Labels: 1st UU principle, 2nd UU principle, anti-oppression, classism, Community, education, equal rights, oppression, sexuality, universal health care, women, Women's Rights

Labels: 2nd UU principle, 5th UU principle, 6th UU principle, anti-oppression, Community, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, multiculturalism, our mission, politics, religious community, USA

Labels: art, equal rights, freak flag, rainbow

Labels: equal rights, Women's Rights

Labels: 1st UU principle, 5th UU principle, anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, drug war, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, marijuana, racism, USA

I support this.


Video here.

Text from here:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

How I wish the US had pursued these with all its might. I wish it still would.

pax hominibus,agape to all,joel

Labels: anti-oppression, classism, economics, education, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, homelessness, personal bookmarks, politics, sacred texts, theological sources, universal health care, USA

Today's service at First UU San Francisco was dedicated to the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office. Here is a picture of the preamble to the UN Charter, drafted 60+ years ago,written as a response to the end of WWII, "the war to end all wars." This picture was taken down on UN Plaza, by where Hyde St. meets Market. St.



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chant/prayer/mantra: Put an end to the war machine, and devote all those lost resources to peacetime prosperity efforts.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: economics, equal rights, globalism, multiculturalism, paradigm shift, parousia, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, theological sources, universal health care

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I know I haven't said all that much on immigration reform, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking on it, and I just came across an article with a long list of principles that should be satisfied by meaningful immigration reform. I agree with these.

Three key points:
1. The US has created a system where undocumented immigrants have no legal recourse, and businesses that hire them can treat them very unfairly without fear of recrimination.
2. US policies of interference in other countries (Including the drug war in Mexico and Columbia, School of the Americas harming the countries of Central America, and a variety of unfair lending practices that leave developing nations in the lurch) leave those countries economically destitute, forcing their workforce to other countries (including the US) to find work. Those practices need to end, so that our country is not exploiting the labor of other countries. We need to explore ways of real cooperation.
3. Incarcerating undocumented immigrants and putting them to work in prison at sub-minimum wage? Highly unethical, yet this treatment seems par for the course for those incarcerated in US prisons.

chant/prayer/mantra: May we all recognize our common humanity, beyond any thoughts to human-created national boundaries.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Capitalism, changing the prison paradigm, classism, equal rights, globalism, immigration reform, racism, USA

So uber-champion of swimming Michael Phelps had a picture of him smoking from a bong end up in a newspaper. And now lots of his sponsors are dropping his contract, including Kellogg's and Subway -- corporations which enjoy business from people who smoke marijuana. Perhaps they and the other folks trying to slap his wrist really are doing it because he should be a role model for kids, perhaps they're doing it because they don't want to be associated with marijuana because of family-goodness perceptions they want to keep alive.

There is a lot I would add to this discussion, but apparently, there are many professional journalists saying pretty much the same thing. Note a few of the headlines of the Related Blogs section from the page linked above (I will add my comments in []'s):

• "Why Are We Condemning Michael Phelps' Pot Use? Add decorated Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps to the growing list of successful Americans who happens to indulge in marijuana during his down time." [Or: they will be otherwise successful until they get found out.]
  
• "If Kellogg's Dumps Phelps, We Dump Kellogg's Tens of millions of Americans think that the public condemnation of Phelps is a farce. We're sick and tired of the public outings, and forced apologies and recantations, which perpetuate this shameless hypocrisy."
• " Michael Phelps, Hypocrisy, and American Drug Policy Today, public figures justify past drug use as "youthful indiscretions" and the matter is dropped. But the reality of drug arrests creates a justified perception economic and racial bias." [Let's face it, the drug laws are in place -- and unevenly enforced-- as a method of social control, to keep (groups of) people who are different, either in skin color, culture, or lifestyle choices on the defensive.]
  
• " Marijuana Blues: If All Americans Had Phelps' Press Experience, The Drug War Would Be Over Imagine how the economy would grind to (even more of!) a halt if we tried to arrest and incarcerate all of the people who had ever smoked pot." [Well, the privatized prison economy (complete with its sub-minimum-wage SLAVE labor) would continue to grow, until we can't find the tax money to pay for a dead-end prison system that destroys the lives of not only inmates, but also the guards/employees, and the towns they are in. Wackenhut is not hurting for earnings, however.]
  
• " Quit Crying Double-Standard Over Phelps America gives its marketable, talented and wealthy weed-smokers the Santonio Holmes treatment. We forgive and quickly forget." [This writer, Jason Whitlock, and I agree on my bracketed statement above: 'America's war on drugs is a scam to lock up poor people, a prop to advance political careers and an easy way for corrupt police and politicians to funnel millions of untraceable dollars into their own pockets.']
• " Petition to Boycott Kellogg's for Treatment of Michael Phelps Kellogg's has decided to end their relationship with Phelps after a photo of him surfaced doing exactly what most Kellogg's customers do right before enjoying a bowl of Rice Krispies with an Eggo on top." [LOL. But seriously, if there is an organized boycott of Kellogg's by all those who stand against our nation's drug policy and the continued insistence that the context of marijuana be one of criminality, it would be interesting to watch how deeply their margins are affected.]
  
• " Michael Phelps In Good Company According to a 2002 Time/CNN poll, 47% of Americans have smoked marijuana. Here's a list of famous users and advocates of the plant." [Includes Laura Bush, Donna Shalala, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sarah Palin, George Soros! President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, President James Madison, President John Kennedy, President Thomas Jefferson, President Andrew Jackson, President Franklin Pierce, Future California governor Brad Pitt (come on, if Reagan and Schwarzenegger can do it...), William F. Buckley, Jr, Jennifer Aniston, Utilitarian ethicist Jon Stuart Mill... Seriously, where have our values come to if we are willing to continue to use legislation and law enforcement to subjugate the lifestyles of large parts of our population?]
  
• " Excuses, Excuses: The Real Problem With Michael Phelps I flashed back to 2004 when Phelps was arrested for a DUI. He was 19, fresh off Athens and the magazine where I worked was honoring him for being a role model for young people." [Um... drinking and driving -- that IS a bad thing for which there should be negative repercussions, and which our society should find ways to make more difficult, and more unnecessary (more designated drivers, more taxis, better mass-transit...)]
  
• " Bong Hits for Phelps: No Apology Needed Phelps struck another blow to the myth that marijuana smokers are lazy. Successful and honorable people who have smoked some pot are all around us, from President Obama to Mayor Bloomberg." [True. When you start having more and more successful people stepping up being "exceptions to the rule," eventually it becomes clear that the rule is unsubstantiated.]
  

The simple way of saying this is that the context is being presented as if Michael Phelps spending some of his downtime in an altered state of consciousness cannot be allowed as a part of our worldview. For Christ's sake -- and I do mean that literally -- shaman and spiritual guides have been smoking and snorting herbs and such for thousands of years. When can we get real about drug policy, and get real about having a system of laws based on a deep and grounded ethical morality, and put people (and the planet) before ideologies?


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, changing the prison paradigm, classism, drug war, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, personal religion, politics, theological sources

So apparently back on December 19th, the Yes on Prop 8 folks got Kenneth Starr (the same guy who prosecuted against Bill Clinton) to file a case so that all 18k of the same sex couples in California who got married last year will have that marriage taken away.

Note that at the bottom of the dailykos page, there's a scary video of two Latter Day Saints marching into a lesbian household and taking their rings and marriage certificate, ripping it in half. That's pretty close to the truth. To think that rights that some people have been working to achieve and then win, could be taken away again is TOTALLY unAmerican.

So, if you're a friend of mine, and/or care about equal rights, please go here, and do as your heart compels.

I find it interesting and extremely sad that the Catholics and JC-LDS folks were two of the biggest proponents behind prop 8, and Unitarian Universalism was one of the biggest opponents to it. What I find interesting are these numbers.

The Catholics, a population of roughly 80 million give an average of 1.3%, a total easily over $5 BILLION dollars to the church annually.

The Mormons, a population of roughly 6 million give an average of 7.5% of their income to the church. For argument's sake, let's pretend the median income is a generous $50k/year. That works out to roughly $22.5 BILLION/year.

Unitarian Universalists have less than 200,000 pledging members, averaging less than 1% of their income. That means a total of (far) less than $100 million.

If we're talking about economic power (and the ability to put it to work in the form of making the world match your values), UU and our message and values are hurting. It's not just a question of getting the message out, but of getting it out enough, and getting it out more. The Catholics, the Mormons and the fundamentalists are all a lot more vocal than us, and often, its the loudest or most frequent voice that gets heard. We would be hard pressed to launch an ad campaign anywhere near the size of the Yes on 8 campaign the Mormons put on, or to pay lawyer's fees the size of someone like Kenneth Starr would ask for.

And a bit closer to home -- with the economic downturn, our association of churches are even hard-pressed to train ministers -- significantly fewer congregations are taking interns for the coming year, which means I might get the opportunity to be a stay-at-home dad for a year, and UU will have me as a minister for one less year, or perhaps not at all. My guess is that many other ministerial hopefuls are in a similar predicament. If our movement, and its values, are important, they need to spread. Unless we're going to turn all of our 50 person fellowships into 1000+ member uber-churches, we're going to need more ministers.

Giving 1% is not the way to do it. And I'm not suggesting 10%, or even 7.5%, but how about 3%? If it's about the margins between operating cost and the good social justice work we can do in the world, 1% is continually help us to keep a roof over our heads and a basic staff with bread on the table, but 1.1% would mean 10 million more bucks to go toward real community-roots justice work, and growth.

And yes, times are tough. My grandparents (a farmer, and a farmer's wife -- in other words, two farmers, one of whom fixed the tractor and tossed the hay bales on the wagon, and the other who drove the tractor and cooked and fed the chickens) didn't make a whole lot of money with their small 40-acre farm operation. But they had a policy that when times were tight. Knowing that the church community was the place that people turned to first when they ran on hard luck, if there was a recession or depression, they gave MORE money to the church, to help the community. In short, this recession/depression is an opportunity for Unitarian Universalists and other churches to pull together in community, and to rely on each other just a bit more.

And I say all this knowing full well that money is a substitute, a symbol of our labor. At some point, I intend to write a bit about what happens when the dollar (and other forms of money) get de-monetized, and are no longer current. I think a bit part of the paradigm shift coming up is when our labor gets de-monetized. I believe there can and will be a time when all our fundamental needs (food, water, housing, clothes) will be easily taken care of (if we work things right -- efficient sharing of resources & bringing the population down to 2-3 billion). And our basic modern needs (running water, electricity, communication, education, garbage collection) will also be taken care of. Then the work each of us does can be voluntary and our labor need not be monetized. It's just a question of if and when enough people have the collective will for us to turn the corner. I guess here I am talking parousia again.

Or we could just go the way of the Dodo. At least some of our theology would last, maybe. The thought that it might not is one of the few things that makes me shudder to the bones. Lord knows the mormons aren't preaching it (yet!).

lyrics: "Come around to my way of thinkin'.
Don't you want to, want to get along?"
-Urge Overkill, from Sister Havana

colors: blood red -- the color of hell -- the hell of enforced separation and divorce

mood: side-tracked. perhaps on-track actually.

chant/prayer/mantra: it takes an impulsive creative force, and then sustained energy.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: angry at organized religions, economics, equal rights, LGBT, our mission, parousia, politics, religious community, salvation, theology

This editorial piece almost brought me to tears.

No matter who you are, if you haven't seen it, it's worth viewing.


peace and love,
joel

Labels: equal rights, LGBT, media

Apparently, somebody has placed a "No on Prop 8" sign at the city of Megiddo in Israel, the supposed site of Armageddon. This is a response to the fact that there are Christians from all over the United States pouring their money and effort into a "Yes on Prop 8" campaign in California, and some of them are saying that the right to same sex marriage is a cultural armageddon. The actual wording of California Proposition 8 includes these exact words: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

i rarely use caps, but feel the need to press the Caps Lock key today... WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE??? WHY DO THEY FEEL ENTITLED TO CALL THEMSELVES CHRISTIANS AT ALL?? NOT IN MY BACKYARD, NOT IN MY STATE, AND NOT ON MY PLANET. Christians are supposed to be intelligent, thoughtful, and according to Jesus' one big command, they are supposed to love their neighbor. Is denying rights to your neighbors some new way of expressing your love for them?

What does it take to see that this proposition is simply denying rights to a certain minority of people? Why would somebody see fit to act out a hurtful ideology against a group of mostly kind and loving people in the name of CHRIST? That is just the worst thing imaginable. I suppose this could be explained by some convoluted logic which ties same-sex love to sin, and cares that people don't go to hell when they die, and therefore a measure like this keeps them safe from sinning. But that neglects the fact that being disallowed to love freely is a real form of hell for any people while they're alive.

Further, in addition to the fact that this effort is trying to limit rights for people, it is also EXTREMELY IMMORAL to be devoting energy to something like this when there are AMAZINGLY LARGE AND SERIOUS PROBLEMS GOING ON IN THE WORLD WITHOUT HAVING TO GRANDSTAND AGAINST SOMETHING LIKE THIS. When this is all said and done, this will be seen akin to tilting at windmills in the middle of a hurricane. A genuine fools' errand, and there are millions of American sucked into doing it through religious ideology.

IMO, it's about time for the rest of humanity to come around to a more quaker way of thinking.

It looks like I'm going to be spending my birthday working against this effort, and perhaps even performing a wedding.

To those who are so concerned about gay marriage that they are devoting this much time and effort into preventing it, I'll say simply that my prayers are with you, but I will not stand with you, and your effort will fail because it is unloving and against what Christ wants for the world.

lyrics: "There's more to love than boy meets girl." - Communards

colors: Solid Rainbow.

mood: Exasperated, yet hopeful.

chant/prayer/mantra: May there be world community one day, with an overflowing amount of love, where no love is denied. Amen.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Christianity, environment, equal rights, LGBT, renewable energy

Labels: art, Book of Romans, Capitalism, Christianity, equal rights, heaven on earth, oppression, paradigm shift, parousia, pax hominibus/bright shiny future, tarot

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...

...is acceptable to me.

Makes reference to
"There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male [a]and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." from Galatians 3:28. That and Romans 8:18-25 are about all the Paul I can take, however. Too toxic. Paul gets two points for two good pericope samples. Although this one kind of has a yonic invasive quality to it, it might be difficult to deal with for some folks who've been through certain Christian damage events, or who simply don't appreciate the violation of being hoovered into a giant wicker basket.

lyrics: Eddie Izzard, talking about the Stoics, on "Circle".

colors: blue, orange, and yellow, for an angel education picture i drew earlier today.

mood: metatronic, bionic, embryonic

chant/prayer/mantra: be. do. have (only a little). enjoy.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: anti-oppression, Book of Romans, classism, coursework, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, heaven on earth, Multitheticalism, parousia, racism, theological sources, Universalism, Women's Rights

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Just thought I'd note that. It's really astounding to see how the interpretation of those two clauses has evolved over the years, thereby setting precedents that we have to live with. (Actually we don't have to live with them into perpetuity, because of the "redress of grievances" clause, and the likely never-to-be-written "riot clause." And presently of course we do have to live with bad laws and bad interpretations* for now, since the executive branch is actively pursuing some laws as written and interpreted by the other branches.) It's equally astounding to consider the considerations and assumptions that the members of the supreme court turn to when laying down new precedents.

I understand that being human, its essentially impossible to be non-ideological, though the ideologies of the judges show through fairly clearly when one adds a critical eye to the bright light that gets shined on the procedures and decisions they make. By that, I mean that some start from the assumption that the founding fathers/parents of this country meant to honor freedom of conscience above all else, by creating this document. And others go so far as to start from the assumption that they meant only that the nation could not establish and endorse a religion, and that people were free to go to any religious house they choose.

Further, at this stage, a small and growing group of the justices on the supreme court believe that the laws of this country come first, rather than the freedom of conscience. If the courts are not protecting our freedom of conscience from the tyranny of the majority and from the tyranny of corrupt laws, then who??? The supreme court is a (if not THE) primary vehicle in which the nation's laws can be tried and found to be in error. Here, specifically, I am referring to the Employment Division vs. Smith case, but really, to the whole process. When a judgment is handed down that says, in effect, "Since what this religion is practicing is against the law, and the law was not written specifically to single out out that religion, that religious practice is still against the law. YET for these ideological people (who also happen to have ascended to the very seat of human justice in the US), there is no reason to assume that the government should have to prove why the law is required, or that there is no less constraining legislation that could more justly address the grievance.

In that case, the justices throw true liberty out the window, and are interested in a continuation of laws, putting written legislation and past interpretations above the inherent freedom of decision and action afforded to individuals. After all, as we join together out of a lawless "natural state" of cavepeople into social contracts where we recognize that the government has as one of its major roles that of determining the boundaries of freedom between rights of people against each other, and against the powers ceded to government in exchange for freedom from others' freedoms to. But when government goes bad, it forgets that its powers come from the people, and begins to define the freedoms with greater allowances to some parties than others, in effect breaking the contract with people whose views differ from the majority, thus violating their right to be free to express themselves as they please, as long as they are not imposing unduly on the freedom of expression of others. And yes, there is a line that must be determined there, and determining the line between the freedoms of two different entities is the purpose of courtly jurisprudence, but I would warrant with every fiber of my being that neither the lines being drawn by the the legislation, nor those practiced by the executive branch, nor those interpreted by the judicial branch -- none of those lines are drawn justly, with individuals' rights in the fore of consideration.

That's my thinking.

lyrics: "Clean up your shit, man, before I change my mind." -Beth Wood

colors: white and yellow

mood: studying hard, should be writing the above in a paper

chant/prayer/mantra: focus. focus. focus.


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

*just to clarify, while i am certainly critical of the government (as every true patriot should assiduously be), i think that for one to be critical and always partisan against the government is foolish. to me, being critical means to critique and examine something with open eyes, through as diverse a sequence of lenses as one can produce. then to discern the flavor of the thing (or to judge it, if you will).

the government is not all bad. there are good people within, there are bad people within, and there are people who exhibit both good and bad actions. the policies and laws are not all bad or good, nor are there interpretations. and those deciding how to carry out the laws are not all bad or good, but of course "teh george" does seem to be attempting to set a record for the former...

that's why having freedom for honest and open conversation/dialog/trialog/quadralog in our country/world is so important, and why i'm a media reform advocate. the minute a law or interpretation gets written, it starts to decay. if we can critically talk about it, our democracy survives and thrives. those who would hinder that are NOT interested in democracy. EOM.

Labels: coursework, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, media, oppression, our mission, personal religion, politics, theology

Original post from phone follows, blocked and quoted:

Blog on mag n her nose in th mastif-g.shep's b-hole. Yankd her away. Stil not fully pomo. Same w/ xtians n homos.

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So, today, I was walking Maggie and we came upon a woman with a ~125 pound mastiff/german shepherd dog. They did the usual sniffing around, and then she decided to go in for the glory. I watched in horror as I had a full view of this other dog's large butthole, and my dog's nose going straight for it, not to simply sniff it from a millimeter or two away -- but she actually had her nose right up against it for an instant and would've stayed longer had I not yanked her away.

My reaction was entirely reflexive, a directive from some logic burned deep into my primal mind (where the deep frames of reference lie, and where 'intuition' comes from) that says noses do not touch buttholes. Buttholes are often dirty, especially big nasty mastiff/german shepherd buttholes. But not to Maggie. That was EXACTLY what she wanted to do and I wouldn't, couldn't, let her do it. I had her on a leash, and I pulled her away from her bliss. It was not very post-modern of me. If I really don't want that, she really doesn't want that. And if I can control/influence/coerce, I will.

As soon as I recognized what had happened to me, I realized where the SNAFU between Christians and homosexuals comes from. Somewhere deep within the Christian intuition/framework-of-thought, buttsex, woman-on-woman cunnilingus, and man-on-man blowjobs, and by extension anything having to do with homosexuals is understood to be reflexively wrong. And I realize that I will never be OK with Maggie sticking her nose into a dirty dog sphincter.

There are big differences here, however. First, I am close to my dog. I care about my dog. If this were a couple of dogs that I didn't know, I would chuckle, and in my mind, give them kudos for following their nature. But my dog sleeps in our bed. She licks my face -- which she won't be doing that for a while now, until her nose gets clean. Actually I see her licking her nose right now after eating a pizza crust.

Anyway, she's our dog and I care about her well-being, and she enjoys sleeping with us. If she wants to do that, then I'm drawing the line as to where she can put her nose. Being in community as we are, and knowing a bit more about the dangers of the world (traffic, vicious dogs, chasing cats and falling into a hole, etc), I keep her on a leash. In effect, the leash helps with community. I'd rather not have her on a leash. To me, organized religion is like a leash, binding us together -- to some set of principles, a person, a code, or a creed.

If you're part of a community, interacting with other people, there are certain things you can't do, or you will impinge on others' freedom or well-being. If there were a person with tuberculosis and you were to visit them and get the disease, then go back to the community, that would be a Bad Thing. If, however, it were a person with a non-communicable disease such as cancer, visiting them and then going back to the community wouldn't be a problem.

I'll get to the point in a minute.

Imagine there are people who have different sexual practices in your community (whether seen in the context of your family, your town, your country, or your world). And of course, pretty much everybody does have different variations in sexual practices and technique, right? So what if people of the same gender want to touch one another in ways that you don't? How is that different than a man and woman who touch each other in ways that you don't?

If its people who I don't know and I hear about whatever they're doing, I'm going to react however I am going to react, depending on the deed they do. I may feel revulsion, I may chuckle, or perhaps envy or inspiration. But unless there is something about what they're doing that causes real danger or cost to the community (e.g. - spreading communicable diseases), I have no right trying to control their behavior. Especially if they're not in my religious community, and don't share my values.

The post-modern aspect is that people who are not me like some things that I don't like. And they are welcome to pursue those things with absolute freedom as long as it doesn't impinge on my freedom. If it does impinge on some of my freedom, we need to negotiate a middle ground.

Take marriage, for example. Say two people of the same gender want to be free to get married and have a monogamous relationship, with all the social and fiscal benefits that entails. That impinges on straight peoples' freedom to have exclusive rights to marriage and monogamy, and all of the benefits. It also impinges on the beliefs of people who believe that marriage is a gift from God to heterosexuals, by extending or redefining it.

To see it from the other perspective, say a group of people wants to be free to create legislation that disallows marriage and monogamy for those who find their life partner to be the same gender. This impinges on the freedom of homosexual couples to have a covenant before God, friends, and family, and formally establish that they choose to be monogamous. Legislation of that nature impinges on the freedom of homosexual couples to share in the benefits afforded to those who are married. Legislation of that nature impinges on my freedom to have gay and lesbian friends who are married into monogamous relationships.

As a divine representative, I certainly don't sign on with legislation like this, and I look on what is happening here, and wonder if this isn't just the same old excuse by some people thinking how they're different from another group of people, and wanting to find a way to exercise their freedom of oppression against those they think to be "other". So what happens here? In a 'freedom versus freedom' model of this, the oppressors are transgressing/trespassing against those who they claim are transgressing/trespassing* against them. Its simply a case of might makes right, which is very uncivilized. That's why Zoroaster came. That's why Moses came. That's why Jesus came. That's why Mohammad came. That's why there have been a mountain of prophets, to try to get humanity to be civil to one another and to appreciate Life in all its glory.

*here I'm thinking in terms of "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" from the Lord's Prayer....

I have homework to do tonight. I've got to stop sending little "reminder" text msg notes to my blog for later follow-up.

Lyrics: "I dreamed I would fall like a wounded cannonball." - Brandi Carlile

pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: Christianity, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, Maggie