Saturday, March 3, 2012

Via JMG: Billboard Of The Day


American Atheists say:
The “HR 535 – Year of the Bible Resolution” declared by the PA House of Representatives asked us to “study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures”. After considering the bill, we felt it necessary to highlight one of those teachings and share it with the public in the form of this billboard. It will be posted starting around March 5th for 28 days, and stay up throughout the month of March.

reposted from Joe

Via Bahai-Net

What came to my mind as I watched this was the time of witch burnings - it's the same thing, I thought, just as ignorant, just as hysterical, just as evil - and once again, it comes from "religious" feelings - better to be without religion altogether, if this is what it comes to. When will Baha'is understand that if you denounce homosexuality as an undesirable aberration, displeasing to God and needing correction, you are contributing to this kind of ignorant fear of gays? All the Baha'i platitudes about it being wrong to show prejudice or disdain toward gays are meaningless as long as they hold on to the denouncement of homosexuality as being abhorrent to God, while insisting they are not homophobic - you can't have it both ways, folks.

 http://www.gaybahai.net/discussion/post/1746062

Friday, March 2, 2012

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma March 2, 2012

Growing Through

Even on a small scale in daily life situations, such as when we feel bored or ill at ease, instead of trying to avoid these feelings by staying busy or buying another fancy gadget, we learn to look more clearly at our impulses, attitudes, and defenses. In this way dukkha guides and deepens our motivation to the point where we’ll say, 'Enough running, enough walls, I’ll grow through handling my blocks and lost places.'
- Ajahn Sucitto, "From Turning the Wheel of Truth: Commentary on the Buddha's First Teaching"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Via JMG: 21 Senate Dems Want Marriage Plank


At this writing 21 Senate Democrats have signed on to a call for a marriage equality plank in this year's Democratic Convention. Chris Johnson reports:
The Washington Blade received statements from the offices of 21 Democratic senators — including Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) — expressing support for including a marriage equality plank in the Democratic Party platform. The Blade solicited statements from all 53 Democratic senators and will update this article as more senators respond. The senators follow the lead of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who on Tuesday became the first U.S. senator this year to get behind the idea of including same-sex marriage in the Democratic Party platform. Shaheen, who’s also a co-chair of President Obama’s national campaign committee, said she backs a plank in support of marriage equality proposed by the LGBT organization Freedom to Marry.
Here's the language of Freedom To Marry's proposed plank.
The Democratic Party supports the full inclusion of all families in the life of our nation, with equal respect, responsibility, and protection under the law, including the freedom to marry. Government has no business putting barriers in the path of people seeking to care for their family members, particularly in challenging economic times. We support the Respect for Marriage Act and the overturning of the federal so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and oppose discriminatory constitutional amendments and other attempts to deny the freedom to marry to loving and committed same-sex couples.”

reposted from Joe

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Grandparents For Marriage Equality

Via JMG: CALIFORNIA: Support For Same-Sex Marriage Soars In Latest Poll


The Sacramento Bee reports:
The new Field survey shows support has leapt markedly in the three and a half years since California voters approved Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, 52.3 percent to 47.7 percent. The poll showed increases in support virtually across the board – among voters under 64, non-white voters, Catholics, Republicans and nonpartisans. Poll Director Mark DiCamillo said the move to a 25-point gap goes beyond the gradual increase in support that has been expected as young voters age and "replace" older voters in the electorate. "This is now showing that opinions are changing irrespective of generational replacement," DiCamillo said. "This is real change."
I wonder if Equality California is kicking themselves right now.


reposted from Joe

Via JMG: NOM's Traitor Wrote A Book



Reposted from Joe

JMG Quote Of The Day - George Clooney


"I think it’s funny, but the last thing you’ll ever see me do is jump up and down, saying, 'These are lies!' That would be unfair and unkind to my good friends in the gay community. I’m not going to let anyone make it seem like being gay is a bad thing. My private life is private, and I’m very happy in it. Who does it hurt if someone thinks I’m gay? I’ll be long dead and there will still be people who say I was gay. I don’t give a shit." - George Clooney, speaking to the Advocate.


reposted from Joe

JMG Quote Of The Day - Sgt. Brandon Morgan


"I used to be a very, very fanatical Christian, not that there’s anything wrong with being a Christian, but my beliefs, my core beliefs, definitely have changed as I’ve grown up because of the way I live, the way I am. I joined the Marine Corps because I felt I wanted to be the voice of God in the Marine Corps. I’m pretty sure people very close to me like my mother, my father, and my sister always knew that there was something different about me. I was always at the church, and had those values, had that idea that homosexuality was wrong according to the Christian faith. Eventually, nature comes out." - Sgt. Brandon Morgan, speaking to the Daily Beast.

RELATED: On the day that the story broke on JMG, those of us on this side of things traded a couple of slightly worrying items Morgan had apparently posted online some years ago. The wording was certainly mild compared to what we see here every day, but still there was some momentary concern that the entire "gay Marine in love" story might be some strange hoax. But as we see in the quote above, Morgan was just working through the youthful denial that so many of us faced.


reposted from Joe

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma March 1, 2012

Trusting in Yourself

The Buddha is saying, 'You are this.' He doesn’t say, 'I have something extra that I am going to give you.' Trust in yourself, trust in who you are. Sit down, breathe, be listening right now, hearing right now. Be intimate. But you have to do it for yourself.
- Elihu Genmyo Smith, "No Need to Do Zazen, Therefore Must Do Zazen"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Via Facebook:

Via Marriage Equality USA: Catholic school fires gay teacher planning wedding


The Supreme Court has ruled that religiously affiliated organizations like this school have the legal right to discriminate against anyone they choose, so I'm not arguing with the school's actual //legal// rights to fire the music teacher. I believe, however, that the firing was highly //immoral//. And why was it ok for him to keep his job when he was living with another man, but not ok after he talked about getting married. And I wonder if the school has fired any teachers who have been divorced, or who use contraception. I suspect with near 100% certainty the answer is no.
 
NORMANDY • A popular music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School in north St. Louis County recently was fired after church officials learned that he planned to marry his male partner of 20 years in New York, one of a handful of states where same-sex marriage is legal.
 

Via AmericaBlogGay:


Marine spokesman on gay kiss: "It’s your typical homecoming photo." And it was their first kiss.

Great job from the Marine spokesman. Not to mention, this was their first kiss. Their four year friendship had turned into a romance by mail (or email) while the Marine was stationed in Afghanistan.

Sgt. Brandon Morgan returned Wednesday from a six-month deployment to Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan.

There to meet him was his friend of four years, Windward Oahu artist Dalan Wells -- a friendship that had turned to a long-distance love during the deployment. This was their first kiss.

"We couldn't talk, I can barely talk now, his hands went numb, my legs were shaking, our first kiss after just knowing how we felt about each other,” Morgan said.

“All my superiors, my staff sergeants, my gunnery sergeants, my lieutenants, my officers, my captains, they're all very ecstatic and very happy that I had somebody to come home to,” Morgan said. “Again, gay or straight, does not matter.”

A spokesperson for Marine Corps Base Hawaii said in a statement: "It's your typical homecoming photo."

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma February 29, 2012

Toppling the "I" Throne

The ego must be dethroned, its arrogance must be dismantled, and we must begin, before it is too late, to listen to the ensuing silence. All of this is about becoming who we are in the deepest sense and about surrendering to what creation is asking of us and needing from us just now.
- Reginald Ray, "Looking Inward, Seeing Outward"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Via JMG: On The Origins Of HIV


The Washington Post has published a fascinating history of the origins of HIV, based on the fairly widely-accepted theory that the virus sprang from chimp to human during the tumultuous colonial days of western Africa, possibly beginning in the 1880s.
Most of this colonial world didn’t have enough potential victims for such a fragile virus to start a major epidemic. HIV is harder to transmit than many other infections. People can have sex hundreds of times without passing the virus on. To spread widely, HIV requires a population large enough to sustain an outbreak and a sexual culture in which people often have more than one partner, creating networks of interaction that propel the virus onward. To fulfill its grim destiny, HIV needed a kind of place never before seen in Central Africa but one that now was rising in the heart of the region: a big, thriving, hectic place jammed with people and energy, where old rules were cast aside amid the tumult of new commerce. It needed Kinshasa. It was here, hundreds of miles downriver from Cameroon, that HIV began to grow beyond a mere outbreak. It was here that AIDS grew into an epidemic.
Read the full article. (Tipped by JMG reader Greg)


reposted from Joe

Via Gay Politics Report:

  • Houston mayor won't back down from marriage stance
     
  • Houston Mayor Annise Parker said this week she believes President Barack Obama “needs to evolve a little bit faster” on the issue of marriage for same-sex couples, and that she supports an effort to include marriage equality in the Democratic platform. Meanwhile, Parker rejected a local pastor's call for her to resign over her increasingly public stance on marriage. "I do my duty to uphold the state Constitution and the U.S. Constitution. I swore an oath to that. I take that oath very seriously, but I have my First Amendment rights to free speech. We all have the right to do that and I’m sorry [he doesn't] understand the Constitution," Parker said. The Huffington Post/Gay Voices (2/27), ThinkProgress.org (2/28)     

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

Tricycle Daily Dharma February 28, 2012

Who We Really Are

The life that flows through each of us and through everything around us is actually all connected. To say that, of course, means that who I really am cannot be separated from all the things that surround me. Or, to put it another way, all sentient beings have their existence and live within my life.
- Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, "The Bodhisattva Vow: Eight Views"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Monday, February 27, 2012

Via jMG: NYC's U.S. House Members: It Gets Better

Clip description:
Members of New York City's Congressional Delegation -- Reps. Jerrold Nadler, Ed Towns, Eliot Engel, Carolyn Maloney, Joe Crowley and Jose Serrano -- released a video to combat the scourge of suicide among LGBT American youths. They join thousands of others across the country working to help those who are at risk. The It Gets Better Project was created in 2010 to address the alarming increase of reported suicide among LGBT youths.
NYC House members except the Republicans.




Reposted from Joe

Via Facebook: