KEEPING ON MESSAGE/FASCINATING RHYTHM: The ¨Land of the Eternal Spring¨ renews itself once again

It´s the rainy season in America Central.  It starts like God has a starting time at exactly May 15th and nobody better forget it.

It´s true, there may be a few odd rain showers before May 15th but when it is actually May 15, high Summer is over, the thunder begins and the rain clouds form and take shape like Zeus was hiding out in the Volcano (and the volcan even it erupts with staggeringly gorgeous display of gladness during the season change).

I´ve lived in the Caribbean and Central America for over two decades now and I´m thrilled when the great magical greening season begins...it blows, it streaks, light the lights we´ve got nowhere to hit but the heights.

Our world around us takes on the spirit of lush fertility and it´s put to good use...it stimulates me and my art grows.

FASCINATING RHYTHM: Lead singer Tom Gabel tells ¨Rolling Stone¨ she is a Transgender

Laura Jane Grace, formerly known as Tom Gabel

¨The lead singer of punk band Against Me! was greeted with cheers at her first stage appearance since announcing she is transgender.

Laura Jane Grace, formerly known as Tom Gabel, played a gig at San Diego and said she was relived by fans’ reactions.

She told Rolling Stone: “I was worried that some people expected me to come out looking like Little Bo Peep or something.”

Touring with The Cult, Against Me! played six new tracks including The Gender Dysphoria Blues. Rolling Stone said she made no mention of transition on-stage, the song would form the title track of an album currently in the works...¨ please read it all, HERE

·  Thanks to Pink News, United Kingdom
·  Thanks to Rolling Stone
·  Thanks to CassandraX, photo

¨GAY UGANDA¨ NOT FORGOTTEN: ¨Such is the strength of the human spirit: we are gay, Ugandan, and we live and work in the country. Life is tough.¨ October, 2010



¨...we gay Ugandans hide so well, and are gracefully camouflaged, that fellow Ugandans frequently ask themselves who the "evil gays" are. Of course, we are their kin.¨

 ¨GAY UGANDA¨ We are thinking of you and to all the Kuchus of Uganda we send you our best wishes and prayers for well-being, everyday safety and personal happiness too. Leonardo Ricardo, Central America

¨I woke early to an empty bed. Partner not around. Gone for a seminar in Mukono, just outside Kampala. It's not far, but I can't be with him. That means a cold bed for me. Cold food, too, because I am hopeless in the kitchen. He bears those burdens, literally looking after me. I know, I take it too far, but I do love being looked after. He makes me feel special; and I am missing him.


We live in the suburbs of the Ugandan capital, and have been together for 10 years. And we are gay. He is a man. I am a man. We are both Ugandans, living, working in Uganda. So, how is it to be gay, and Ugandan, today? We live in interesting times and we have lived a kind of terrifying history.


When we met and moved in together, I was living with my brother. I sat him down and told him: "You know I am gay. I am going to have my lover move in with me." He nodded. I told him that he had the option of living with his dad, if he objected, but I was determined to stay with my lover.


I was simply tired of the hiding, the subterfuge, the lies. My brother did know that I was gay, since we lived in the same house. But not the rest of my family, and not the neighbours. That could not happen.


So, 10 years ago I got a "room-mate" who coincidentally shared the bed with me. We were deeply closeted at the beginning. We thought (hoped, prayed) that nobody knew. After all, though we are grown men living together, sharing a house in Kampala is no big deal. I mean, in Kampala, in Uganda, with the depressed economic conditions, what was more notable was that there were only three of us in the house rather than 10.


I was involved in gay rights issues – some very early, nascent activities. Self-confidence, independence of income and some education helped me, as did a sense of growing anger at my world of duplicity, shame and enforced lies. My partner was more cautious. Not all the things that I did were below the radar, or underground.


It was at his insistence that I made my Gay Uganda blog as anonymous as possible. His was always the voice of caution: wait, don't do that, don't expose yourself, remember that it is no longer you alone.


And, he was correct. I did heed his voice. Because, for a gay Ugandan, life is not safe. Being known to be gay is tough. It is a life of reckless fear, not courage. We do what we do, not because we can, but because there is no other option. From the very first inkling of our sexuality, we learn to hide. And we do hide.


In fact, we gay Ugandans hide so well, and are gracefully camouflaged, that fellow Ugandans frequently ask themselves who the "evil gays" are. Of course, we are their kin. But they don't believe their brothers, sisters, cousins, relatives can be the "evil gays".


In the beginning, I think it was the religious questions that led to my activism. I was baptised into an Anglican family. While in high school, round about the time that I realised my sexuality, I became an evangelical Christian.


But being gay in Uganda and Christian is a real challenge. Ugandans are highly religious and, coming out to myself later, I knew I couldn't reconcile my faith and sexuality. I decided to repudiate faith. But then I went further and became angry at the faith as shown in Uganda. And why not?


The words and actions of our religious leaders are full of hate. Mufti Mubajje, titular head of Muslims in Uganda, believes that all gay Ugandans should be marooned on an island in Lake Victoria. We would then die out and solve the country's gay problem.


When we came out at a press conference in 2007, all the sermons in churches and mosques over the following days were about the evil of homosexuality. An anti-gay demonstration was organised, ultimately limited to a rally at Kyadondo rugby ground. And, there, ministers – both political and religious – railed at the evil homosexuals who had dared to show their faces (even though we were wearing masks).

The KUCHUS are strong and staying afloat in Uganda

It was a tough time. I remember, we were home that evening, with some gay friends – kuchus, as we call ourselves. They were a bit worried, because I had been at the press conference and the radio was talking about the imminent arrests of gay men.


That was when my dad revealed his knowledge. He came to our door, anxious. He had heard a rumour that we were all going to be arrested. "Who is going to be arrested?" I asked him, shocked, more by the fact that he knew, than that he was warning me. "You," he indicated towards me and my partner.


Fortunately, the rumours of arrest were unfounded. But, we had been exposed and the exposure was going to grow. Now that gay Ugandans had "come out", we were the target of any newspaper seeking to make a quick buck. I was known. My partner was known.


The anti-homosexuality bill of 2009 further flushed us out of our closets. We found ourselves targeted by a truly horrible piece of legislation, seeking to kill and imprison us for life, all in the name of "family and cultural values". We had to fight, and we had to come out of the shadows to fight.


Death and life imprisonment. No access to information or help. The danger of being reported to "relevant authorities" by pastors, doctors, parents. Mandatory HIV tests. All these are provisions of the Bahati bill. We had to show our faces. We had to, and we did.


But, though the international outcry enabled the government to go slow on the bill, our exposure was not reversible. Now a tabloid has published the photographs of alleged gay Ugandans, under the headline "Hang Them".


No, it is not easy to be gay and Ugandan. Whether it is denial of HIV prevention services for gay men, or the need to bribe police when you are reported, it is not easy.


Such is the strength of the human spirit: we are gay, Ugandan, and we live and work in the country. Life is tough. But, I dare say, having come through the fire, we are as tough, if not tougher.¨ Gay Uganda HERE

· Thanks to Gay Uganda, sidebar
· Thanks to The Guardian, United Kingdom
· Thanks to Nsubuga
· Thanks to Public Radio, U.S.A.

MURDER IN UGANDA: Remembering Anglican ¨Integrity Uganda¨ Member and Gay Rights Activist David Kato, May You Rest in Peace and Rise in Glory

TIME FOR ANOTHER REALITY BASED ERUPTION: I´ve been fully present in my own life for over 68 years (well, often I´ve been fully present)

It´s time for a taste of reality

It´s come to this.  Actually, it already came to this (well, not exactly as pictured but I GET the picture) over the last couple of years.  To tell the truth it started with retirement at age 62 and I stopped going regularly (daily) to the gym.  I was simply too tired.  It´s how it really was...one morning I could NOT get out of bed (it was never easy for me at 5:00 A.M. anyway but I forced myself because the physical/cosmetic rewards were great and in the last years I had a trainer every morning at 6:00 when the gym opened to keep me on point). 

I was burned out at 62 and I thought that I needed to rest myself instead of driving myself as I had for a lifetime of trying to ¨look good¨ and work hard and be somebody and trying NOT to drop through the cracks in my own life (lots of ups and downs and lots of solid and wholesome/unwholesome adventures too) along the way.  After decades of sobriety and NOT touching the booze and living in the REAL world of happiness, grief, fear, glee and huge globs of face-it-as-you-can character revelations -- both good and bad...I was/am tired.  I´d danced as fast as I could even when the music stopped playing.   I surrendered, I was pooped-out I grabbed a chair before there wasn´t one for me to sit down in...maybe there wouldn´t be enough chairs for resting?

I´ve stayed current.  I´ve stayed in the day.  I´ve been given new friendships and fine companions and I´ve kept many old friends and have lots of dogs, birds and fish too.  I´ve been creative.  My Art has progressed.  It´s been rewarding to dedicate much more time to painting in my retirement.  I faced scares.  I´ve had five, count em, five, eye surgeries in recent years.  Well, maybe I didn´t face the scary part too well as I´ve stayed a bit closer to home and I´m afraid to drive at night even though my vision corrects just fine I do tend to bump into things...my body does, not my car.  I do enjoy entertaining.  I like to cook and even have a maid! 

I´ve been fully present in my own life for most of the years that led up to the 68th year of age that I have right now.  I´m been blessed on so many levels of life and I KNOW that I´ve been privileged and downright lucky and even authentically graced with a great miracle (even though I was drunk, slightly blury, when the burning bush appeared, age 35, in my living room during my one-on-one/try-to-pass-out cocktail party in the middle of a weeknight when God lifted active alcoholism from me).

My life is filled with great bursts of energy, great personal success and some great failures too
in my little pond of trying-to-be-a-big-frog croaking.  Alas, mostly I´m just a regular human being who has always appreciated being a real live pollywog who has survived sharks, snakes and predators of many stripes (it´s just a little test, sometimes deadly sometimes not, afterall, ¨it gets better¨).  But I´ve always felt God (completely unrehersed) and tried as hard as I could to shower myself with the best of the world ¨intentions¨ as they appealed to the authentic me (I even once had a little business The Best of the New World). Most of the World does, it really does, appeal to me (even with the poisoness reptile wrestling).  There is so much to take in, verdad?  Even the less colorful takes on special meaning when viewed up close. I´m passionate about the world around us and every glimmer of good in humanity (both known and not) but, I loathe injustice and I actually find little love in my aging heart for those who harm/abuse others.  The Bigots have almost worn me out...almost, that is, as I think they may become enlightened before my curtain comes down  (Lord, hear my prayer).  

Yet, still, my compassion seems to me almost on empty for those who I view as demonziers of innocents and marginalizers of our sister and brother human beings.  I have BIG resentments as the ¨haters¨ prattle on and on about ¨sexual¨ circumstances in others of which they fear or know nothing/little. Everyday sociopaths, con artists and greedsters get my goat. My patience has faltered and my tolerance seems like a dishonest jesture to me.  I sometimes worry about the ¨business¨ of others. Outside acts of which I have no need, or wish (mostly), to control!  Imagine! Pass the Brownies please. Fret, fret!

I know that TRUST, letting go, forgiveness and understanding are the paths to becoming a healthier me...in all my affairs.  Acceptance too.

Then some action: I´ve become a ¨Plant Based¨ eater (as my friends Tom and Elizabeth and David Charles Walker introduced to me).  I joined a online 12 Step ¨eating¨ dilemma group -- very nifty folks online there (wherever there happens to be). After two months I feel so much better and my blood pressure and my heart agree that plants are good for me.  Onward I go (to the Gym too) and thank you for being here and for visiting me.  I intend to keep ¨being¨, albeit with less ¨striving¨  the person that God created me to be...a more ¨rightsized¨ version of me in several ways. 

As my Mom always said ¨We shall see what we shall see.¨

Leonardo Ricardo/Leonard Richard/Len
Guatemala, Central America

EPISCOPAL SAINTS: ¨Today is the Feast of Copernicus and Kepler, Astronomers¨

¨Episcopalians feel easy around scientists. We have a few in our congregations, and they help us remember that the quest for knowledge is 100% God-Approved™

Today is the Feast of Copernicus and Kepler, Astronomers, and already we’re seeing some reaction.

Michael Poteet, a Presbyterian member of the Daily Office   congregation, writes, “Is today actually a feast day for these two astronomers on the Episcopal calendar? I think that is marvelous!”

And Maria L. Evans, a stalwart laywoman from Missouri, adds this: “I totally dig that they are on the calendar. Where else but the Episcopal church do we put people on the saints calendar that point out, ‘Guess what? The universe doesn’t revolve around us!’”

(I had to tell Maria this known fact: the universe revolves around the Subdeacon’s new granddaughter. Her name is Hadley, and she’s got more hair than Clint does.)

But there’s a bigger point to be made here, which I will now divulge to you (free of charge): Yes, it is marvelous and wonderful that we have a Copernicus and Kepler Day; and no, there is nowhere else but The Episcopal Church where you will find any feast days of scientists...¨ read it all, HERE

·  Thanks to the Daily Office, http://dailyoffice.org/
·  Thanks to Josh Thomas
·  Thanks to Gay Spirit Diary, sidebar
·  Thanks to David Green, Episcopal Rainbow Shield

¨It’s part of the genius of The Episcopal Church that we mix freely with scientists and artists, bankers and queers; housewives, grandbabies, bakers and cops.¨  Josh Thomas

A MESSAGE TO BISHOP GREG VENABLES/ARGENTINA - SOUTHERN CONE: Buenos Aires Welcomes Foreigners To Obtain Same-Sex Marriages

 

 
¨Argentina has had marriage equality for same-sex couples since July, 2010, but now Buenos Aires will allow visitors to the country to marry as well. According to a new law passed last week, any foreign couple (including both same- and opposite-sex couples) can marry in Buenos Aires with only a five-day request and a temporary address. Spouses-to-be interested in marrying there are encouraged to hire a local lawyer to make sure all of the paperwork is submitted properly and efficiently.¨ HERE

·  Thanks to Think Progress LGBT, sidebar
·  Thanks to Zack Ford

ATTENTION ARCHBISHOP OF YORK AND OTHERS : We don’t need religious moral guidance for good conduct, something which religions acquired from our innate sense of ethics and human goodness, and then perverted.

¨Slavery was eventually outlawed, women freed from being a chattel of men, and individuals were at last free to believe or not believe in a religion; except that it hasn’t fully been realized. Why?¨

¨Men like Freud, Kinsey, Marx, and Darwin, all pioneers in their own fields, had to combat the customs of their cultures to make their contributions to human knowledge.

Similarly, older historical figures, amongst them Socrates, Galileo, and Columbus, all had to contend with their prevailing cultures and authorities. The concern herein is not with the actual discoveries and contributions made by such men, often at extreme and deeply personal levels of self-confrontation, but with the fact that they had to question, deny, defy and combat the stultifying and entrenched values of their cultures with risk to their own welfare.

With many of their achievements, they set the world stage for the progress of science, technology, and, with the work of the humanist enlightenment philosophers, advanced the concepts of individual freedom.

Furthermore, the settlement of the Americas and the subsequent United States Constitution with its Amendments, broke the unquestioned control of religious power over not only the state, but also the individual.


Universal human rights were beginning to be acknowledged in law. Slavery was eventually outlawed, women freed from being a chattel of men, and individuals were at last free to believe or not believe in a religion; except that it hasn’t fully been realized. Why?


Without going into specifics, the main delay has been the reluctant relinquishing of all the restraining rules, laws and customs of previous generations.

That is nothing new, as the previously mentioned pioneers faced confrontation with such entrenched beliefs and laws. They succeeded in displacing many of those archaic beliefs because the empirical reality of their findings was irrefutable, or consisted of thoroughly sound rational arguments based on fact rather than conjecture.

Traditional beliefs, laws and customs were questioned and recognized as unjust, misleading, inadequate, and inaccurate. Without pursuing natural intellectual curiosity using scientific method, and acceptance of revealed reality, we would all still be believing the insanity of a flat Earth, and murdering each other for the sake of personal subjective beliefs. We are better than that...¨ please read it all, HERE  (emphasis added)

A Response on Marriage and Civil Partnership

John Sentamu, Archbishop of York
HERE

NOTE: The Archbishop of York may fail to be nominated as the next Archbishop of Canterbury -- ¨not because he is black¨ HERE


·  Thanks to Desmond Rutherford, Des Down Under
·  Thanks to LGBTQ NATION,  sidebar
·  Thanks to Thinking Anglicans, sidebar
·  Thanks to The Archbishop of York

HUMANS AND 4,000 OTHER SPECIES HAVE HOMOSEXUALITY: ¨....it is possible for demons or the devil to inhabit or invade animals just the same way they invade humans, and that causes the sin of lust.¨

A Former Chaplain Explains Where Gay Animals Come From

This was on The David Pakman Show, where Pakman queried ex-Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt and full-time godnut on the habits and provenance of homosexuals. The following dialogue was helpfully transcribed by Raw Story's Stephen C. Webster:

“Let’s step back for a second, Gordon, and say okay, let’s assume you’re right that homosexuality among humans is only because of marketing,” Pakman countered. “What about in the 4,000 other species that have homosexuality? Because, as far as I know, they don’t have TV. They don’t have advertising. They don’t have the iTunes store to recruit people. How is it that humans are gay sometimes because of marketing, but 4,000 other species… Why? Is it something else?”

“It is entirely possible — we know from the Bible, for example, when Jesus cast the devil out of Legion, he went into a herd of pigs,” Klingenschmitt said. “So, it is possible for demons or the devil to inhabit or invade animals just the same way they invade humans, and that causes the sin of lust.”

“So, what you’re saying is, in humans it’s marketing that makes people gay; in animals, it’s the souls of gay humans who have invaded the animals,” Pacman replied. “That makes them gay?”

Klingenschmitt laughed and scratched his temple. “Well, I think you twisted what I’m saying there,” he said.

Klingenschmitt has many more interesting theories to share -- including a neat rehashing of the Anita Bryant line about gay "recruitment," made scientific-sounding by the invocation of "biology" and "Mendelian genetics" -- with which you may acquaint yourself ...¨ read more: HERE

·  Thanks to Towleroad, sidebar
·  Thanks to Raw Story´s Stephen C. Webster
·  Thanks to The David Pakman Show

The Book of Mormon: A Superior Revelation or a Hoax?

The Angel Moroni, son of the Nephite prophet Mormon

¨Those outside the Mormon Church see the good works of its members and because of their lack of understanding of Christian teaching and their acute lack of knowledge regarding Mormon sources, they tend to think that the Mormon church is as Christian as the Baptists, Methodists and the Presbyterians.¨

¨Missionaries for the Mormon Church have converted millions of people to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by convincing them that the Book of Mormon is true and superior to the Bible.

The Book of Mormon claims to be history of "the period from 600 BC to 421 AD during which the Nephite, Lamanite, and Mulekite civilizations flourished."{1} It is also believed by the Mormon Church that these civilizations were descendants of Lehi, a Jew who led a colony of people from Jerusalem to the Americas in 600 BC.

The Nephite prophet Mormon and his son Moroni played major roles in bringing the lost story of these civilizations to light. War broke out among the descendants of Lehi, and as they were about to annihilate one another, Mormon wrote their history on golden plates and hid them in the hill Cumorah in New York state.

According to Bruce R. McConkie, a Mormon scholar, the Book of Mormon has three purposes:

To bear record of Christ and clarify his Divine Sonship and mission, proving that he is the Redeemer and Savior;

To teach the doctrines of the gospel in such a perfect way that the plan of salvation will be clearly revealed;

To stand as a witness that Joseph Smith was the Lord's anointed through whom the latter-day work of restoration would be accomplished.{2} (According to the Mormon Church, Christianity was corrupted after the death of the last apostle and Joseph Smith was anointed by God to restore the true church.)

Referring to the Book of Mormon, the Mormon apostle Orson Pratt, said: "This book must be either true or false. If true, it is one of the most important messages ever sent from God.... If false, it is one of the most cunning, wicked...impositions ever palmed upon the world, calculated to deceive and ruin millions."{3}

It is imperative that we recognize the Book of Mormon for what it is and challenge those who continue to perpetuate the false idea that it is true. In order for the Book of Mormon to be accepted as divine truth, the Bible must be discredited.

The book of 2 Nephi in the Book of Mormon says: "Because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words."{4} Joseph Smith said, "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."{5}

The underlying problem with the Book of Mormon is that there is absolutely no objective, external evidence for much of the information found in the book. And the information that is trustworthy was plagiarized right out of the King James Bible. Beyond the fact that the Book of Mormon cannot be verified externally, the potential convert is told that the Smithsonian Institution uses the Book of Mormon to aid its archaeological work. However, in a letter referring to this Mormon claim, the Smithsonian Institution Department of Anthropology states: "The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archaeologists see no connection between the archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the Book."{6} there is much, much more, HERE (emphasis added)

·  Thanks to Russ Wise
·  Thanks to Mormon Beliefs about Prophecy, Heaven, and Celestial Marriage

DELUSIONAL, OR IMMORAL? What they really mean when they say they’re “not anti-gay”

Charles W. Colson, political saboteur for President Richard M. Nixon ¨The leading voice of ´Christian´ victimism¨ 

¨The memorial service for the late Chuck Colson was held today. May God have mercy on his soul. Of those contending to replace him as the leading voice of “Christian” victimism, and as the architect of anti-gay propaganda at Prison Fellowship Ministries, John Stonestreet is probably the most sophisticated.

One of the favorite techniques of Colson and his acolytes is to stand reality on its head by casting themselves, although they are the ones working to deny religious freedom and civil rights to others, as the oppressed and persecuted. Hence Stonestreet, in a recent column, claims for himself and his audience the role of Esther. You all know the story, right? Haman, the Jew-hating dictator, is a prime minister whose king has unwittingly taken the Hebrew Esther as his wife. When Haman is angered by Mordecai and is about to respond in a genocidal rage, Esther outs herself to save her people. Stonestreet equates the situation of the Hebrews, in exile under the rule of Haman, to the circumstances of “Christians” today when they are restrained in any way by the civil rights of others. My husband gently pointed out to him the irony of his words: That the behavior Stonestreet is encouraging is very much like Haman’s inclination to dehumanize the Hebrews and see them as something other than just people, perhaps objectifying them as the “lobbyists” or “homosexual activists” of their day.

 Stonestreet didn’t seem to understand. “Hamaan wasn’t grumpy at the Jews because of their propaganda or lobbying,” he responded. “They were exiles. He just didn’t like them.”

Not exactly (and one would expect a Prison Fellowship Ministries “Centurion” to know his bible a little better than this). Haman was “grumpy at the Jews” (!) because Mordecai refused to bow down. Had Mordecai accepted Haman’s authority by denying his own religious identity, Esther never would have outed herself, and no one would have been the wiser. Haman didn’t object to Jews, really – only those Jews who insisted on following that commandment “Thou shalt worship no other gods before Me.” The other Jews, the nice ones who didn’t assert their Jewishness, he had no problem with. Don’t ask, don’t tell... read it all, HERE (emphasis added)

·  Thanks to David
·  Thanks to The Maddow Blog
·  Thanks to Equality Loudoun, HERE