“One ought to know that it is not easy for a man to acquire a fixed judgement, unless he should day by day state and hear the same principles, and at the same time apply them to his life.”

--Epictetus
Fragment 16 [Oldfather Trans.]

"The Jewish tradition teaches that within every person, even the worst criminal, there exists a nekudah tovah, a point of pure goodness. The Jewish obligation is to work to uncover that point of goodness, in ourselves and in others, so that it can transform us through the process of teshuvah, the radical idea that we can change, that we can always be better than we are. The concept of teshuvah holds the promise that even the most wicked cannot be defined solely by their worst acts. The divine spark always contains within it the potential for change."

Daniel Sokatch

“It is sufficient if you set before yourself the example of wise and good men, whether alive or dead, and compare your conduct with theirs.”

Discourses 2.18.21 [Higginson Trans.]

Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'

by DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 9, 2005, 07:53

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

...

"Initial estimates for the George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University are around 100 million dollars. Seems like a lot of money for a shelf."
- Will Durst

“From this day forward, whenever we do anything wrong, we will ascribe it to the judgement which lead us to the act; and we will endeavor to remove and extirpate that, with greater care than we would remove abscesses and tumors from the body. In like manner, we will ascribe what we do right to the same cause; and we will accuse neither servant, nor neighbor, nor wife, nor children, as the cause of any evil to us--persuaded that if we had not made certain judgements, we should not carry them to such consequences. The control of these judgements lies in us, and not in any outward things. Of these judgements we ourselves, and not things outward, are the masters.”

Discourses 1.11.35-37 [Higginson Trans.]

"I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free, than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty."
- Woodrow Wilson

MotherJones.com / News / Feature

Original Intent
Revisionist rhetoric notwithstanding, the founders left God out of the Constitution–and it wasn't an oversight.
Susan Jacoby
November/December 2005 Issue

...
For the 21st-century apostles of religious correctness, the godless Constitution—how could those framers have forgotten the most important three-letter word in the dictionary?—poses a formidable problem requiring the creation of tortuous historical fictions that include both subtle prevarication and bald-faced lies...

The marvel of America's founders, even though nearly all of the new nation's citizens were not only Christian but Protestant, was that they possessed the foresight to avoid establishing a Christian or religious government and instead chose to create the first secular government in the world. That the new Constitution failed to acknowledge God's power and instead ceded governmental authority to "We the People…in order to form a more perfect Union" was a break not only with historically distant European precedents but with recent American precedents, most notably the 1781 Articles of Confederation, which did pay homage to "the Great Governor of the World," and the Declaration of Independence, with its majestic statement that "all men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." It is worth noting here that the Declaration was a bold and impassioned proclamation of liberty, while the Constitution was a blueprint for a real government, with all the caution about practical consequences (such as divisive squabbles about the precise nature of divine authority over earthly affairs) required of any blueprint.

Eighteenth-century theological conservatives lost the battle over the Constitution, and the pill remains equally bitter to their spiritual descendants. Every time I write an article mentioning the constitutional omission of God, I receive hundreds of identical emails calling me a liar (sometimes a godless liar), because the document is unmistakably dated "in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven." That the religious right should fall back on a once-common manner of dating important papers—as unrevealing of religious intent as the use of B.C. and A.D.—demonstrates just how seriously it takes the enterprise of controlling the past in order to control the future.

...
Confronted with the Constitution's silence on divine authority, revisionists repeatedly fall back on the specious argument that since everyone took God's omnipotence for granted in the 18th century, there was no need for the framers to make a special point of mentioning the deity. If that were true, there would have been no bitter debates in the states about the nonreligious language of the Constitution. Moreover, this line of reasoning is self-contradictory, coming as it does from a political/religious lobby that backs the appointment of "originalist" judges—those who insist that the Constitution can only mean exactly what it said at the time it was written. It is ludicrous to suggest that men as precise in their use of words as Adams and Madison would, perhaps in their haste to get home to their wives, have simply forgotten to mention God.

Equally ludicrous is the notion that there was no tension between religion and secularism before federal courts, in the 20th century, began to apply the guarantees of the Bill of Rights to states. The balancing act between secularism and religion, as old as the republic, originated as a creative tension—in contrast to the destructive power struggle that has developed in recent years. For several decades after the Revolution, many Americans saw no conflict between devout personal religious views and secular views of governmental responsibilities...

More of this excellent article at
http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/12/original_intent.html

"Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism."
- Hubert Humphrey

"You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American."
- Woodrow Wilson

Quotes

"[My openly gay Sunday school teacher] made it very clear that you have a special gift, and as long as you lead your life with dignity, and are a human being of your word, and you have good character, the world cannot deny you."

-- Kenneth Reeves, on his own wonderful coming out experience as a teen. Reeves, a City Council Member and former Mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1992-1995, was the first openly gay African-American man to head a major U.S. city. More at: http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2002/brotheroutsider/reeves.html

"Gay people are the sweetest, kindest, most artistic, warmest and most thoughtful people in the world. And since the beginning of time all they've ever been is kicked ..."

-- Openly gay singer, Little Richard

"Equality is more than tolerance, compassion, understanding, acceptance, benevolence, for these still come from a place of implied superiority: favors granted to those less fortunate. These attitudes suggest that there is still something wrong, something not quite right that must be overlooked or seen beyond."

-- Openly lesbian author, Suzanne Pharr

"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."

-- Jane Addams, social worker & feminist ... she lived long before anyone defined themselves as "lesbian," but she "shared her life for 40 years" with Mary Rozet Smith

"Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt, ambassador, first lady, human rights activist ... who had two loves in her life, her husband, Franklin, and her partner, Lorena

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

-- Bishop Desmond Tutu

"We can love what we are, without hating what -- and who -- we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings."

-- Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize

"Don't pray in my school, and I won't think in your church."

"The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"I would advise them to look for that other guy Osama (bin Laden)...rather than comedians. I don't think we pose much of a threat."

- Scott Dikkers, editor-in-chief of The Onion, in response to a White House request that the satirical newspaper stop using the presidential seal.

"Hopelessness translates into inaction; it translates into surrender to what is feared to be the inevitable. We must all be thinking about what can be done to assure a human future on our planet."
--Walter Cronkite

"We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves."

James Joyce, ULYSSES

"The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others."
- Adolf Hitler

Some Quotes

" When you're told by a medical person or researcher 'This is what you are', that smacks of colonialism. But if you are from a community and you say, 'This is what I want you to call me,' that's what empowerment is all about. "

- Dr. Terry Tafoya

"I have noticed that as soon as you have soldiers the story is called history. Before their arrival it is called myth, folktale, legend, fairy tale, oral poetry, ethnography. After the soldiers arrive, it is called history."

- Paula Gunn Allen

"After all, Lewis and Clark's story has never been just the triumphant tale of two white men, no matter what the white historians might need to believe. Sacagawea was not the primary hero of this story either, no matter what the Native American historians and I might want to believe. The story of Lewis and Clark is also the story of the approximately 45 nameless and faceless first- and second-generation European Americans who joined the journey, then left or completed it, often without monetary or historical compensation. Considering the time and place, I imagine those 45 were illiterate, low-skilled laborers subject to managerial whims and 19th century downsizing. And it is most certainly the story of the black slave York, who also cast votes during this allegedly democratic adventure. It's even the story of Seaman, the domesticated Newfoundland dog who must have been a welcome and friendly presence and who survived the risk of becoming supper during one lean time or another. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was exactly the kind of multicultural, trigenerational, bigendered, animal-friendly, government-supported, partly French-Canadian project that should rightly be celebrated by liberals and castigated by conservatives."

-- Sherman Alexie, in an Time magazine essay entitled "What Sacagewea Means to Me"

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

-- Armistead Maupin

"Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown."

- Claude Bernard

Their agenda is not just anti-gay and anti-marriage, it's anti-choice, anti-civil rights, anti-separation of church and state, and in fact antediluvian."

-- Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, arguing that religious conservatives' opposition to civil marriage for gays and lesbians is part of their broader agenda.

"Anamchara (ahn-im-KAR-uh) is a Gaelic word that means "soul friend." A soul friend is a person who provides others with coaching, support and guidance as they progress along the path toward fulfilling their spiritual and mystical potential.

"Originally, the ancient Druids functioned as soul friends to the pagan Celtic chieftains; later on, the Christian saints took over this spiritual role, providing direction and guidance to anyone who wished to grow spiritually. Today, anyone can have (or be) a soul friend. A person does not need to be of Celtic ancestry to benefit from having or being an anamchara.

"In its simplest form, a soul friend is anyone who provides spiritual support to another, no matter how humble or "ordinary." In a more formal way, an anamchara is a mentor or a coach -- a person who shares his or her knowledge or expertise with others, usually in a structured way. Such an anamchara may provide his or her services as part of a religious community (such as a Christian minister or a Wiccan priestess) or may work independently (such as a spiritual coach or professional psychic)."

"Having to squeeze the last drop of utility out of the land has the same desperate finality as having to chop up the furniture to keep warm."
- Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 1949

"If I believe in something, I'm willing to accept the flak, because some of us have got to sacrifice what may be popular for what is right. And it will soon be popular. But even if it isn't, it's still right."

Rev. Al Sharpton re combatting homophobia among African-Americans

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."

- Martin Luther King Jr., in his speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence"

More Quotes

"How could I have been anyone other than me?"
-- South African rock star, guitarist and vocalist Dave Matthews

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more
painful than the risk it took to blossom."
-- American author of Spanish, Cuban, French and Danish descent Anais Nin

"Don't you ever wish
You were someone else
You were meant to be
The way you are exactly

Don't you ever say
You don't like the way you are
When you learn to love yourself
You're better off by far

And I hope you always stay the same
Cause there's nothing 'bout you I would change"
-- Joey McIntyre, "Stay the Same" from the 1999 CD of the same name

"How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful
How could anyone ever tell you, you were less than whole
How could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle
How deeply you're connected to my soul."
-- Libby Roderick, "How Could Anyone (ever tell you, you were anything less
than beautiful?)" from the CD If You See a Dream

"...but here am I;
Once a caterpillar, now a butterfly."
-- Pet Shop Boys, "Metamorphosis"

"I don't think that [the issue of] sexuality and disability is controversial because of genitals. I don't even think it's controversial so much because of pregnancy. The major reason it's controversial is that it would force a massive reevaluation of who disabled people are."
-- Dave Hingsburger

"I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse. "
-- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

"From an early age, we're taught not only bigotry but also to feel helpless and hopeless when confronted with it, as if it is a force of nature--like gravity--that we cannot control. This is the lesson we must unlearn. We must break free of the mindset that tells us we have to accept injustice, intolerance, and bigotry..."
-- Kevin Jennings, from "Learning to Swim Upstream"

"The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it's much more exciting."
-- Andy Warhol

"Can I tell you guys something?" Joe says. "Will you promise not to laugh at me or say it's gross?"
"Promise," I say, and Skeezie goes, "Pinky swear," and smiles.
"You know what I want more than anything?"
I am guessing by the way he takes a deep breath that the answer to this is not to be found in any of Joe's usual wish-list categories, such as home decor or celebrities-I'd-most-like-to-be-stuck-on-a-desert-island-with.
"I think about this a lot, but I've never told anybody. Not Aunt Pam or anybody. What I want more than anything is to hold hands with somebody I like."
Joe pulls his knees up then, sharp, and crosses his arms over them, so he can lay down his head, like now that he's told us this terrible secret he doesn't want to see our faces telling him what we think.
"Does that gross you out?" he asks from inside his folded-up arms.
"No," I go, and so does Skeeze.
"If that's how you feel, then you should just go for it, man," says Skeezie, getting all serious. "I mean, you're a pretty outrageous character, JoDan. I never seen you exactly lacking for nerve."
Joe lifts his head. "Right. Can you see me walking down the hall holding hands with Colin the way Brittney holds hands with Will, or Sara with Justin? Not that I'm saying Colin would want to or anything, but it's not fair."
-- James Howe, The Misfits, pp. 121-2

Lives in the Balance

LIVES IN THE BALANCE
By Jackson Brown

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear

You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.
You hear one thing again and again
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend

But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone

There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the President the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars

I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die

And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
- Thomas Paine

"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell
Speaking on his 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council on prewar Iraq's alleged WMD programs
September 2005

"It has always been hoped that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand as constant reminders of why preventing the further use and proliferation of such weapons – and why nuclear disarmament leading to a nuclear weapon-free world – is of utmost importance for the survival of humankind and planet Earth…Let us renew today ... the promise to the peoples of the world to spare no effort to work collectively to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons.”

Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency
Remarks made in Vienna in commemoration of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
5 August 200

How, then, did we get here? How did the richest country on Earth end up watching children cry for food in putrid encampments on the evening news? How did reporters reach crowds of the desperate in places where police, troops and emergency responders had not yet been--three days after the storm?
-- Time magazine Sep 14 2005

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
-- Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA)

"His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday.' She drowned Friday night."
- Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, on Meet the Press

"If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"
- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

"Isn't it amazing, how rapidly the Bush White House can move on the news of William Rehnquist's death and elevating John Roberts to be the Chief Justice nominee and yet they find a way to move at a positively glacial pace to drop drinking water and save some lives in New Orleans?"
- Bob Geiger

"Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny."
- Barry Goldwater

The worst kind of disinformation, of course, is when you don't know you're being disinformed.

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."
- Rachel Carson

"Members of Congress need to look down at their What Would Jesus Do bracelets... Jesus would not cut food stamps."

-Rev. Douglas Smith, Executive Director of the Virginia Interfaith Center, at a rally outside the office of House Agriculture Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA-6) to call for the protection of the Food Stamp program and fairness in agricultural subsidies.

Every wave, regardless of how high and forceful it crests, must eventually collapse within itself.
Stefan Zweig

It would be foolhardy to count on the conscience of the world.
Stefan Zweig

Warning Labels on Gays--Really Sick Christians

"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes 1 to 2 years off the average life span, yet we “celebrate” a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average lifespan according to the 2005 issue of the refereed scientific journal Psychological Reports. Something is wrong with this picture."
--Rev. Bill Banuchi
Executive Director of the New York Christian Coalition
http://www.nychristiancoalition.org/PressRelease.html
scroll down to June 12, 2005

"In a nation of minorities, it is important that you don't cherry-pick rights. A right is a right."
Paul Martin

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
- Albert Einstein

But you cut deals with your partner in marriage; they give you longitude and you give them latitude. That way, if you’re lucky, you create a map together of a shared world you both can recognize and inhabit comfortably.
--Jonathan Carroll
p. 24-25 from “The Wooden Sea”

"I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe, I believe what I believe is right."
- George W. Bush

Schools

ON DEMOGRAPHICS:
"You may teach a class that is all male or all female. You may teach a class that is all white or all black or all Chicano. But you will probably never teach a class that is all straight."
-- Joseph A. Devito

ON ETHICS:
"We are the first country in the world to institute public education in order to give every kid a chance. As a teacher, I have a moral obligation to help every kid do well. I can't neglect certain kids simply because I don't like them."
-- Kevin Jennings, former classroom teacher and currently Executive Director of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)

"Every child's sense of himself is terrifyingly fragile. He is at the mercy of his elders, and when he finds himself totally at the mercy of his peers,who know as little about themselves as he, it is because his elders have abandoned him."
-- James Baldwin, Dark Days

ON TESTING:
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
-- Albert Einstein

LAWS & POLICIES DO MATTER:
"Taunts and anti-gay violence are driving students out of school and pushing vulnerable youth to terrible desperation. This bullying is not only dangerous - it is illegal when it is ignored by the school officials entrusted with the safety of all students."
-- Attorney Jon W. Davidson of Lambda Legal

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

POLICIES ALONE AREN'T ENOUGH:
"No uniform, no metal detector, no security guard, no dress code, can do what students can do to impact a school's climate to foster learning. All the policies and regulations can be in their rightful place(s), but to truly personalize a school we have to reach students before we can teach students."
-- Dave Maloney, assistant principal at Branford (CT) High School

Quotes

"Action is the antidote to despair."
-- Joan Baez

"I am visible--see this Indian face--yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They'd like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven't. We haven't."
-- Gloria Anzaldua

"When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation."
-- Cherrie Moraga

"It always makes me so angry when people assume that anyone who calls himself or herself a Chicano or a Chicana is automatically someone who doesn't like to read. . . . I knew how to read before I went to the first grade because of my grandmother. All of my cousins were under her tutelage. She taught us to read and to respect learning."
-- Arturo Islas

"This is an abuse of the legislative process ... If the law does not protect you it will not protect me."
-- U.S. Representative Charles A. Gonzales of Texas, regarding the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment that would have permanently restricted marriage rights to heterosexuals in the United States

"We were not taking any more of this shit. We had done so much for other movements. It was time."
-- Sylvia Rivera, on her participation in the Stonewall Riots, fighting back against police brutality that targeted gay, lesbian, bi, and trans people and inspiring the generations of civil rights activism that followed.

"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
-- artist, Andy Warhol

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them."
-- Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde

"If people knew how hard I have had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all."
-- Italian artist, Michelangelo

It is better to be hated for what one is than loved for what one is not.
-- author and Nobel Prize winner, Andre Gide

Abe's Advice

"Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe."
- Abraham Lincoln

Fundamentalism

"Fundamentalism is religious fascism, and Fascism is political fundamentalism."
- Martin Riesebrodt

Go Rossie

"This country has a respect for all of its citizens and allows them to all be equal under the law. It's very, very inspiring for those of us in the United States who have just been nationally shamed by a president who tried to introduce bigotry into the U.S. constitution. So, Canada, this is an amazing place."

-- Rosie O'Donnell speaking July 12 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Christian Paradox

"Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that 'God
helps those who help themselves.' That is, three out of four
Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the
core of our current individualist politics and culture, which
was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy
Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin's wisdom not
biblical; it's counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from
the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of
neighbor."

- Author Bill McKibben, in his Harper's magazine essay, "The
Christian Paradox"
entire article at http://go.sojo.net/ct/5pzNZZp1bzdh/

Quotes

"Most times, the only gay or lesbian face people know of is who they see in the pride parade. To judge us on that would be like judging heterosexuals after watching Mardi Gras."
-- Lesbian Civil Rights Activist, Candace Gingrich (who is European-American)

"...without equality there can be no democracy."
-- Human rights activist and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and first lady and lifelong romantic partner of Associated Press reporter Lorena Hickok) Eleanor Roosevelt

"I was writing and keeping a big log of daily harassment reports. Every day, I was going into the principal's office and writing down what happened--this person spit food on me, this person pushed a lunch cart into my side, this person pushed me into a locker, these people drew pictures of stick figures bending over and engaging in anal sex with each other. At least once a day, I was in the principal's office, writing a harassment report. And they did nothing about any of them. It gave the students permission to openly harass me, knowing that there wasn't going to be consequences for it. And each time, it got worse and worse and more intense."
-- Derek Henkle, who won nearly half a million dollars from his school district for failing to protect him from anti-gay abuse

"During that punk period, around 1979, wearing swastikas was very popular with punks. Because I was Jewish, it really disturbed me so I wrote this song 'Take Off Your Swastika,' and I performed it on acoustic guitar so the audience could hear the words. When I got heckled at some of the harder core shows, I would just throw it back at them. I've always really respected the audience. That young slam dancing crowd might be a wild crowd but it was very intelligent. So it was exciting. It was always thrilling for me to go out there alone."
-- Punk and folk artist, Phranc (who is Jewish, a lesbian, and a gender outlaw)

"The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden -- as an unpatriotic act -- that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood."
-- James Baldwin

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
- James Baldwin

"Every child's sense of himself is terrifyingly fragile. He is at the mercy of his elders, and when he finds himself totally at the mercy of his peers, who know as little about themselves as he, it is because his elders have abandoned him. I am talking, then, about morale, that sense of self with which the child must be invested. No child can do it alone. Children, I submit, cannot be fooled. They can only be betrayed by adults."
- James Baldwin, Dark Days

"Change your mind as often as possible. Just because you thought something yesterday doesn't mean you have to think it today. Don't ever become a prisoner of your own opinion."
-- author, actor Harvey Fierstein (who is Jewish, a gay man, and a gender outlaw)

"To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."
-- Leonard Bernstein

"Cultivate the positive and beautiful thing within yourself. It's individuality that's going to keep the world interesting,"
-- Me'Shell NdegéOcello

Eisenhower Repub

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

--President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954 (source: Eisenhower Presidential Papers, Document #1147; November 8, 1954 The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XV - The Presidency: The Middle Way Part VI: Crises Abroad, Party Problems at Home; September 1954 to December 1954,) Chapter 13: "A new phase of political experience"

Ben on Liberty

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
-Benjamin Franklin

What the Bleep

You really need to see the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know." Forget the negative reviews. Those folks just don't get it. The movie just might change your life for the better. Really!

www.whatthebleep.com

Nature and Preservation

"It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water-and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood."
-- Bernard DeVoto

How True

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis (1935)

RFK

"The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals of American society."
- Robert F. Kennedy

Need for More Than Small Acts

"Small acts of humanity amid the chaos of inhumanity provide
hope. But small acts are insufficient."

- Paul Rusesabagina, Rwandan and former hotel manager whose
actions inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda.

Emma on Patriotism

"Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superioirity upon all others."

--Emma Goldman

The Time Is Now

"The time is always right to do what is right" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Encroaching On Our Rights

"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations: but, on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism. If we go over the whole history of ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes. If we consider the peculiar situation of the United States, and what are the sources of that diversity of sentiment which pervades its inhabitants, we shall find great danger to fear, that the same causes may terminate here, in the same fatal effects, which they produced in those republics. This danger ought to be wisely guarded against."
- James Madison, 1788

RFK On What We Can Do

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events; and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
- Robert F. Kennedy

Some Folks Just Don't Want to Get It

"Do they want to see them hold hands in public and make out? We could get a lot of people together for a demonstration of homosexuality, if that's what it takes."

-- Joel Paramo, student editor of the East Bakersfield High School newspaper, responding to school authorities' refusal to allow the paper to publish stories about gay students because it couldn't prove the students were open about their sexual orientation.

Why do we need such a thing as LGBTIQ Pride Month?

In 1967, two years before the Stonewall Rebellion, Mike Wallace said this on 60 Minutes: "The dilemma of the homosexual: told by the medical profession he is sick; by the law that he's a criminal; shunned by employers, rejected by heterosexual society. Incapable of a fulfilling relationship with a woman, or for that matter, with a man. At the center of his life, he remains anonymous. A displaced person. An outsider."

In 1986 then-Cardinal Ratzinger (who is now Pope Benedict XVI) published a document titled "On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons." The letter referred to homosexual orientation as an "intrinsic moral evil." After the document was published, many bishops ruled that Dignity (a group of Catholics that works for respect and justice for all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons) could no longer use church facilities to meet.

It was still illegal in NY in 1991 to run a business that catered to homosexuals, just as it had been in 1969 at the time of the Stonewall Rebellion. I don't know if the law's still on the books today.

In 2005, after his arrest for, among other violence, allegedly bombing a nightclub with mostly lesbian patrons, Eric Rudolph said, "Any conscientious individual afflicted with homosexuality should acknowledge that a healthy society requires a model of sexual behavior to be held up and maintained without assault. Like other humans suffering from various disabilities, homosexuals should not attempt to infect the rest of society with their particular illness."

As of May 18, 2005, on their web site, White Aryan Resistance (which has games on its web site entitled "Shoot the fags before they rape you" and "Don't let those spics cross our border," as well as cartoons divided into sections called "Niggers, Gooks, Beaners, ZOG..." ) says, "...Homosexuals must be encouraged to separate their lifestyles from the community at large. Homosexuality must not be taught as a positive lifestyle ... The best that Aryan heterosexual society can do is to limit their collective influence and keep the closet door shut..."

As of May 18, 2005, Peter Sprigg is quoted on the Family Research Council web site, saying, "[An] element of the homosexual agenda is to get "sexual orientation" added to the categories of protection under anti-discrimination codes in private organizations and under civil rights laws in the public sector. In fact, homosexuals should and already do have all of the same rights under the law as any other citizen, such as the right to vote, the right of free speech, and the right to trial by jury. Those rights are truly "civil" or political in nature, and the exercise of them does nothing to infringe on anyone else's freedom. However, adding "sexual orientation" to civil rights laws governing private employment and housing does infringe on the rights of others--namely, the normal right of employers and landlords to make economic decisions based on their own best judgment. Governments normally interfere with such economic freedom only when the alleged "discrimination" is based on characteristics that are inborn, involuntary, immutable, and innocuous, such as race." [NOTE from Beth Reis, co-chair, SAFE SCHOOLS COALITION: Apparently Mr. Sprigg doesn't realize that most non-discrimination laws also prohibit firing someone for her religious beliefs ... which are neither inborn, involuntary, immutable nor, obviously, innocuous.]

As of May 18, 2005, Richard G. Howe is quoted on the American Family Association web site, saying, "Homosexuality is being forced upon us through legislation, taught to our children in school and promoted in the powerful arts/entertainment complex. If it is true that homosexuality has the destructive effects on the individual and society that many believe, then it behooves us to know our enemy and forestall any further advance of homosexuality by understanding what it is, what the homosexual community is up to, and how to answer their arguments in the open marketplace of ideas."
[NOTE from Beth Reis, co-chair, SAFE SCHOOLS COALITION: Mr. Howe doesn't realize, I think just how few teachers feel that they'd be supported by their administrations if they even spoke up in response to anti-gay bullying, no less taught in affirming ways about the LGBT rights movement or even two-mama families. The ranks of brave teachers have grown in the 17 years since the Safe Schools Coalition came into being, but they are still a small minority in most parts of the United States.]

The Safe Schools Coalition is a public-private partnership of 80+ organizations (government agencies, schools, community agencies, churches, youth/student groups, gay/lesbian groups, human rights groups) and 400+ individuals working to help schools become safe places where every family can belong, where every educator can teach, and where every child can learn, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

Safe Schools' website: http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org

Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

Review
http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/05/har05005.html

"Some people think that FDR invented the progressive income tax when
he raised income tax rates on the super-rich to 90 percent. Some
believe that LBJ invented anti-poverty programs when he more than
cut in half severe poverty in the US by introducing Medicare,
housing assistance, and food-stamp programs in the 1960s. Some
believe that Jack Kennedy was the first president to seriously
talk about international disarmament, a conversation that Richard
Nixon carried on in pushing through and getting ratified the
anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty so recently discarded byGeorge
Bush Jr. Some believe that Teddy Roosevelt - the Republican Roosevelt -
was the first to seriously discuss the "living wage," or ways that
corporate "maximum wage" wink-and-nod agreements could be broken up.
Some believe the inheritance tax to prevent family empires from taking
over our nation was the idea of Woodrow Wilson, or that FDR was the
first to think up old-age pensions as part of a social safety net
known today as Social Security.

"But it was actually Thomas Paine who first developed all these themes
in their modern political context. He did so in his book "The Rights of Man.""

George Ex-Gay?

"Lee, in George Bush's GayGate, writes -- "Why is Bush so hostile to the idea of gay marriage? Perhaps because until 1987, George W. Bush was gay.

"According to a group of 29 Yale classmates who comprise Gay Ivy Leaguers for Truth, Bush was 'known to be at least sexually experimental throughout his time in college.'

"One of Bush's alleged former boyfriends, Anthony Berusca (Class of '70), told The Dallas Morning News that Bush was 'deeply conflicted about being gay, even somewhat self-hating.'

"Berusca is convinced that this conflict led to Bush's drinking problems, but describes the President as a 'gentle, caring lover.'

"In 1986, the Bush family arranged for George to join Worthy Creations, a church group in El Paso that focuses on converting homosexuals through faith.

"A year later, Bush claimed to be straight, born again, and engaged to Laura Welch (Kitty Kelly in "The Family" wrote that Bush's twin daughters were not his offspring, but from a donor at a fertility clinic)."

10 stories you haven't read

The United Nations Department of Public Information has selected
10 stories from around the world that, though out of the
international spotlight, are in need of serious coverage:

1. Somalia: Steps on a path to fragile peace in a shattered
country

2. Tragic blind spot in health care for women

3. Northern Uganda: A humanitarian crisis that demands sustained
focus

4. Sierra Leone: Building on a hard-won peace

5. Actors for change: The growth of human rights institutions

6. Cameroon: Farming in the dark

7. Island after the hurricane: Grenada struggles to recover from
devastation

8. Behind closed doors: Violence against women

9. A viable alternative: Curbing illicit drugs through
development

10. Environment and health: New insights into spread of
infectious diseases

http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/

Losing your religion

The experience of losing your faith, or of having lost it, is an
experience that in the long run belongs to faith; or at least it
can belong to faith if faith is still valuable to you, and it
must be or you would not have written me about this. I don?t
know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the
20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this
experience that you are having right now of unbelief. "Lord, I
believe; help my unbelief" is the most natural and most human
and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the
foundation prayer of faith.

- Flannery O'Connor

GeorgeJr and Darfur

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality."

John F. Kennedy

Maybe for Bush also since he has not said anything about the genocide occurring in Darfur, Sudan for over 113 days. That's almost four months of silence on a genocide that may eclipse Rwanda. What's with this country's highest leader?

Faith

"We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of their country."
- Margaret Mead

A Maxim

"The ultimate maxim of human life would then be to live as if a universe will be created in your image."

Robert Nozick

Evil

"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false."
- Bertrand Russell

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Cheap Grace

Let the Christian rest content with his worldliness and with this renunciation of any higher standard than the world. He is living for the sake of the world rather than for the sake of grace. Let him be comforted and rest assured in his possession of this grace - for grace alone does everything. Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace!

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sins departs.

Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must the asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.

Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Bonhoeffer

"I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I tried to read his "Cost of Discipleship." I wasn't grown up enough to wrap myself around this text. Last night we watched the 2003 documentary about him. It's time to give him another try, especially now that I am working myself around the ability of my country to allow genocide to happen--Rwanda and Darfur.

Thank God for Molly

"It's a joke that the Right wing claims it is against 'judicial
activists.' What they want are judicial activists who agree with
them."

- Molly Ivins, syndicated columnist

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21873

A brilliant and lucid look at the whole "activist" judges scam.

Right to Lifers

"The right-to-lifers believe that the right to life begins with conception and ends at birth."
- Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA)

Christians

"What these self-avowed Christians do not acknowledge -- and what the American public seems little aware of -- is that the war they are waging is actually against other people calling themselves Christians. To simplify: Right-wing and fundamentalist Christians are really at war with left-wing and mainstream Christians. It is a battle over both the meaning and practice of Christianity as well as over the definition and destiny of the republic. Secular humanism is a bogeyman, a smoke screen obscuring the right-wing Christians' struggle for supremacy...

"The present war within the Christian fold is perhaps more threatening to the republic than any of the previous intramural disputes. Right-wing religious zealots, working in partnership with the secularists who have advised President Bush, are a threat to the most fundamental of American principles. The founders of our nation welcomed and planned for spirited debate over public policies, including the role of the judiciary. But as sons of the Enlightenment, they looked to found a republic in which the outcome of those debates would turn on reason and evidence, not on disputed religious dogma. They planned wisely for principles that are now under wide assault.

"All Americans, of whatever religious or non-religious persuasion, need to be on the alert to preserve those principles. The burden falls especially heavily on the mainstream Christians who are slowly awakening to the gravity of the challenge facing them. Too long tolerant of their brethren, too much given to forgiveness rather than to confrontation, they need to mount a spirited, nationwide response to what constitutes a dangerous distortion of Christian truths and a frightening threat to the republic they love."


from ". . . Smearing Christian Judges" by Paul Gaston
The Washington Post
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
A10687-2005Apr22.html

Madison's the Man

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
- James Madison

Kierkegaard: 'A bunch of scheming swindlers'

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to
understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers.
We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very
well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act
accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget
everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God,
you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein
lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian
scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend
itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be
good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it
is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even
dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

- Soren Kierkegaard

Focus on the Family

"I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party...

"From my point of view, they are the Antichrist of the world."
- Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO)

AMEN!

"Personal Responsibility, Republican Style" by Will Durst

"Personal Responsibility, Republican Style" by Will Durst


"Welcome back to 'Meet the Press.' In this segment we welcome as our guest the distinguished Representative from the third District of Wyoming. Congressman, as you know, the DC Police have announced today that the House Majority Leader has been found naked in a bathtub next to a dead prostitute, hugging a bloody axe, the suspected murder weapon, to his chest, with the words 'Yes, I did it. Me.' written with the victim's blood on the bathroom mirror in the Congressman's own handwriting. We've just heard a senior member of the Minority delegation voice his argument as to why the leader deserves to have at least one -- if not both -- of his hands slapped. Do you, sir, agree with this punishment which would involve the admonishment of a member of your own party?"

"Thank you, Tim. With all due respect to my good friend of long standing and esteemed associate from across the aisle, I condemn this character assassination of our revered leader, so obviously a scurrilous partisan attack, solely meant to distract we, the party of ideas, from accomplishing the tasks the good and hard working people of America sent us here to Washington to achieve. I will tell you who the true victim is here, and its not this alleged 'prostitute.' It's America, Tim. And America's crying because it is abundantly clear this is simply an assault by the radical left wing press as part of their fundamental agenda to tear down the leader's leadership in which he excels by leading...

"How do we know the leader wasn't trying to warm the woman with his body heat after her ill-fated attempt at suicide?...And I guarantee that the marching orders for this bogus partisan witch hunt can be traced directly to the desk of Hillary Clinton..."

Resistance Futile My ...

"There is no evidence that the Ratzinger family felt inclined to help the town's few remaining Jews, or the smattering of anti-Nazi resistance fighters who dared to oppose the regime.

"Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau concentration camp for being a conscientious objector, recalled: "It was possible to resist and those people set an example for others." She added: "The Ratzingers were young and made different choices.""

excerpt from "Pope Benedict: His role in the Nazi years"
By Tony Paterson in Traunstein
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=631615

why do i keep going on about the pope? i'm not even catholic, although i love the pomp and ceremony of a mass. it just bothers me that a world leader bashes anyone or thing that doesn't fit his narrow view of the world. and if anyone questions his past and motivations, he just says, "well i did what i did because they made me." excuses with no responsibility. just like most conservatives i know. pass the buck the devil made me do it. that's bs! anyone with integrity owns their mistakes, takes responsibily for them, and moves on with no excuses. the pope ain't.

Pope Benedict XVI's questionable qualifications

"Will this "simple and humble worker" be able to heal a sharply divided church? In a time when the world's religious and political leaders ought to be concentrating on extending human and civil rights to those that have been historically denied, and should be rectifying the wrongs perpetrated upon the poor and the oppressed, Cardinal Ratzinger appears to represent the old guard. Will this ultraconservative Pope unite Catholics and bring them into a more enlightened twenty-first century, or will his actions attempt to return the church's 1.1 billion-members to the 16th century?"

excerpt from "Pope Benedict XVI's questionable qualifications" by Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange
http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=18929

Pope on Sexually Abusing Children

"I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offences among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower... One comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church," - Pope Benedict XVI, 2002.

Pope Ratzinger Still Bad

May 1984: Ratzinger orders the imprimatur lifted from Sexual Morality by Fr. Philip S. Keane, published in 1977 by Paulist Press. Keane argues that homosexual conduct cannot be understood as "absolutely immoral."

1985: As head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger upbraided Seattle's archbishop for his liberal views on women, gays and doctrinal issues. In his 1985 report, Ratzinger disciplined Hunthausen for the archdiocese's ministries to gays and lesbians, including hosting services at St. Joseph's for Dignity Seattle. That's the state chapter of a national organization of gay Catholics. In one of the Vatican's most widely publicized reports, Ratzinger warned Hunthausen against politicizing the issue of women in the church, misuse of married ex-priests, marrying divorced people and giving them communion rights, giving communion in ecumenical settings, and granting general absolution of sins to large groups.

October 1986: Ratzinger publishes a document titled "On The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons." The letter warns of "deceitful propaganda" from pro-homosexual groups. It instructs bishops not to accept groups that "seek to undermine the teaching of the church, which are ambiguous about it, or which neglect it entirely." The letter refers to homosexual orientation as an "intrinsic moral evil."

January 1987: After prolonged debate, The Catholic University of America fires Fr. Charles Curran, a moral theologian known for his dissent from official church teaching on sexual ethics. On homosexuality, Curran has written: "Homosexual acts in the context of a loving relationship that strives for permanency can in a certain sense be objectively morally acceptable."

1987: He claims that Jewish history and scripture reach fulfilment only in Christ — a position denounced by critics as “theological anti-semitism”.

December 1988: Dominican Fr. Matthew Fox is silenced by Ratzinger, citing his failure to condemn homosexuality, among a host of other issues. Fox is expelled from the Dominican order in 1992.

July 1992: Ratzinger sends a letter to the U.S. bishops supporting legal discrimination against homosexuals in certain areas: adoption rights, the hiring of gays as teachers or coaches, and the prohibition of gays in the military. In such situations, Ratzinger writes, "it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account."

July 1998: The Committee on Marriage and Family of the U.S. bishops' conference re-issues its letter to parents of homosexuals, "Always Our Children," after making several changes demanded by Ratzinger. They include referring to homosexuality as a "deep-seated" rather than "fundamental" dimension of personality; suggesting that homosexual acts by adolescents may not indicate a homosexual orientation; adding a footnote describing homosexuality as "objectively disordered"; and deleting a passage that encourages use of terms such as homosexual, gay and lesbian from the pulpit in order to "give people permission" to discuss homosexuality.

2000: He signs a document, Dominus Jesus, in which he argued: “Only in the Catholic church is there eternal salvation”. This brands other Christian churches as deficient -- shocking Anglicans, Lutherans and other Protestants in ecumenical dialogue with Rome for years.

Ratzinger also told priests to deny communion to anyone who voted for Kerry in the 2004 elections. And he tried to cover-up the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy.

What a legacy so far.

NOTE: Info cut and pasted from various sources.

PFLAG Concerned Over Election of Cardinal Ratzinger as New Pope; Families Urged to Confront Bigotry from Religious Leaders

4/19/2005 2:43:00 PM

To: National Desk

Contact: Taylor Thompson of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, 202-467-8180 ext. 213 or tthompson@pflag.org

WASHINGTON, April 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following statement was released today by Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) on the Election of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pope:

Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays expressed concern today over the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope. For gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) Catholics and their families, this choice does not present a hopeful vision of the future or inspire optimism for affirming language, policies or outreach.

Ratzinger authored a Vatican document condemning marriage and adoption by gay men and lesbians in July 2003. Described as a "battle plan for Catholic politicians" by the Washington Blade, the document urges the Church to reject gay and lesbian families on the basis of "basic values."

PFLAG's executive director Jody Huckaby, a gay former Catholic, wonders whose values Ratzinger is really defending. "Religious leaders like Ratzinger cannot dictate to us what our family values must be, particularly when their idea of family values excludes all GLBT people and loved ones," said Huckaby. "Our PFLAG families have values of love, respect and compassion -- perhaps the most distinguishing thing about those values is that they don't exclude anyone."

Additionally, Huckaby urges GLBT people and their families to confront bigotry in the Catholic church and other faith traditions. "We cannot shy away from explaining how discrimination in organized religions can tear families apart. The fight for GLBT equality must include our willingness to challenge our religious leaders."

There is much to celebrate in the Catholic church's advocacy for the marginalized and maligned people of the world -- the poor, the politically oppressed and those in war-torn countries. Ironically, however, the Church refuses to recognize the injustices it inflicts on its own families each time leaders like Cardinal Ratzinger vilify GLBT people. We hope that, as PFLAG families reach out to leaders of their faith, members of the clergy will realize the need for responsible religious rhetoric and the strength that comes from embracing all families.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

-0-

/© 2005 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

God's Politics

The place to begin to understand the politics of God is with the prophets, the ancient moral articulators in the Scriptures who claimed to speak in “the name of the Lord.” What were there subjects? Quite secular topics really - land, labor, capital, wages, debt, taxes, equity, fairness, courts, prisons, immigrants, other races and peoples, economic divisions, social justice, war, and peace-the stuff of politics…And whom were the prophets usually speaking for? Most often, the dispossessed, widows and orphans (read: poor single moms), the hungry, the homeless, the helpless, the least, last and lost.

-Jim Wallis from his New York Times Bestseller, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get it.

Pope Ratzinger Bad

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force On the Election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope

"Today, the princes of the Roman Catholic Church elected as Pope a man whose record has been one of unrelenting, venomous hatred for gay people, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. In fact, during the reign of John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger was the driving force behind a long string of pronouncements using the term 'evil' to describe gay people, homosexuality, and marriage equality. As a long-time Catholic from a staunchly Catholic family, I know that the history of the church is full of shameful, centuries-long chapters involving vilification, persecution, and violence against others. Someday, the church will apologize to gay people as it has to others it has oppressed in the past. I very much doubt that this day will come during this Pope's reign. In fact, it seems inevitable that this Pope will cause even more pain and give his successors even more for which to seek atonement."

- Matt Foreman
Executive Director

The Pope Good for Peace

At least there is some good coming out of Italy.

"The ascension of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI is good news for the peace camp: he will carry on the legacy of John Paul II, whose stance against the invasion of Iraq enraged the War Party -- and inspired millions with the hope that God had not abandoned the world to the Devil. The new Pope, as head of the Congregation of the Faith, openly disdained the Bush Doctrine when it was invoked by the U.S. government as a rationale for war: "The "concept of a 'preventive war,'" he noted, "does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church." You bet it doesn't, and if I were the White House I would be expecting much more along these lines. Even as the War Party was reveling in its purported triumph, the Cardinal averred that "it was right to resist the war and its threats of destruction," declaring: "It should never be the responsibility of just one nation to make decisions for the world."

"The Holy Father got that right. Even in the choice of his name, the portents are good. Pope Benedict XV was pope during World War I. He remained neutral and 'in 1917 delivered the Plea for Peace, which demanded a cessation of hostilities, a reduction of armaments, a guaranteed freedom of the seas, and international arbitration.'"

excerpt from "Benedict XVI: A Champion of Peace" by Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2013

Quotes

"We convince by our presence."
-- Walt Whitman

"The Supreme Court has held that students have a First Amendment right to free speech at school unless that speech disrupts the educational process. But for the censorship to be legal, the speech itself must be genuinely disruptive -- it can't just be censored because someone finds it offensive, or it generates discussion or the administration is worried that it might cause controversy."
-- Jeff Gamso, legal director of the ACLU in Ohio, which sent a legal warning letter to a school that banned the wearing of T-shirts that express support for gay rights.

"Do something, anything, every day to change the world. It doesn't have to be big, it could be giving a dime to a street person, planting a flower, picking up litter. Anything will change the world."
-- out gay actor and author, Harvey Fierstein (Mulan, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Sissy Duckling, Torchsong Trilogy)

"I make the films I do because I can't let the bad guys get away with it ... There are forces in this world and they have their agenda to take over, to dictate how everybody should live, and dictate what the rules are going to be ... That is why I did [The Public Families Project] - fighting society."
-- Chinese-American out gay filmmaker, Arthur Dong (Stories from the War on Homosexuality, Family Fundamentals, Licensed to Kill)

"No more lies, no more pain, no more acting, just living in our truth. We want our children to know that their fathers are proud and comfortable with whom they are. Also as they grow older, we hope society will be a more tolerant place, accepting all differences in people."
-- retired NFL player and openly gay dad, Esera Tuaolo

"Being nurturing is not a biological trait assigned to only [one] gender."
-- Lance Chen-Hayes who is gay and Chinese-American and who, with his partner, Stuart Chen-Hayes, is raising their son

The True Meaning of a Fundamentalist Christian

From "The True Meaning of a Fundamentalist Christian" by Byron Williams - byronspeaks.com

"It is impossible to be a fundamentalist Christian and not apply a strict adherence to the belief of "love your neighbor as yourself," a concept Jesus placed as a high priority. In short, a fundamentalist Christian must be a fundamentalist to love.

"A genuine definition of Christian fundamentalism would demand that love, justice, hope and opportunity be central to its understanding.

"In addition to King, Mother Teresa and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are authentic examples of a Christian fundamentalist. In fact, Gandhi's embodiment of the teachings of Jesus, as a practicing Hindu, remains far superior to the claims of orthodoxy by the vast majority of 21st century Christians.

"The challenge is to wrest the title "fundamentalist Christianity" away from those who have narrowly defined it as a tool that works in tandem with the state for its own purposes of greed, domination and a limited interpretation of morality.

"The way to accomplish this is to be living examples of a strict adherence to love, justice, hope and opportunity, thereby authentically being fundamentalist Christians in word and deed.

"Moreover, such fundamentalism is possible universally, even if one is not Christian."

http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=18905

Corruption

"No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Negroponte Bad

"I am not prepared to describe in detail exactly how I plan to
carry out the job."

- John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee to become
director of national intelligence, responding to questions from
the Senate intelligence committee. Negroponte honed his
professional discretion while ambassador to Honduras, where,
reports The Washington Post:
http://go.sojo.net/ct/D7zNZZp1uX3g/, his anti-communist
convictions led him to play down human rights abuses.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Excerpt from "Onward Christian Soldiers...Toward a Theocratic Judiciary" by Mel Seesholtz
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/041205Seesholtz/
041205seesholtz.html

"For those who think beyond the Bible and who have not become willing slaves to the politicized, perverted version of "Christianity" espoused by the likes of Sheldon and Dobson and their political agents, it's clear America is headed in the wrong direction. Centuries of progress are being systematically dismantled as so-called "religious" leaders and the politicians inhabiting their deep pockets lead America backwards into the new theocracy. In her April 7 column, in The New York Times, Maureen Dowd noted that even the Rev. John Danforth—former Republican senator, U.N. ambassador, and the Episcopal minister with prayed with Clarence Thomas during Anita Hillﾒs testimony—has come to the conclusion that the Republican Party "has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement."

"The tragedy of a Florida woman well illustrated just how much the Republican Party has become "the political extension of a religious movement."

"On March 31, Terri Schiavo died. The Christian Right and their political sycophants shamelessly exploited the families' personal conflicts and tragedies for their own political purposes and fund-raising efforts. The Rev. Sheldon even bragged about it: "In acknowledging the galvanizing, check-writing effect of her case, the Traditional Values Coalition's founder, Rev. Lou Sheldon, told The [New York] Times, 'That is what I see as the blessing that dear Terri's life is offering to the conservative Christian movement in America.'"

"Exploitive, crass fund-raising aside, perhaps Bishop John Shelby Spong asked the most poignant question: "Why is it, I wonder, that those identified as secular humanists, who express grave doubts about the reality of life after death, seem almost universally to favor allowing Terri Schiavo to die in peace; while those identified as members of religious communities, who claim to believe firmly in life after death, seem so eager to keep bodies alive long after meaningful life has departed?"

"Isn't it time to repair and rebuild that "wall" between church and state Jefferson knew was essential? He and more than a few of the other Founding Fathers—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Samuel Adams to name but a few—were Deists. Then as now, Deists accept the notion of "a Creator" and respect Jesus as a teacher, but do not believe in the second-hand, politically-motivated "revealed word" attributed to Moses and Old Testament prophets, or the dogma of New Testament authorities such as Peter, Paul and John. In the eighteenth century, Deists were particularly skeptical of the allegedly "God given" dogma created and propagated by politically motivated church leaders. The Founding Fathers were astute students of history and had learned the lesson Europe's seventeenth century religious-civil wars taught. In a very real sense, the American republic was conceived as a prophylactic against the marriage of Church and State. And for good reason . . ."

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."—President George H. W. Bush [!!!!!!!!!!??????????]

GOP and the Courts

"Apparently, it's not enough for Republicans to rule the White House and the Congress. They want power over the independent judiciary, too. The checks and balances so vital to our democracy are for them merely an inconvenience."
Senator Edward Kennedy

Bill Maher's New Rule on Abstinence

"BILL MAHER: And finally, New Rule: Abstinence pledges make you horny. In a setback for the morals/values crowd, a new eight-year study just released reveals that American teenagers who take virginity pledges wind up with just as many STD's as the other kids. But that's not all. "Taking the pledge" also makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex, and four times more likely to allow anal. Which leads me to an important question: where were these pledges when I was in high school?

"So, seriously, when I was a teenager, the only kids having anal intercourse, were the ones who missed. My idea of lubrication was oiling my bike chain. If I had known I could have been getting porn-star sex the same year I took Algebra 2 - simply by joining up with the Christian right - I'd have been so down with Jesus, they would have had to pry me out of the pew.

"And, let me tell you, there is a lot worse things than teenagers having sex. Namely, teenagers not having sex. Here is something you'll never hear: "That suicide bomber blew himself up because he was having too much sex. Sex, sex, sex, nonstop, all that crazy Arab ever had was sex, and look what happened." But among the puritans here of the 21st century, the less said to kids about sex, the better. Because people who talk about peepees are "potty-mouths."

"And so, armed with limited knowledge and believing that regular, vaginal intercourse to be either immaculate or filthy dirty - these kids did with their pledge what everybody does with contracts. They found loopholes. Two of them, to be exact.

"Is there any greater irony than the fact that the Christian right actually got their precious little adolescent daughters to say to their freshly-scrubbed boyfriends, "Please, I want to remain pure for my wedding night, so only in the ass... And then I'll blow you, I promise." Well, at least these kids are really thinking outside the box."

http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/20050401.html

Focus On Your Own Damn Family!

It's Human Rights

"It is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the
era of civil rights to the era of human rights. When you deal
with human rights you are not dealing with something clearly
defined in the Constitution. They are rights that are clearly
defined by the mandates of a humanitarian concern."

- Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated April 4, 1968.

A Senator and A Terrorist

The Nashua Advocate Calls for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to Resign Immediately From the U.S. Senate, Following Remarks Excusing Terrorism Against Judges

By ADVOCATE STAFF

An Excerpt with the Rest at http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/04/nashua-advocate-calls-for-sen-john.html

"In a statement on the floor of the United States Senate, Cornyn--incredibly, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee--has blamed the judicial branch of the United States government, specifically the United States Supreme Court, for the recent spate of terroristic acts on American soil which left a judge dead in Georgia and a judge's family dead in Illinois; Cornyn also intimated that the judicial branch of the federal government has become "dangerous."

"[The statement was made as part of the Republicans' ongoing effort to break with 216 years of parliamentary tradition in the United States Senate and abolish the "filibuster"--primarily as a means to push through Congress radical Rightist judges; presumably, the sort of judges who, in Cornyn's home State of Texas, found no ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the case of a defense attorney sleeping through a capital murder trial].

"Here is the relevant portion of Cornyn's dangerous, poisonous, and virulently inciteful remarks:

"[I]t causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions. And no one, including those judges, including the judges on the United States Supreme Court, should be surprised if one of us stands up and objects.

"And, Mr. President, I'm going to make clear that I object to some of the decision-making process that is occurring at the United States Supreme Court today and now. I believe that insofar as the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policy-maker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people, it has led to the increasing divisiveness and bitterness of our confirmation fights. That is a very current problem that this body faces today. It has generated a lack of respect for judges generally. I mean, why should people respect a judge for making a policy decision borne out of an ideological conviction any more than they would respect or deny themselves the opportunity to disagree if that decision were made by an elected representative?

"Of course the difference is that they can throw the rascal out--and we are sometimes perceived as the rascal--if they don't like the decisions that we make. But they can't vote against a judge because judges aren't elected. They serve for a lifetime on the federal bench. And, indeed, I believe this increasing politicalization of the judicial decision-making process at the highest levels of our judiciary have bred a lack of respect for some of the people that wear the robe. And that is a national tragedy.

"And finally, I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news. And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence. Certainly without any justification but a concern that I have that I wanted to share.

"You know, it's ironic, if you look back, as we all have, being students of history in this body, all of us have been elected to other bodies and other offices and we're all familiar with the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution itself, we're familiar with the federalist papers that were written in an effort to get the Constitution ratified in New York state. Well, Alexander Hamilton, apropos of what I want to talk about here, authored a series of essays in the Federalist Papers that opined that the judicial branch would be what he called the, quote, "least dangerous branch of government." The "least dangerous branch." He pointed out that the judiciary lacked the power of the executive branch, the White House, for example, and the federal government and the political passions of the legislature. In other words, the Congress. Its sole purpose--that is, the federal judiciary's sole purpose was to objectively interpret and apply the laws of the land...

"Had Cornyn actually read the U.S. Constitution anytime recently, his decrying of lifetime appointments for federal judges would have rung somewhat hollow, given that these appointments are explicitly prescribed by the Constitution itself: "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour..." [U.S. Const., Art. III, sect. 1].

"For a sitting Senator to use locked-and-loaded phrases like "it has led," "it has generated," "it has bred," "some connection," and "cause-and-effect" to characterize the relationship between the constitutionally-guaranteed maxim of judicial independence and the assassination of federal judges is an abhorrence, an abomination, and an outrage of unprecedented proportion--even in the well-documented, sorry history of conservatives' open contempt for judicial independence and the rule of law (e.g., non-compliance with anti-segregation edicts in southern states; violence against abortion clinics; school-sponsored prayer in violation of standing court orders; and so on).

"Cornyn's comment is one of the few you will ever hear from a national politician which sounds significantly worse in context--a context which includes not only a dead judge in Georgia and a judges' family massacred execution-style in Illinois, but also a thinly-veiled and possibly criminal threat against the federal bench from a member of Congress and a recently-uncovered murder plot in the Terri Schiavo case directed against (no surprise, given the Cornyn-backed, G.O.P. incitement on this point) the state and federal judges on the case.

"If a man refuses to uphold the text of the United States Constitution, and indeed allows for the presence of violence against one co-equal branch of government as a sort of explicable response to constitutionally-guaranteed judicial independence, that man is no Senator."

Don't Hold Yer Breath

Thomas Jefferson said, 'If you are angry, count to 10 before you talk. If you are
very angry, count to 100.' I can't listen to Jefferson because I'd be counting to 1
million."

-- Dick Francis, a father whose son is gay, testifying before a Texas House
committee considering an amendment to the state constitution that would ban marriage
for gays and lesbians.

Lautenberg Spanks DeLay

April 1, 2005

Tom DeLay
Majority Leader
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Majority Leader DeLay,

I was stunned to read the threatening comments you made yesterday against Federal judges and our nation’s courts of law in general. In reference to certain Federal judges, you stated: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”

As you are surely aware, the family of Federal Judge Joan H. Lefkow of Illinois was recently murdered in their home. And at the state level, Judge Rowland W. Barnes and others in his courtroom were gunned down in Georgia.

Our nation’s judges must be concerned for their safety and security when they are asked to make difficult decisions every day. That’s why comments like those you made are not only irresponsible, but downright dangerous. To make matters worse, is it appropriate to make threats directed at specific Federal and state judges?

You should be aware that your comments yesterday may violate a Federal criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. §115 (a)(1)(B). That law states:

“Whoever threatens to assault…. or murder, a United States judge… with intent to retaliate against such… judge…. on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished [by up to six years in prison]”

Threats against specific Federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a Member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well.

Federal judges, as well as state and local judges in our nation, are honorable public servants who make difficult decisions every day. You owe them – and all Americans – an apology for your reckless statements.

Sincerely,

Frank R. Lautenberg

Kennedy re Delay

What did Tom DeLay mean Thursday when he said that "the time will come for the men responsible" for the death of Terri Schiavo "to answer for" their actions? He wouldn't explain at a press conference held in Texas on Thursday (3-31-05).

But after a judge was killed in Atlanta and a judge's family was murdered in Chicago, Senator Ted Kennedy rightly labeled DeLay's comments "irresponsible and reprehensible." Senator Kennedy went on to say, "I'm not sure what Mr. DeLay meant when he said 'the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.' But at a time when emotions are running high, Mr. DeLay needs to make clear that he is not advocating violence against anyone. People in this case have already had their lives threatened. It is time for mourning and healing, not for more inflammatory rhetoric, and responsible national leaders should understand that and stop this exploitation."

What is DeLay thinking? Does he support vigilantism against those who don't think or believe like he does? Are only he and those of his ilk safe from attack and all others placed in open season? What is going on in my country?

The Culture of Each Life

Excerpts from
"The Culture of Each Life: There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love is to force them to live." by Anna Quindlen

"Arguments about Terri's case centered on something described as a "culture of life." It is an empty suit of a phrase, absent an individual to give it shape. There is no culture of life. There is the culture of your life, and the culture of mine. There is what each of us considers bearable, and what we will not bear. There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays...

"There are many ways in which this case has been divvied up in public. Spouse vs. parents. Liberals vs. conservatives. Secular vs. religious. But it is truly about that thing that defines free human beings: the right to self-determination instead of a one-size-fits-all approach in private matters, in those issues that take place in bedrooms and kitchens and hospices. It's a primal demand for a personal sense of control in the face of intrusive government, intrusive medicine and intrusive strangers who think holding a crucifix like a blunt instrument makes them righteous when it really only makes them sanctimonious...

"Once the feeding tube was removed, polls showed that the majority of Americans believed Terri Schiavo should be allowed to die. That's probably because they've been there. They are the true judges and lawmakers and priests. They've been at the bedside, watching someone they love in agony as cancer nipped at the spine, as the chest rose and fell with the cruel mimicry of the respirator, as the music of personality dwindled to a single note and then fell silent. They know life when they see it, and they know it when it is gone."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7305204/site/newsweek/

Brenda RIP

I only knew Brenda for a few years. I wish I'd known her longer. She attended the local UCC church we are visiting. My daughter thought that she was great--Brenda helped out in Children's Church. I thought she was one of the bravest and most courageous people I have ever known.

My sister is the first truly courageous person I've known--not just rolling with the punches life gives out, but rising above the water. She fought and won a very serious case of colon cancer. Pretty brave stuff.

Brenda was the next brave person I've met. She was transitioning from being a male to being what she felt herself to be--a female. Not a cross-dresser as some called her. She was a female 24/7. I will really miss her. She fought a whole bunch of things, social stigma, and a lot of terrible stuff any poor soul in her situation has to endure to just be themself.

So here's to you Brenda. I'll never forget you. Neither will my daughter, who you blessed with the love and kindness you gave freely to everyone. You and my sister have given my daughter great role models. You show that women can be brave, courageous, and kick butt just like the boys. That's a precious gift in this time of renewed misogny.
________________________

Feb. 26, 1958 — March 15, 2005
Thomas RobertBROCKISH of Longmont, formerly of Boulder, died Tuesday, March 15, 2005, at his home. He was 47.

He was born Feb. 26, 1958, in Denver to Robert F. and Carol M. (Scott) Brockish. He was raised in Brigham City, Utah, and the Boulder area and graduated from Fairview High School in 1977. He moved to Longmont in 1980.

He married Linda Conlin in 1982 in Longmont. They divorced in 1984.

Mr. Brockish had worked for nearly 25 years at King Soopers. He later worked as a caregiver at Cinnamon Park in Longmont, and until his death at the Mary Sandoe House in Boulder.

He was a member of Guardian Angels Catholic Church in Mead and had been involved in the Knights of Columbus and the Legion of Mary. He also attended First Congregational United Church of Christ in Longmont.

Mr. Brockish was also known as “Brenda” by some in the community. He will be remembered for his thoughtfulness, love and compassion for his family, the elderly and the disadvantaged. He volunteered for The Center for People With Disabilities. He greatly enjoyed following local sports teams.

He is survived by his parents of Lafayette; two brothers, Tim and his wife Wendy of Idaho and Ted and his wife Julie of Saudi Arabia; five sisters, Mary Dravis-Parrish and her husband Steve Parrish of Fort Collins, Margie Padron and her husband Balt of California, Madeline Brockish of Lafayette, Milissa Brockish of California and Amy Kenney and her husband Jeff of Lafayette; seven nephews; four nieces; and a host of friends.

Mr. Brockish was preceded in death by his grandparents; and by a nephew, Ben Dravis.

Cremation arrangements have been handled by Howe Mortuary of Longmont. Mass of the Resurrection will be held at 10 a.m. Monday, March 21, at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, 323 Collyer St., with the Rev. Robert Whipkey as celebrant and will be preceded by a rosary at 9 a.m.

Memorial contributions may be made to Imagine! Foundation, Attn: Susan LaHoda, 1400 Dixon Ave., Lafayette 80026-2790.