t see it. I don’t hear about it.” [snip] “We obey orders,” said Amos. “We do that better than anybody does and we have.” He again noted that he doesn’t “even get a question” about openly gay and lesbian servicemembers from subordinates and other Marines. “I don’t hear anything,” said Amos. “I’m not seeing anything at all, so I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out. I’m very proud of the Marines."RELATED: You may recall that Amos was the most strident opponent of the repeal out of all the heads of the military branches. In December 2010 he even claimed that openly gay soldiers would cause Marines to lose their legs.
"When your life hangs on a line, on the intuitive behavior of the young man ... who sits to your right and your left, you don't want anything distracting you," Amos told reporters at the Pentagon. "I don't want to lose any Marines to distraction. I don't want to have any Marines that I'm visiting at Bethesda (hospital) with no legs," he said. He added that "mistakes and inattention or distractions cost Marines' lives. That's the currency of this fight."
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What
is this? This is just your life. So you do your part, and the rest is
clear. It is clear because there has never been anything lacking,
despite any beliefs you might have, despite any ideas you might have.
There has never been anything lacking.
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The
frustrating thing about our life is that there is no control over our
emotions. That’s why there’s no fun. The whole purpose of Buddhism is to
have fun, isn’t it? And in order to have fun you have to have control.
If someone else has control over you, that’s it: there’s no fun.
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The opponents [of same-sex marriage] are resorting to spurious arguments to convince voters that the law will somehow be unfair to those with objections to gay marriages because they don't want to face the real question of fairness at stake. Should the law treat people differently because of their sexual orientation? Or should everyone be treated equally? Maryland's gay marriage ordinance doesn't require anyone to violate their religious beliefs or personal conscience. As much as we hope the debate over this issue will persuade everyone in the state of the value of acceptance and tolerance, the law doesn't force anyone to change the way they think. All it does is to remove a major vestige of discrimination from state law, and that is something all Marylanders should be able to support.
Equality Matters reporter Carlos Maza went undercover
at a NOM conference to pose as a straight college student interested in
"defending traditional marriage." Today he has posted a lengthy
accounting of the events, seminars, and outright lies told to NOM's
young attendees.At noon, I sat in on a talk titled "The Truth About Same Sex Parenting Studies," led by economist Douglas Allen. I had read Allen's work through the Ruth Institute blog before - including a piece in which he wrote that same-sex relationships were more unstable, unhealthy, and promiscuous than heterosexual relationships.Read the full Equality Matters report.
Allen began his talk by attempting to debunk the enormous body of research indicating that same-sex parents can effectively raise children. He listed a number of familiar but inaccurate criticisms of modern same-sex parenting studies: sample sizes are too small, sample sizes aren't random, the studies' authors are biased, and so on.
Allen went on to claim that lesbian relationships were more likely to experience instability and dissolution because women's menstrual cycles become synchronized when they live together for a long period of time. I could barely choke back my laughter when I heard Allen's explanation. I'd been exposed a lot of terrible arguments against allowing same-sex couples to raise children, but "lesbians will menstruate at the same time" was the kind of claim I'd expect to hear from someone parodying the anti-gay position.
A few moments later, though, I wasn't laughing...
Good
for them! Now let's see if they endorse the man who has pledged to
inflict an anti-gay marriage amendment upon the U.S. Constitution.
Every
meditator has challenges. Rather then taking the obstacles as problems
or as unfortunate distractions, a more useful attitude is to patiently
and contentedly learn the skills and insights that can transform them
into stepping stones along the path of practice.
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The effectiveness of our foreign aid has been limited by the cultural agenda of the current Administration, attempting to impose on foreign countries, especially the peoples of Africa, legalized abortion and the homosexual rights agenda. At the same time, faith-based groups — the sector that has had the best track record in promoting lasting development — have been excluded from grants because they will not conform to the administration’s social agenda. We will reverse this tragic course, encourage more involvement by the most effective aid organizations, and trust developing peoples to build their future from the ground up.Lest we forget, Perkins denounced Obama for expressing opposition to Uganda's plan to start executing homosexuals. That's the real "homosexual agenda" of the Republican party.
After Elton has launched a tournament
to pick the hottest of the 32 male-male TV couples that dominate the
world of fantasy "slash" erotica. The elders of the genre, William
Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, are pitted against their modern day
counterparts from the latest edition of Star Trek.
Interesting turn of events reported by Chris Geidner:The trial court judge in California who has taken over hearing the federal court case challenging Proposition 8, the state's amendment limiting marriages to one man and one woman, ordered the case closed today — which would allow same-sex couples to marry in California. The order comes despite the fact that proponents of Proposition 8 have requested the Supreme Court to review the case because, Judge James Ware wrote today, all requests to stay the judgment in the case have been denied. The proponents made no request of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court to stay the case pending resolution by the Supreme Court.What happens next is unclear. Could same-sex marriages resume in California before the Supreme Court even decides whether to hear the appeal of its overturn?
The
brand new Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, has been
arrested for drunk driving. Cordileone is widely considered the "father
of Proposition 8." Police in San Diego say Bishop Salvatore Cordileone was arrested over the weekend for driving under the influence. Police say it happened in San Diego's College District just before 12:30 Saturday morning. Bishop Cordileone is currently bishop of Oakland -- a post he's held since 2009. Last month Pope Benedict chose Bishop Cordileone to become archbishop of San Francisco -- replacing retiring Archbishop George Niederaur. He's scheduled to assume the new post in October.I'll have the delicious mug shot ASAP. (Tipped by JMG reader Mark)
Fortunately,
getting a sense of humor doesn’t come with a price tag. It simply
requires understanding that everything we experience is universal; all
the humiliations and hijinks are a part of life; each and every one of
us gets to slip on the banana peel. So pick yourself up, brush yourself
off, and laugh about it, for crying out loud.
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From
the intrinsic standpoint—one of body, of Buddha-nature—non-killing
means that there is nothing being born and nothing dying. The very
notions of 'birth' and 'death' are extra. Life does not divide up into
things to be killed or not killed; it is just this one body, constantly
changing.
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