"I'm homosexual and I'm afraid about what my future will be and that people won't like me."
Posted by Humans of New York on Friday, July 3, 2015
Sometimes the Internet can be a good place filled with good people. On Friday, Humans of New York photographer Brandon Stanton posted a heartbreaking image of a young boy with the caption, "I'm homosexual, and I'm afraid about what my future will be and that people won't like me." Even 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton left a few inspirational words, writing, "Prediction from a grown-up: Your future is going to be amazing. You will surprise yourself with what you’re capable of and the incredible things you go on to do. Find the people who love and believe in you –- there will be lots of them."Your day will truly be better if you read the comments. And that's a sentence you won't see very often.
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Wherever the Mind Points, It Goes
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In
this historical moment when American democratic ideals of freedom,
civility, pluralism, altruism, and individualism make America the most
comfortable home on earth for the individual pursuit of enlightenment,
it is an essential form of Buddhist practice to participate in politics,
to vote, to speak out, to encourage those who agree, to reason with
those who disagree. It is wisdom. It is meditation. It is compassion. It
is ethics.
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In
this historical moment when American democratic ideals of freedom,
civility, pluralism, altruism, and individualism make America the most
comfortable home on earth for the individual pursuit of enlightenment,
it is an essential form of Buddhist practice to participate in politics,
to vote, to speak out, to encourage those who agree, to reason with
those who disagree. It is wisdom. It is meditation. It is compassion. It
is ethics.
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More than a decade ago, photographer Ed Freeman set out to capture the gay rights struggle in a photograph for the cover of Frontiers, a gay magazine. To do so, he relied on an image — the flag-raising at Iwo Jima — that has been imitated and adapted countless times since it was captured in the midst of one of America’s bloodiest battles. [snip] More than a decade after his adaptation of the photograph was published, it circulated on social media following the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to allow same-sex marriage in all 50 states. That prompted a backlash against Freeman — including a death threat he says he reported to the FBI. “He said if he ever saw me, he’d kill me,” Freeman said in a phone interview. “I got swamped with vitriolic hate mail.” Freeman said there is “no way in hell” that he meant his adaptation of the Iwo Jima image to be provocative. “This picture was just a flashpoint for a lot people who are looking for a reason to lash out, so I guess I get to be the whipping boy,” he said. “I’m fine with that if that’s what it takes.Haters are going nuts on Twitter.
The opposition to legal same-sex marriage is both partisan and generational. Two-thirds of Republicans oppose same-sex marriage, as does a majority of those 65 and older. Two in three Democrats and adults under 30 are in favor. Some of the opposition is clearly religious: 57% of those who say religion is very important to them oppose the ruling (a third approve). Among Catholics, there is a close division with nearly half approving. There is more support in the Northeast and West than there is in the Midwest and South.46% of all Americans say they'd attend a same-sex wedding.
But same-sex marriage has already become part of the American landscape. 44% say they know a gay or lesbian married couple. More than half of those with higher incomes and half of women do, but only 29% of African-Americans say they know a gay or lesbian couple that is married. Those who know a same-sex married couple approve of the Court’s ruling by two to one. While many people know a same-sex married couple, only 7% have attended a same-sex wedding. Three times as many Democrats (11%) as Republicans (3%) and eight times as many liberals (16%) as conservatives (2%) have done so.
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As the early Buddhist teachings freely admit, the predicament is that the cycle of birth, aging, and death is
meaningless. They don't try to deny this fact and so don't ask us to be
dishonest with ourselves or to close our eyes to reality. As one
teacher has put it, the Buddhist recognition of the reality of
suffering, so important that suffering is honored as the first noble
truth, is a gift, in that it confirms our most sensitive and direct
experience of things, an experience that many other traditions try to
deny.
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It
is very hard to extract some sort of enduring positive gain from dharma
practice without taking a really thorough look at your own mind. The
first step is a very close look at the nature of suffering: seeing what
suffering is and getting to know our own suffering. It is through that
deep intimacy with our own suffering that there is liberation.
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Australia will soon decide whether to legalize same-sex marriage under a cross-party bill which may allow parliament members to vote according to their conscience, rather than along party lines, media reported on Wednesday. The debate over whether to follow countries like the United States and Ireland in recognizing same-sex marriage has strained relations between Australia's socially conservative Catholic Prime Minister Tony Abbott and members of his Liberal Party in favor of the change. A cross-party bill, sponsored by two Liberal Party lawmakers is expected to go to the federal parliament on Aug. 11, Sky News Australia said. There is speculation that Abbott may appease his own party members by allowing them the freedom to vote independently, in recognition that they favor the legislation. Abbott's sister is engaged to a woman and has called for bipartisan agreement.The first day of spring in the southern hemisphere is September 23rd.
Governor Kenneth Mapp has announced that he’s currently working on an executive order to direct government agencies and departments to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Mapp made the announcement during a Tuesday morning press conference at Government House, stating that upon taking office in January, he swore to uphold the laws of the land. “The Government of the Virgin Islands as a civil society can no longer discriminate on marriage,” Mapp said. “The nation has arrived, pursuant to the Supreme Court’s ruling, at full marriage equality — when two consenting adults appear for a marriage license and apply for that license, civil society is required to respond. And so persons of the same-sex can be married in the U.S. Virgin Islands.” The governor stressed that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling does not force churches and ministers to perform same-sex or any other kind of marriage, however as the territory’s leader, he must abide by the law.The territory has a population of 106K.
Projects are meant to be temporary and so was Bilerico Project. After more than a decade, it's time to wrap up our experiment. The media landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade and so have our lives and the LGBT movement itself. It's time to turn the page and start something fresh in this new environment. My first post in 2004 was a quote from Margaret Meade. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." I think we've done our part to make the world a better place. This will be my last post on Bilerico Project. The site will be archived at bilericoproject.com so that all 31,000+ posts will still be available for readers. It's been a long strange journey and I've loved every single moment of it, but the time has come to end the project and call it a success.From JMG: "In the early years of this here website thingy, there were only a handful of us doing LGBT news aggregation and commentary before behemoths like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and other major sites launched LGBT verticals. Bilerico now joins Mike Rogers, Pam Spauding, Andrew Sullivan, and John Aravosis in LGBT blogging history. Hail to the independents."
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May I become an island for those seeking dry land
A lamp for those needing light,
A place of rest for those who desire one,
And a servant for those needing service.
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SPOTTED, at 4 a.m. Sat. at the White House: Jeff Tiller, 32, the White House director of specialty media (includes LGBT outreach) and former press-advance marvel, who had the inspired idea of bathing the North Portico (“The President’s Front Door”) in rainbow lighting. The crowds were gone, sunrise was coming, and the lighting contractors who had installed the rainbow were long asleep. After spending the night at the White House in a lawn chair, Jeff climbed downstairs to the tradesman entrance to unplug the lights that he had conceived of months earlier.You can thank Tiller on Twitter. (Tipped by JMG reader Mike)
On June 26, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment requires that states issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Conservative media and the National Rifle Association (NRA) quickly seized on the decision to draw a parallel with concealed carry reciprocity, a top federal legislative priority of the NRA. Reciprocity legislation, also known as federally mandated concealed carry, would force states to recognize permits to carry concealed guns issued by other states, regardless of what the issuing state's standards are for issuing permits. Reciprocity legislation has been introduced in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, but conservative media and the NRA view Obergefell as an opportunity to argue that the Constitution extends at least some right to reciprocal permit recognition regardless of whether Congress acts. The problem with that argument, however, is that the 2008 landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller limited the scope of the Second Amendment right to gun possession to people's homes.
Over the past three days, 26 million people have super imposed rainbows over their Facebook profile pictures using a free tool provided by the company. The rainbow filter launched Friday and continued to gain steam over Pride weekend, garnering more than half a billion likes and comments all over the world. Famous people including Russell Simmons, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff changed their profiles. The tool was created by two Facebook interns during an internal hackathon last week. Changing a profile picture is easily dismissed as low-effort activism. But for many people who are not typically political it was a way to quietly show support.
