Friday, March 4, 2016
Freedom of Speech Must Include Freedom to Offend
The Intelligence2 debates are subject to taste. Not all are worth one's time and the wear and tear on one's sciatic nerve. This one speaks to my condition.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Texas Farts Back! Yes this is a pun and I committed it.
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Details of the struggle are HERE:
- Kurt Vonnegut
Details of the struggle are HERE:
Getting Real Jiggy in Texas
I'm from Texas, and one of the reasons I like Texas is because there's no one in control. - Willie Nelson
By August 1 of next year, if you are a frugal college student attending a state school like the University of Texas, everybody is allowed to conceal carry a gun into your classroom and on campus.
They are posting signs and making slide shows to counsel the Faculty.
The Faculty is beside themselves and many are threatening to quit or strike. Daniel Hamermesh has already quit.
They are posting signs and making slide shows to counsel the Faculty.
The Faculty is beside themselves and many are threatening to quit or strike. Daniel Hamermesh has already quit.
“Will I be the first of many?” Daniel Hamermesh told the Guardian. “No.
The reason I won’t be the first of many is for me it’s a pretty low-cost item. I’m 72, I have a very large pension and I have lots of alternatives. I’m fairly successful and economics is a good business. So it’s sort of cheap heroism. I’m a cheap hero. On the other hand it will cost the university and other universities in the state.
Because while people who are here are to some extent stuck, those who are thinking of coming here have alternatives. So I think the real thing is, it’s going to cost us either more money to recruit people or we’re just not going to get as good-quality people recruited to the faculty here; that’s where I think it’s going.”
If you are a rich kid and can go to private college, Baylor University for example, guns are/can be forbidden. All the private Texas schools have yet to make a decision to allow guns on campus and in classrooms. Most have opted for gun free campus. The state schools do not get a choice.
Nobody really knows for sure what the LAW means in its entirety. Everybody has to figure it out before August 1 of next year. Meanwhile...
Nobody really knows for sure what the LAW means in its entirety. Everybody has to figure it out before August 1 of next year. Meanwhile...
A bill that allows children of all ages to handle guns passed Iowa’s house of representatives on Tuesday.
Approved by a 62-36 vote, the bill permits children under the age of 14 to have “a pistol, revolver or the ammunition” while under parental supervision. The bill will now head to the state senate.
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Sickening Kiddyraper Disses the Girl Scouts
St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson is urging priests to disassociate from the Girl Scouts because the organization promotes values "incompatible" with Catholic teachings. The Roman Catholic Church is concerned about the "formation of children." Read his letter HERE.
I loved Girl Scouts. I got a badge in basketmaking. I went on field trips and did Art. We did the play Cinderella and I was an ugly Stepsister.
I was always afraid in church and afraid of the Nuns and Priests. Now, I ask you, if you want to send your girl to some kind of creative weekend activity, who are you going to call?
Now, watch the same Archbishop Carlson testify he did not know kiddyraping was a crime.
"In the clip above from a recent videotaped deposition, released today, Robert Carlson, the Roman Catholic archbishop of St. Louis, claims that he didn’t always know it was a crime for adults, including priests, to have sex with children. He testifies that he’s not sure when he learned that it was illegal. He testifies that he’s not even sure he knew as far back as the 1970s that sex with children was illegal.
If this testimony is accurate, Archbishop Carlson is a moral idiot who lacked the sense to run a Boy Scout troop, much less a Catholic parish or diocese. But there is good news for the archbishop: documents released yesterday indicate that he may simply be a butt-covering coward perjurer":
Read more...
Friday, February 19, 2016
God bless Australia and Tim Minchin. I know S/He does.
Favianna Rodriguez |
One day the Roman Catholic Church may repent and reform and tell the truth about all the kiddyfucking. When they do, it will be in part because of the intelligent ridicule of Tim Minchin and the courage of the child sexual abuse survivors.
Comedian Tim Minchin has taken aim at Cardinal George Pell in a provocative song in which he calls Australia's highest-ranking cleric in the Catholic Church scum, a coward and a pompous buffoon.
The musical attack aired on Network Ten's The Project on Tuesday night and immediately attracted a swell of support from viewers and social media users, despite outrage from The Project co-host Steve Price. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/come-home-tim-minchins-lament-to-cardinal-pell-packs-a-punch-and-a-few-abuses-20160216-gmvvy9.html#ixzz40cT3ENxA Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook
If you go to the Sydney Herald and read the whole article, you will find a place to send a contribution so that the Survivors can go to Rome and spit in Cardinal Pell's face, unfortunately only figuratively speaking.
Chief KiddyFucker Cardinal George Pell can "Sue me. Sue me. What can you do me? I hate you." Does not matter if you kiddyfucked, George Pell. You covered for the kiddyfucking priests. Jesus is waiting for your chubby ass, Georgie. "And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." - Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Westerfield and Bevin plan to rape every woman in Kentucky who wants an abortion.
Molon Labe |
Derek Selznick, the Reproductive Freedom Project director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, has been a vocal critic of the wave of anti-choice bills in the state’s legislature. He told the Courier-Journal that this bill “is not informed consent.”
“This is about politicians trying to bully, shame and humiliate women who have already made their personal and often heart-wrenching decision to end their pregnancy,” Selznick said.My friend Sydney suggests:
Then women will make copies of the ultrasounds, send them off to Westerfield and all authors of such bills, attached with the following FBI's definition of rape:
“The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
Republicans have made me a one issue voter - women's reproductive autonomy. I will vote for anyone with DEM after their name. Republicans have the rape and breeder slavery of women in their party platform.
Do not fuck with women, you might lose your tiny balls. Mrs. Bevin and Mrs. Westerfield, if you actually exist, you might want to review Lysistrata.
LYSISTRATA
There are a lot of things about us women
That sadden me, considering how men
See us as rascals.
CALONICEThe links in the names Westerfield and Bevin will take you where you can comment on the motherfucking (literally) rapists about how much they love and care for women.
As indeed we are.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Asshats on Parade - Does Prayer Work? Answer: Yes It Does.
Kali Durge Namo Namah |
I am old. I have been in favor of Gay civil rights since I was 16. I had a serious conversation with the first Gay person I ever met. Some folks have children they love dearly who are Gay. I have family and friends who are Gay.
I pray daily for Fat Tony Scalia's heart attack. I pray in Jesus name like the Nuns taught me. I pray fervently. But the Mofo does not die.
I can't figure out why prayer is not working. Maybe I am praying to the wrong deity? Maybe Kali is the answer? I will try most anything legal. Up your giggy, Fat Tony. Sideways. And no KY for you.
I warned you in the masthead that I was a trashmouth. The picture of Kali at the right comes from this interesting website.
New Yorker Magazine: A few months from now, when the Supreme Court hears arguments in the two same-sex marriage cases it accepted for review last Friday, many observers will likely be in Hosie’s position—listening with some amazement to Scalia as he berates lawyers, fascinated by his animosity, wondering about the point where a cruel note removes any enjoyment one might find in intellectual theatrics. There haven’t exactly been signs that Scalia is mellowing. His dissent, this year, in an Arizona immigration-law case, was as politicized and angry as ever—and gay-rights cases do not exactly bring out his soft side. For the health-care case, we had broccoli arguments; for same-sex marriage, we will likely be coming back to bestiality.
Click Me! |
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Sitting at Home in the Polar Vortex
I will be back to complain and disclaim as soon as I get some coffee. We are out of coffee. Bad planning.
Bill Maher fires up on the air. Why does he always grin like a 2 year old found whizzing in the geraniums. I did good, Mom, right? Yes dear.
Monday, February 1, 2016
Signs of the Month - February 2016 - Standoff in Oregon
If I did not know this was a standoff between townspeople and militia, I would think I was at the Memorial Day Parade in Hopewell NJ in 1956 outside my Uncle Joe's tavern. This sign is funny. The horse and rider so beautifully rural and American. The flags.
But if you scroll through the linked material, you can see the Locals are serious as a heart attack. Serious. They brought coffee and snacks.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Republican Men Are Sexpigs
During the last presidential election cycle, Republicans spent a lot of time telling me they plan to force birth of the 35,000 rape pregnancies that occur each year. Essentially, their position is that if I get pregnant, it was not really rape. I consented in some way.
I am a rape and sexual abuse survivor. I had PTSD almost the entire year.
I am a rape and sexual abuse survivor. I had PTSD almost the entire year.
I cannot tell you how embarrassed I am before the world. I spent a whole year listening to Republicans tell me that rape is not a good enough excuse to have an abortion. I did not think there would be a new low.
- Radio Host Frequented By Gun Activists Calls For Shooting of Bush Family & Obama, Sexual Violence Against Hillary Clinton
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/radio-host-frequented-gun-activists-calls-shooting-bush-family-obama-sexual-violence-against#sthash.0KwsAsjO.dpuf
- Grand Rapids, Michigan (CNN)
Donald Trump attacked Hillary Clinton in vulgar terms Monday night, saying that her bathroom break during the last Democratic debate was just too "disgusting" to talk about and then stating she "got schlonged" by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.
- Trump attacks Megyn Kelly:
Trump’s fury was sparked by Kelly’s opening question, asking if calling women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals” is behavior befitting a president.
- Donald Trump’s rally in New Hampshire was interrupted today by a squealing sound.
Trump asked, “Was that a dog?” A supporter in the audience shouted, “It’s Hillary!” Trump threw his head back in laughter, “Uh oh! It’s Hillary? Ha, ha, only in New Hampshire! First it was screechy dog and then it was a very serious dog, right?” Watch below at the 30-minute mark.
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Pain pain go away.
I have found an intelligent woman doctor whose office I can walk to when I am better. And although the robot machines were there, operated by smiling helpers, Doctor does actual examination of her patient. Very efficient.
She finally took care of my chief complaint = unending pain. I do not hurt while I type now. Maybe I can get some writing done. I have enough pain meds to keep me from continuing pain. Constant pain saps all energy. All I feel is very tired. I have not slept well in days. Now I will sleep.
Ms. Tucker, please write on these pages please, how you truly are. And peanut cat? Confess. I am sending good wishes to all the wounded. Thank you for sharing with me.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Happy New Year!
Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole,
n'aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe' ll'aria fresca pare già na festa...
Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole.
What a beautiful thing is a sunny day!
The air is serene after a storm,
The air is so fresh that it already feels like a celebration.\
What a beautiful thing is a sunny day!
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Mourning, Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth. I have got to cut it out.
I am/was going to write about Ted Cruz calling for carpet bombing. Something...
But every time I type carpet bombing, tears roll down my cheeks.
It is the concussion not worked out yet. I just cry like a fool.
“The corpses, most of them in ordinary cellars, were so numerous and represented such a health hazard that they were cremated on huge funeral pyres, or by flamethrowers whose nozzles were thrust into the cellars, without being counted or identified,” Vonnegut wrote in “Fates Worse Than Death.
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
But every time I type carpet bombing, tears roll down my cheeks.
It is the concussion not worked out yet. I just cry like a fool.
This is what the Lord says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15It is the awful photos of Dresden. Dresden had no strategic value. We broke it because we could. It is what Kurt Vonnegut wrote about being there and here:
“The corpses, most of them in ordinary cellars, were so numerous and represented such a health hazard that they were cremated on huge funeral pyres, or by flamethrowers whose nozzles were thrust into the cellars, without being counted or identified,” Vonnegut wrote in “Fates Worse Than Death.
“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
I was born today in December on the 9th in 1943.
I am going to have steamed Alaskan Crab with Drawn Butter for birthday supper. I am eating an almond croissant. Nothing hurts me at the moment although I seem rather dim. God bless us every one.
Thursday, December 3, 2015
To All my Friends, Foes and Fellow Music Gnomes
Hello Everybody.
I had an MRI yesterday. And what is even better, I do not need or want a pill for pain for the first time since November 13. There is nothing like severe pain to adjust your priorities - clears your sinuses right out.
I ate. I bathed myself by myself. I have the cutest Brazilian physical therapist named Leo who is also a gardener. He and I will be walking around the Hood with my new walker. Leo says I cannot go anywhere by myself.
Leo hopes I 'will not give up gardening.' I will never give up gardening. What is even funnier was hearing a snatch of a fellow client's explanation of how how he happened to be in the orthopedist's office "...well, I was in the garden..."
My Shrink beat my GP up thoroughly for conspiring - with my garden - to get me.
You Gnomes from the Music Grotto even made mention in the 'Yes, she is Sane' testament. I do not know why. I encourage her to read these pages. While the love and conflict around here is superior, some of us may make the SANE CATEGORY only with a some judicious trimming and shoving into place.
Thank you for all the cards and flowers and good wishes.
I am on SLOW. It took more than an hour to compose and correct this note to you all. That is pathetic. So I still need brain rest.
And just so you know it is really me, let me tell you I would rather fuck Leo. Hmmm, I am getting better.
I had an MRI yesterday. And what is even better, I do not need or want a pill for pain for the first time since November 13. There is nothing like severe pain to adjust your priorities - clears your sinuses right out.
I ate. I bathed myself by myself. I have the cutest Brazilian physical therapist named Leo who is also a gardener. He and I will be walking around the Hood with my new walker. Leo says I cannot go anywhere by myself.
Leo hopes I 'will not give up gardening.' I will never give up gardening. What is even funnier was hearing a snatch of a fellow client's explanation of how how he happened to be in the orthopedist's office "...well, I was in the garden..."
My Shrink beat my GP up thoroughly for conspiring - with my garden - to get me.
You Gnomes from the Music Grotto even made mention in the 'Yes, she is Sane' testament. I do not know why. I encourage her to read these pages. While the love and conflict around here is superior, some of us may make the SANE CATEGORY only with a some judicious trimming and shoving into place.
Thank you for all the cards and flowers and good wishes.
I am on SLOW. It took more than an hour to compose and correct this note to you all. That is pathetic. So I still need brain rest.
And just so you know it is really me, let me tell you I would rather fuck Leo. Hmmm, I am getting better.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
My Garden Bit Me
Monday, November 9, 2015
"I will bleed on your capitalism."
CONTENT WARNING: BLOOD.
"Today i am forgoing tampons and pads outside the houses of parliament to show how ‘luxury’ tampons really are.
We are also raising money to buy tampons for homeless shelters, womens shelters and the refugee crisis.
We’re getting lots of dirty looks and someone just shouted at us to get a job. But everyone keeps saying “haha omg how quickly would we get free tampons if everyone stopped wearing them?!” So, I’m giving it a go.
Taxes are necessary, i get it. So are tampons/ pads. They’re not luxury items, anymore than jaffa cakes, edible cake decorations, exotic meats or any other number of things currently not taxed as luxury items.
Maternity pads are taxed, but incontinence pads arent. We’ve had enough. Maybe bleeding on their doorstep will get the tories to do something about this?"
- Charlie Edge
KlingonShit happens - again.
- READ MORE...
“I don’t believe these people for a moment, do you? In fact, we can discern upon them the spirit of lying, the spirit of death, the spirit of murder, the spirit of greed. I mean, whenever I look at a picture of those executives, if you look in the spirit, at the demons inside of them, you can see the blood dripping from their fangs. These people are just evil.” - Gordon KlingonShit
I am not going to apologize for the Klingon joke. I know how this guy got elected. You stoners and trekkies cannot fool me. I mean, who else would vote for him? There cannot be that many fundamentalist Christians in Colorado. They legalized marijuana did they not?
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Musical Interlude for Attitude Adjustment - Philadelphia Opera Company
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. - Albert SchweitzerI shop at Reading Terminal Market weekly for fresh ground coffee and real bread. Iovine's for fresh produce. The Amish butcher for breakfast sausage and honey. Then I eat lunch at Pearl's Oyster Bar. Music and good food is Paradise.
I love the City of Brotherly Love. You never know when a random act of culture by the Philadelphia Opera Company may appear.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Where is Barry Goldwater now that we need him?
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. - Article Six of the Constitution of the United States of America
Ted Cruz said this at the Kill the Gays Conference:
"No man who doesn't begin every day on his knees is fit to stand in the Oval Office"I have only one question. It is the President who needs the kneepads now instead of the intern?
Republicans want to stick their noses so far up my hoohah they can see my uvula because Jesus. If any of these sick fundamentalist freaks becomes POTUS, I am emigrating. I just do not know where to go.
Kill the Gays! Bengazi! This is policy?
Barry Goldwater said this and I keep quoting him in hope that somebodys somewhere really are conservative:
On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.
I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."
Speech in the US Senate (16 September 1981)
Friday, November 6, 2015
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
There is Something Wrong With You
I have only one question. Does this guy own gun(s)?
For those who support our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, really like the sandwiches and are not interested in being shot by a religious zealot, I have a solution. Here are the directions for making your own southern-style chicken sandwich. I know you can create your own film festival. Ahh modern life. So many Christians. So few lions.
Monday, November 2, 2015
"...and this no one has a right to but HERSELF."
"...every man has a property in his own person and this no one has a right to but himself."
- John Locke, 2nd Treatise on Government
"This idea that you hear about in the abortion debate that it's a woman's right to choose and she has the right over her own body, no, that's not true! What that means is that your arms and your legs and your head, it all belongs to God."And who speaks for God? Why, Jeff Crawford. Amazing how that works...for centuries.
- Arkansas Pastor Jeff Crawford
1 Timothy 2:12
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
This is his twitter you can let him know what you think: https://twitter.com/JeffCraw4d
All these guys look like fucking child molesters.
VirginiaLady
That's only because they are.
PlumDumpling
Correct. If grown women are so easily dispensed with, what or who are they planning to fuck? Children. It is biblical.
Numbers 31:18
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Letter to the Roman Catholic Church - Remember the last time this happened?
The following is the full text of a letter addressed to Pope Francis on Oct. 3 by Polish Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa, a former Vatican official who publicly revealed that he’s gay and in a long-term relationship on the eve of a Synod of Bishops in Rome in which discussion of how the Church relates to gays and lesbians was expected to be a major topic of conversation. Crux translated the letter from Italian.
Holy Father, Dear Francis,
I have always loved the Church of Christ.
Today, as a baptized person, as a priest and a theologian who’s wanted to serve the Church with my entire life, I turn to you, my superior and pastor of this Church.
After a long and painful period of inner discernment and prayer, before God and with full consciousness of the gravity of the moment, I’ve made the decision to publicly refuse the violence of the Church with regard to people who are homosexual, lesbian, bi-sexual, transsexual and intersexual.
Being myself a man with a homosexual orientation, I can’t continue any more to tolerate the homophobic hatred of the Church – the exclusion, marginalization and stigmatization of people who, like me, are continually offended in their dignity and human rights, rights which are denied and struck down by this violent Church and its individual faithful.
Today I stand on the side of courageous homosexual people, who for centuries have been humiliated by the fanatical Church. I no longer accept a salvation that gratuitously excludes a part of humanity. We homosexuals don’t need the compassion that the Church promises us. We’re neither the enemies of the Church or of the family, which is the false and offensive image that Church has succeeding in creating about us. We desperately seek only to be respected in our dignity and our rights. If the Church is so obtuse, so incapable of reflection, so behind the times in terms of the conscience of humanity, as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini put it so well, if it can’t come up with an adequate welcome for this innocent people, it should at least stop pressuring states and nations that want to respect the human right of homosexual people to a civil marriage.
[Note: Martini, a former Archbishop of Milan frequently mentioned during his lifetime as a papal candidate, died in 2012. In his final interview, Martini said he believed the Catholic Church was “200 years behind the times”.]
Let the Church focus on its own religious marriage and make its heterosexuals happy, who right now don’t seem all that happy behind the prison walls of the cold doctrinal rigidity of the Church! But stop spreading hate against those who want to live their own love in peace on this earth! A Church incapable of dialogue with humanity should be quiet, if it’s not capable of using reason!
I thank you for some of your words and gestures as pontiff with regard to some homosexual people. But your words will have value only and exclusively when all the violent and offensive declarations of the Holy Office about homosexual people are cancelled, as well as the obscene instruction of Benedict XVI that prohibits admission to the priesthood for homosexual people. In the meantime, the clergy, which is full of homosexuals and at the same violently homophobic, should be consistent with this diabolical instruction: All the gay cardinals, the gay bishops and gay priests – including fantastic gay priests, as they are – should have the courage to abandon a Church that’s inhuman, insensitive, unjust and violent.
[Note: The “Holy Office” is a reference to the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The instruction under Pope Benedict XVI to which Charamsa refers appeared in 2005 and was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which is responsible for supervising seminaries.]
I stand with homosexual people to be at their service and to help them wake up this dormant Church, which is Pharisaical and hypocritical, locked into its cold and inhuman doctrine without mercy or charity, a homophobic Church that knows only how to hate the other because he or she isn’t heterosexual. It knows how to persecute and destroy the loves of thousands of gays who are spiritual people, open to the transcendent and sensitive to the divine. They’re treated as excluded lepers by the Church, as if human beings choose their own sexual orientation, heterosexual or homosexual.
I stand with this people that’s oppressed and persecuted by the Church. I stand with that people as a Polish priest representing a particularly hateful Church, which is presently led by pastors without hearts or brains, for whom one can only ask forgiveness and show the proper compassion. Some of them are with you in the synod, with their language of hate lacking any human sensitivity, interested only in how to pressure democratic governments and get them to submit, how to steal more and more from the common good, and how to deny fundamental rights to free people.
I’ve lived a long period of discernment and inner struggle in order to reach the full awareness that I will no longer accept this hatred of exclusion: If the salvation the Church has to offer does not respect the nature of homosexual people, I refuse that salvation. I refuse it in the name of God, who created us and loves us as we are.
I reflected a long time about this decision, in part because I know how violent the Church is toward anyone who leaves it. I’m afraid of how violent the Church could be towards my family, which has no responsibility at all for my decision. I’m especially worried for my mother, a woman of unbreakable faith, who’s not to blame for my decisions. I know the risks she runs in this violent and uncaring Church, to which she’s unreservedly dedicated her entire life. Catholics can be people without hearts, without mercy, without any human feeling, following the logic of collective responsibility for individual decisions and destroying the lives of the innocent. In Poland, Catholics are true maestros of hatred, of stigmatization and exclusion of others, of homophobia. My mother does not deserve any offense from this inhuman Polish church!
“I want mercy from you, not sacrifices!” [Note: This is a quote from the Old Testament, Hosea 6:6]. God does not want human nature to be sacrificed. God respects the mystery of created human nature, yet the Church hates everything about human nature that’s different from its project of power and dominion over people and their sexuality. The church serves only the heterosexual part of humanity, and does not want to reflect calmly and rationally on the nature of homosexual people.
Holy Father, the challenge facing the Synod of Bishops, the major part of which is intellectually dormant and has never experienced the smell of the sheep, is not only the faithful who are divorced and remarried, but also those of us who are sexual minorities who have the right to live our love in dignity, a love which the Church is stubbornly killing. [Pope Francis has said he wants pastors who “carry the smell of their sheep,” meaning who are close to ordinary people.] We have the right to a family life, even if the Church doesn’t want to bless it. We exist and will continue to exist, even if the Church reduces us and keeps reducing us to nothing, as it still does with faithful who are divorced and happily remarried.
In order not to upset your happy journey of heterosexual salvation, which is different from us, many of those of us who are sexual minorities have already withdrawn from your Church. Absolutely do not pity us! Have pity only on yourselves, the hypocrites and Pharisees over whom you’re presiding in the synod. But please, have mercy! Have just a touch of mercy! Have mercy: At least leave us in peace, allowing civil states to make our life more human, while you with your Church have succeeded in making our lives as homosexuals and lesbians nothing but a Hell.
Your Church should only apologize and then keep quiet forever! Or, it should convert during its path in the synod and start to think about that part of the Church and of humanity made up of homosexual believers, whom you denigrate, offend and stigmatize, humiliating and excluding them as if they were lepers.
I pray for you, knowing that you’re a man of God, but I will do everything I can to help homosexual people wake the Catholic Church from its inhuman sleep, which by now has reached bestial limits of intolerability.
Yours,
Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa
Adjunct Secretary of the International Theological Commission
Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome
Rome, 3 October A.D., 2015
Holy Father, Dear Francis,
I have always loved the Church of Christ.
Today, as a baptized person, as a priest and a theologian who’s wanted to serve the Church with my entire life, I turn to you, my superior and pastor of this Church.
After a long and painful period of inner discernment and prayer, before God and with full consciousness of the gravity of the moment, I’ve made the decision to publicly refuse the violence of the Church with regard to people who are homosexual, lesbian, bi-sexual, transsexual and intersexual.
Being myself a man with a homosexual orientation, I can’t continue any more to tolerate the homophobic hatred of the Church – the exclusion, marginalization and stigmatization of people who, like me, are continually offended in their dignity and human rights, rights which are denied and struck down by this violent Church and its individual faithful.
Today I stand on the side of courageous homosexual people, who for centuries have been humiliated by the fanatical Church. I no longer accept a salvation that gratuitously excludes a part of humanity. We homosexuals don’t need the compassion that the Church promises us. We’re neither the enemies of the Church or of the family, which is the false and offensive image that Church has succeeding in creating about us. We desperately seek only to be respected in our dignity and our rights. If the Church is so obtuse, so incapable of reflection, so behind the times in terms of the conscience of humanity, as Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini put it so well, if it can’t come up with an adequate welcome for this innocent people, it should at least stop pressuring states and nations that want to respect the human right of homosexual people to a civil marriage.
[Note: Martini, a former Archbishop of Milan frequently mentioned during his lifetime as a papal candidate, died in 2012. In his final interview, Martini said he believed the Catholic Church was “200 years behind the times”.]
Let the Church focus on its own religious marriage and make its heterosexuals happy, who right now don’t seem all that happy behind the prison walls of the cold doctrinal rigidity of the Church! But stop spreading hate against those who want to live their own love in peace on this earth! A Church incapable of dialogue with humanity should be quiet, if it’s not capable of using reason!
I thank you for some of your words and gestures as pontiff with regard to some homosexual people. But your words will have value only and exclusively when all the violent and offensive declarations of the Holy Office about homosexual people are cancelled, as well as the obscene instruction of Benedict XVI that prohibits admission to the priesthood for homosexual people. In the meantime, the clergy, which is full of homosexuals and at the same violently homophobic, should be consistent with this diabolical instruction: All the gay cardinals, the gay bishops and gay priests – including fantastic gay priests, as they are – should have the courage to abandon a Church that’s inhuman, insensitive, unjust and violent.
[Note: The “Holy Office” is a reference to the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The instruction under Pope Benedict XVI to which Charamsa refers appeared in 2005 and was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which is responsible for supervising seminaries.]
I stand with homosexual people to be at their service and to help them wake up this dormant Church, which is Pharisaical and hypocritical, locked into its cold and inhuman doctrine without mercy or charity, a homophobic Church that knows only how to hate the other because he or she isn’t heterosexual. It knows how to persecute and destroy the loves of thousands of gays who are spiritual people, open to the transcendent and sensitive to the divine. They’re treated as excluded lepers by the Church, as if human beings choose their own sexual orientation, heterosexual or homosexual.
I stand with this people that’s oppressed and persecuted by the Church. I stand with that people as a Polish priest representing a particularly hateful Church, which is presently led by pastors without hearts or brains, for whom one can only ask forgiveness and show the proper compassion. Some of them are with you in the synod, with their language of hate lacking any human sensitivity, interested only in how to pressure democratic governments and get them to submit, how to steal more and more from the common good, and how to deny fundamental rights to free people.
I’ve lived a long period of discernment and inner struggle in order to reach the full awareness that I will no longer accept this hatred of exclusion: If the salvation the Church has to offer does not respect the nature of homosexual people, I refuse that salvation. I refuse it in the name of God, who created us and loves us as we are.
I reflected a long time about this decision, in part because I know how violent the Church is toward anyone who leaves it. I’m afraid of how violent the Church could be towards my family, which has no responsibility at all for my decision. I’m especially worried for my mother, a woman of unbreakable faith, who’s not to blame for my decisions. I know the risks she runs in this violent and uncaring Church, to which she’s unreservedly dedicated her entire life. Catholics can be people without hearts, without mercy, without any human feeling, following the logic of collective responsibility for individual decisions and destroying the lives of the innocent. In Poland, Catholics are true maestros of hatred, of stigmatization and exclusion of others, of homophobia. My mother does not deserve any offense from this inhuman Polish church!
“I want mercy from you, not sacrifices!” [Note: This is a quote from the Old Testament, Hosea 6:6]. God does not want human nature to be sacrificed. God respects the mystery of created human nature, yet the Church hates everything about human nature that’s different from its project of power and dominion over people and their sexuality. The church serves only the heterosexual part of humanity, and does not want to reflect calmly and rationally on the nature of homosexual people.
Holy Father, the challenge facing the Synod of Bishops, the major part of which is intellectually dormant and has never experienced the smell of the sheep, is not only the faithful who are divorced and remarried, but also those of us who are sexual minorities who have the right to live our love in dignity, a love which the Church is stubbornly killing. [Pope Francis has said he wants pastors who “carry the smell of their sheep,” meaning who are close to ordinary people.] We have the right to a family life, even if the Church doesn’t want to bless it. We exist and will continue to exist, even if the Church reduces us and keeps reducing us to nothing, as it still does with faithful who are divorced and happily remarried.
In order not to upset your happy journey of heterosexual salvation, which is different from us, many of those of us who are sexual minorities have already withdrawn from your Church. Absolutely do not pity us! Have pity only on yourselves, the hypocrites and Pharisees over whom you’re presiding in the synod. But please, have mercy! Have just a touch of mercy! Have mercy: At least leave us in peace, allowing civil states to make our life more human, while you with your Church have succeeded in making our lives as homosexuals and lesbians nothing but a Hell.
Your Church should only apologize and then keep quiet forever! Or, it should convert during its path in the synod and start to think about that part of the Church and of humanity made up of homosexual believers, whom you denigrate, offend and stigmatize, humiliating and excluding them as if they were lepers.
I pray for you, knowing that you’re a man of God, but I will do everything I can to help homosexual people wake the Catholic Church from its inhuman sleep, which by now has reached bestial limits of intolerability.
Yours,
Monsignor Krzysztof Charamsa
Adjunct Secretary of the International Theological Commission
Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome
Rome, 3 October A.D., 2015
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Vanuatu is in the news again... - Bede's Beat
There was a major earthquake 35km NE of Port-Olry on 20 October. Fortunately no casualties and minimal damage was reported.
But the news that is really grabbing Australasia and Oceania's attention is that -- after being convicted by the Vanuatu Republic's Supreme Court on corruption charges along with 13 other legislators on October 9 -- Vanuatu's Parliamentary Speaker Marcellino Pipite immediately invoked one of his powers as "acting president", since President Baldwin Lonsdale happened to be abroad on the 9th, to pardon himself and the other 13 MPs. Immediately upon his return, President Lonsdale overturned the pardons. On October 21st, the Supreme Court ruled the pardons unconstitutional.
We hear of or read about places such as Vanuatu, but what about the people who actually live there?
The following clip contains a demonstration of water percussion filmed at Banks Island, Vanuatu.
It is raw footage filmed by AJ Hickling as part of a self-funded hour-and-a-half film exploring Vanuatuan culture through percussion and rhythms, "Evolving Rhythms - Island Adventures"
The videographer notes that -- while the ceremonies captured in this video are very sacred and performed at very specific times -- "The men were keen for me to film them and put the footage on the internet for the world to see but I was forbidden to show footage to any villager."
Flag of Vanatu |
Coat of Arms of Vanuatu |
Vanuatu is home to the "Jeux d'eau" or "Water Games" -- the highlight of which are Water Percussion competitions and demonstrations.
The following clip contains footage from the Jeux d'eau 2007, shot by videographers from the Museum of Music in Paris.
The following clip contains footage from the Jeux d'eau 2007, shot by videographers from the Museum of Music in Paris.
The following clip contains a demonstration of water percussion filmed at Banks Island, Vanuatu.
It is raw footage filmed by AJ Hickling as part of a self-funded hour-and-a-half film exploring Vanuatuan culture through percussion and rhythms, "Evolving Rhythms - Island Adventures"
The film contains some amazing performances, but the filmmaker's attention span is less than I prefer when i drum with someone, as much of the music is presented in tantalizingly (and maddeningly) short clips of local performers, whose performances are often used as samples rather than featured in full and explained and explored... Perhaps AJ should have done more listening and less smoking during his trip...
Here is an example of a Vanuatuan "stomp dance", filmed at a Chiefmaking ceremony in Bethel Village, Vanuatu. The percussion is provided by slit drums.
Here is an example of a Vanuatuan "stomp dance", filmed at a Chiefmaking ceremony in Bethel Village, Vanuatu. The percussion is provided by slit drums.
The final clip is footage of a ceremonial dance, of a type known as a "kastom dance", performed by the Smol Nambas people of Vanuatu. It was recorded on Maskelynes, one of the very small Vanuatuan islands, located off the coast of the larger island of Peskarus. The percussion instrument being played is a slit gong drum. The dance they are performing is called the "raft dance" and tells of how the Smol Nambas came to live on Maskelynes.
The videographer notes that -- while the ceremonies captured in this video are very sacred and performed at very specific times -- "The men were keen for me to film them and put the footage on the internet for the world to see but I was forbidden to show footage to any villager."
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Naked Bunch
I need to get out more. I love my funky city. I had no idea we had an annual Naked Bike Ride in Center City. The 12 mile ride through the city is part of the World Naked Bike Ride movement.
The World Naked Bike Ride is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, but some on skateboards and inline skates), to "deliver a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world."
Photo by NYC Pixelista
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Remembrance of a Beloved Man
Would you please consider making the obituary I wrote for Nick included at the bottom of this page available on your blog for his countless friends and followers to read who still may not yet know of his passing. Not a day goes by where I don't encounter at least one of his loyal readers who hasn't. Another, even just yesterday while posting on Raw Story.
Nick and I met at the Philadelphia Inquirer where we both worked during our early 20's while fresh out of college circa 1980. In addition to our other duties we composed literally thousands of obituaries although I never imagined I'd one day be writing his.
Anyone who personally knew Nick would surely agree he deserves and has duly earned all respects including final remembrance.
Gratefully, Mike Adams
VANOCUR, Nicholas (1957-2015) age 58 of Nashville TN passed away Sun August 23, 2015.
Beloved son of Sander Vanocur (born 1928, ret) and Edith C. Pick (1923-1975). The eldest of two children, Nick is survived by his dear father Sander Vanocur of Santa Barbara CA and loving brother Christopher Vanocur of Columbus OH (born 1959).
While an official CoD hasn't yet been determined nor released by Davidson County officials (Nashville TN) it's believed Nick passed peacefully while asleep sometime during Sunday August 23rd due to kidney failure or related complications.
Nick was a lifelong writer, editor, journalist and political humorist enjoying a loyal daily readership and following of national proportion. He attended Sidwell Friends School in Wash DC (class of 1975), UCSD and Temple University.
Nick was a professional staff member of The Philadelphia Inquirer (Phila), Temple News (Phila), The Tennessean (Nashville) and Planet Weekly (Tuscaloosa) newspapers.
He also worked for Sam-Eric Theaters and Universal Studios while a student in California. He was chosen for and served two prestigious internships during his earliest years. One as a US Senate page during 1969 and another with IBM during 1970.
Over his career Nick received two “Best of Gannett” Headline Awards and was mentioned in a book by Joe Calloway entitled “Becoming a Category of One" for his outstanding ability to quickly glean the most strategic facts involved with a story and produce a provocative headline of award-winning caliber.
Nick's professional abilities included Journalist, News Production Editor, News Copywriter, News Story Editor, Press Release Agent, News Blogger and Political Humorist.
Interment and memorial services will be announced by the Vanocur family at a later date as soon as they've been arranged and become known.
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