Monday, June 10, 2013

Via JMG: Google Salutes Maurice Sendak


Today's Google Doogle pays tribute to gay author Maurice Sendak, who died last year.  Sendak came out in 2008 at the age of 80 and revealed a 50-year relationship with his partner.
For what would have been his 85th birthday on Monday, Google has drawn up a wonderfully imagined Google Doodle as a tribute to the beloved illustrator and children’s book author Maurice Sendak. It begins, of course, with Max sailing to the land of Where the Wild Things Are, but soon also ventures to the surreal cityscape of In The Night Kitchen and ends, appropriately, with the birthday party from Sendak's 2011 book Bumble-Ardy. Happy birthday, Mr. Sendak.



Reposted from Joe

Via JMG: No Marriage Rulings From SCOTUS Today


 
The Supreme Court has released its regular Monday rulings and the same-sex marriage cases do not appear on the list.  Most do not expect the DOMA and Prop 8 rulings to be issued until the end of the month, but there is a chance they could come sooner.  There will be another round of rulings issued later this week in a rare Thursday release.

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Reposted from Joe

Prop 8 Ruling is Just Days Away: June 10 Marriage News Watch


Via JMG: Californians Back Marriage By 22 Points


The Los Angeles Times reports on their latest poll:
The poll found that 58% of the state's registered voters believe same-sex marriage should be legal, compared with 36% against, a margin of 22 points. When the same pollsters asked that question three years ago, 52% favored gay marriage and 40% opposed it, a 12-point spread.
Most national polls this year have found majority support, but only one of those surveys reported it as high as 58%. The average was roughly 51% in favor of gay marriage. As in the rest of the country, more women (63%) than men (52%) in California favor same-sex marriage.
Younger California voters also support gay marriage by larger margins than older voters, the poll found. Whereas 76% of voters ages 18 to 29 support legalizing the unions, only 52% of those ages 50 to 64 agree.
Still, the shifts among older voters are dramatic. Voters 65 and older are now almost evenly divided — 46% in favor, 47% against — compared with just three years ago, when seniors opposed gay marriage by 19 percentage points.
If Prop 8 is upheld and marriage ends up returning to the ballot in California, at least we have this as a starting point. For now.


Reposted from Joe

Via The Buddha's Face / FB:

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. 
~Thomas Merton





To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
~Thomas Merton

Via Today.com: How Gay Married Couples get Shortchanged

How gay married couples get shortchanged

June 9, 2013 at 10:32 AM ET
 
Patrick Plain, left, and Seong Man Hong, both of New York, celebrate after getting married at the City Clerk's office in New York Sunday, July 24, 201...
Jason DeCrow / AP
 
Patrick Plain, left, and Seong Man Hong, both of New York, celebrate after getting married at the City Clerk's office in New York Sunday, July 24, 2011. 
 
More than 1,000 federal rights and securities are denied to couples in same-sex marriages not legally recognized by Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, says Vickie Henry, senior staff attorney at Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD. GLAD is a leading advocacy group in the campaign to strike down DOMA.

"Few of those benefits are more important than Social Security," says Crosby Burns, policy analyst of the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan educational institute based in Washington, D.C.

"This program forms part of the bedrock of our nation's safety net," Burns says. "With full and equal access to this social insurance program, families headed by same-sex couples would finally have access to the economic safeguards they need, intended to keep them out of poverty and afloat during hard times."

Chief among them, Henry says, are the spousal benefit, the spousal disability benefit, the lump-sum benefit and the survivors benefit. The children of same-sex parents would also be affected.

Read on to see how the Social Security system works in favor of heterosexual married couples and against same-sex married couples. If DOMA is struck down, gay couples stand to gain more Social Security benefits.

Make the jump here to read the full article courtesy of today.com

Via Buddhism on Beliefnet:



Daily Buddhist Wisdom






Eventually we will find (mostly in retrospect, of course) that we can be very grateful to those people who have made life most difficult for us.
- Ayya Khema, "When the Iron Eagle Flies"

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma

Tricycle Daily Dharma June 10, 2013

Here and Now

Heaven and hell are not some places I’m going to go to later on. Heaven and hell are here right now, and I create them for myself with my own choices.
- Hae Doh Gary Schwocho, "Beneath Belief"
Read the entire article in the Wisdom Collection through June 11, 2013
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