Monthly Archives: June 2008

Lesbian Rights Pioneers to be Legally Joined at Last

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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to officiate at the private ceremony in his City Hall office before 50 invited guests. He picked Martin, 87, and Lyon, 84, for the front of the line in recognition of their long relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement.

Along with six other women, they founded a San Francisco social club for lesbians in 1955 called the Daughters of Bilitis. Under their leadership, it evolved into the nation’s first lesbian advocacy organization. They have the FBI files to prove it. …
Lesbian couple of 55 years ready to say ‘I do’ – Yahoo! News

More Big Issues Go To Supremes

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The dispute over gun rights poses several important questions. Although the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the court has never definitively said what it means to have a right to keep and bear arms. The justices also could indicate whether, even with a strong statement in support of gun rights, Washington’s handgun ban and other gun control laws can be upheld.

Officials at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said recently that they expect Washington’s 32-year-old handgun ban to fall but believe that background checks, limits on large-volume gun sales and prohibitions on certain categories of weapons can survive.

In addition to the guns case, the justices are still weighing whether Exxon Mobil Corp. has to pay a $2.5 billion punitive damages judgment over the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989 and whether people convicted of raping children may be executed.

Gun rights is biggest issue for court to decide – Yahoo! News

What do Christianity and Buddhism have in common?

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All Christians believe in Jesus. But just what that belief means and what its consequences are vary widely, so widely that Christians have gone to war against other Christians who believed differently.

Buddhism traces itself back about 2,600 years to Shakyamuni Buddha. But whether Buddha was a man or a divine being, someone to emulate or someone to pray to (or all or none of the above) is something Buddhists are far from unanimous about.

So the first thing Christianity and Buddhism have in common is that Christians disagree about Christianity and Buddhists disagree about Buddhism.
LJWorld.com / Faith Forum: What do Christianity and Buddhism have in common?

How Buddhists Understand Evil

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Evil in Buddhism — How Buddhists Understand Evil
by Barbara O’Brien

Evil is a word many people use without thinking deeply about what it signifies. I’d like to compare common ideas about evil with Buddhist teachings on evil, if for no other reason than to facilitate deeper thinking about evil.

Loving Day — June 12

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Loving Day commemorates the US Supreme Court decision on 12 June, 1967, that overturned Virginia’s miscegenation law and, in the process, made interracial marriages legal in all the states and territories. Poetically, the couple who brought suit in Loving v. Virginia were Mildred and Richard Loving.

It is interesting to note that 41 years and one day ago, mixed racial marriages were illegal in 16 states. Today Senator Barack Obama, not only the son of a mixed marriage but also of a native African, is one step away from the Presidency.

Isn’t it wonderful that we have finally reached a point where loving relationships among consenting adults are no longer used to drive wedges between people?

Not.

We’ve come a long way, baby, but…

Hollywood’s Decency Epidemic

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Alas, even as the floodtides of rectitude threaten to give us all a cleansing soak, the Culture War’s most dogged mercenaries grow increasingly desperate to sound notes of alarm. The Parents Television Council is so eager to characterize your flat-screen as the portal to Satan’s eternal multiplex that it actually characterizes the plastic surgeries on the MTV show I Want a New Face as “violent incidents.” It also employs eagle-eyed lip-readers to decipher and categorize the bleeped-out utterances of reality TV contestants. In 180 hours of family-hour programming the group recently assessed, there were 30 bleeped “fuck”s, one bleeped “bitch,” one bleeped “asshole,” and an especially troubling 54 “unknown” bleeps. …
Reason Magazine – Hollywood’s Decency Epidemic

Aren’t these the folks who think it’s ok for big people to hit little people, and that it’s OK to keep information from teenagers that might prevent unwanted pregnancy and undeserved disease, and that…

Mormons to mark 30 years of blacks in priesthood

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Latter-day Saints will mark the 30th anniversary Sunday with an evening celebration of words and music in the Salt Lake City Tabernacle.

Heralded as a revelation from God to church President Spencer W. Kimball, the four-paragraph statement gave blacks full membership in the church for the first time after nearly 130 years.

Some say it was the most significant change in church policy since Mormons abandoned polygamy in 1890 to gain statehood for Utah.

Unlike other religions, the Mormon priesthood is not a set of trained clerics. It is a lay status granted to virtually every Mormon male at age 12, allowing them to bestow blessings and hold certain church callings.

Until 1978, black men could attend priesthood meetings but could not pass sacraments or give blessings, even on their own families. They could not enter Mormon temples for sacred ceremonies, including marriage.

“It left you on the outside,” said Darius A. Gray, who is black and joined the church as a young man in 1964. … Mormons to mark 30 years of blacks in priesthood – 06/07/2008 – MiamiHerald.com

The Karmapa of Tibet builds in Earleton, FL — sort of…

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David Bole is the lama, or priest, in residence at the Gainesville Buddhist Center at Northwest 10th Avenue, off of 13th Street. Like minded people join him there for study and meditation, and the group has weekly meetings on Sunday.

Last year, the Buddhist center bought a piece of property that sits on the shores of Lake Santa Fe, near Earleton. The group hopes to raise as much as $2- to $3 million to build a retreat and sanctuary for meditation in its rural, Lake Region spot. …

Karmapa: “If you build it, I will come.”

Bradford County Telegraph

Monks Succeed in Cyclone Relief as Junta Falters

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KUN WAN, Myanmar — They paddle for hours on the stormy river, or carry their sick parents on their backs through the mud and rain, traveling for miles to reach the one source of help they can rely on: Buddhist monks.

At a makeshift clinic in this village near Bogale, an Irrawaddy Delta town 75 miles southwest of Yangon, hundreds of villagers left destitute by Cyclone Nargis arrive each day seeking the assistance they have not received from the government or international aid workers.

Since the cyclone, the Burmese have been growing even closer to the monks while their alienation from the junta grows. This development bodes ill for the government, which brutally cracked down on thousands of monks who took to the streets last September appealing to the ruling generals to improve conditions for the people. … MORE

California High Court Says Same-sex Marriages Can Proceed

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The California Supreme Court today rejected a bid to freeze last month’s ruling legalizing gay marriage, paving the way for same-sex couples to begin walking down the aisle as soon as June 17.

Moving swiftly to remove legal uncertainty, the court turned away a request from gay marriage foes to stay the ruling until after the November election, when voters will consider a ballot measure that would change the state Constitution to again outlaw same-sex weddings. … Court clears way – San Jose Mercury News