ginalin

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/05/10/Presbyterians_Approve_Gay_Clergy/


"After 33 years of debate, the Presbyterian Church has voted to change its constitution and allow openly gay people in same-sex relationships to be ordained as ministers.

Just two years ago, the majority of the church’s regions voted against ordaining gay candidates.

This year’s vote was 205 to 56, with three abstentions. According to The New York Times, 19 of the church’s 173 presbyterys switched their votes from no to yes in the last few months.

“All of us are surprised,” said the Rev. Gradye Parsons, the church’s Stated Clerk, its highest elected official.

He said the change in tune can be attributed to the growing acceptance of gays and lesbians in the United States, and to church members growing tired of the conflict.

“We’ve been having this conversation for 33 years, and some people are ready to get to the other side of this decision,” he said. “Some people are going to celebrate this day, because they’ve worked for it for a long time, and some people will mourn this day because they think it’s a totally different understanding of Scripture than they have.”

The Presbyterian Church is the latest in a line of mainline Protestant churches to vote to accept gay clergy members and church leaders, including the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and The Episcopal Church."

No gay "marriage" yet, but hey...baby steps. I think it's interesting that the split between the "OMG, it's the gay agenda!" people and continuing social acceptance is growing, and the homophobes are steadily losing ground. Do you think that the more mainstream religions are getting the message that they must change or die? People are accepting reality and growing tired of this ridiculous and groundless conflict.

A UU minister I read a while back said that if religion dies in America, religion is to blame for not recognizing the needs of people and adapting to the times. How true. Church attendance is slowly and steadily declining as is agnosticism and atheism. Why? Not because we've become "godless" or less humane as a people, because we are in many ways more humane, more socially conscious as a society than ever. What is "divine" or compassionate about us is in US, not in a building or even in a group. A group can only enable that or not, and a building is just a place to meet.

Also, the feeding of fear by some religion has to stop. Blaming this or that group or people for our mutual ills is extremist thinking at it's worst and most destructive. The right blames the left, fundamentalists blame gays, racists blame another race or color, misogynists blame women...etc. How easily we forget that we share communities, states, countries and most importantly, a planet.

Change is irresistible and inevitable. Change will happen, change is happening. Those who cannot accept it will become social pariahs. They will acquire the outcast status they try to impose upon those they hate.

Thanks for the virtual gift, Regis! Much appreciated.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110203/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_senate

WASHINGTON – To hear Senate Republicans tell it, the defeat of their attempt to repeal the Democrats' health care overhaul was really a victory of sorts on the long march to the 2012 congressional and presidential elections.

The repeal effort sank Wednesday along party lines, 51-47, as expected. But in the process, Republicans forced Democrats on the record in favor of President Barack Obama's signature overhaul and launched what they described as a two-year effort to discredit it in the lead-up to a bid for a second term.


Um...okay, but this is really a good example of how incredibly stupid politics gets when it becomes mostly about them vs us.

There are always flaws in legislation, even yours, so spending all this effort on "exposing" them is ridiculous, which is what the Republicans go on and on about in this article.
Why don't you all work towards actually doing something about real issues instead of worrying about winning, political strategies and what the other guy is doing?
Think that might fix a few things?

This is basically a rant against people who think they're not racist, but in such subtle ways they don't recognize it. Especially around my kids, who thankfully are grown enough to give people who are racist a big eye roll, even if it's their grandmother.

Yes, sadly, my husband's mother is a racist, and she was raised in the South around racist attitudes when young...she tries, but occasionally says something that makes me want to punch her back to the antebellum age where she'd no doubt be happier.

She used to be terribly homophobic too until her son came out to her and she decided not to be, although she still makes a comment about it that makes us all cringe occasionally...she is a product of a certain age and time when all men were supposed to be MANLY with a capital M and extremely HETEROSEXUAL and can't seem to get past it.

I don't write that to excuse it, it's inexcusable...plenty of other people her age have dropped some of the more subtle deeply ingrained racist attitudes.
She's simply not interested, it's easier to believe she's nicer than that, in spite of saying totally stupid things like this that betray the fact that she's still clinging to childhood indoctrination.

But, I got to hear this this morning as we watched the news..."We'll I don't know why THEY are always bitching, THEY got a holiday too."

Yes, it's always THEM and US in the minds of some people. That is the very mindset that creates racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, jingoism...you name it, this "they ain't us" attitude creates it.

I have a personal rule about telling off people in their own house, so my tongue is well-bitten, naturally, but speaking for myself, Martin Luther King did what he did for all of us. He did what he did because it was necessary for us to move forward, ALL of us, as a nation. We could no longer exist divided by race.

We can't exist divided by sexual, social and class discrimination either and as we recently all too tragically learned, political frustration, hate and acrimony.

Of course it was that nutball's fault he did what he did, no sane person shoots into a crowd. But, we've become the nutrient dish of negative emotions, division that grows that kind of confusion and hate. Our divisiveness is feeding it, giving it strength.

As long as it's "them" and "us" we're going to see this sort of thing; we can't forget how easily we've been broken apart on an issue or politics or attitudes in the past. I hate to think that all those ideals about unity and brotherhood Martin Luther King had were just talk. Those must be some scary words to some, they're willing to kill you to shut you up.

I started thinking how far we've come in some ways since his death, and how little we've come in some other ways.

Because I've never thought of Martin Luther King Jr. as one of "THEM". He's one of me, I would only hope.

It's Phil's and mine 23rd anniversary today. *smiles*

I want to give a heartfelt thanks to my friend Ruth for her generous gift again this year, which I'll enjoy in part to have a nice dinner out with my husband for our anniversary.
You're an angel. Hugs.

Thanks to everyone who wished me well...I'm up and around pretty well, rested most of yesterday, of course. Came home 4 hours after my surgery, ate a sandwich, took some oxycontin and went to bed. LOL Got up for dinner and then messed around on the computer a bit. If I time the pain pill right, I can sit for about 3 hours before I need to lie down.

Pretty sore where my gallbladder was, but I was already sore there BEFORE the surgery. Turns out it was VERY distended, I had over 100 stones in there and it had become acute. Very irritated, which explains a lot of the pain I was having..I got a big bag full of a very strong antibiotic in my IV before surgery as a usual precaution.

Getting up and down is the most painful thing...walking a bit hunched over, but sitting for a few hours is no big deal, doesn't hurt at all.

I don't have any stitches or staples..they used surgical glue to put me all back together. I'm sure it's fine, but it makes me nervous..I'm afraid to sneeze, cough or laugh too hard. LOL

I'm having my gall bladder surgery on Monday Dec. 13th at 8:30am.

I'm looking forward to it as I've been living on pain pills for the last two weeks. Yay Vicodin, you are my friend.

I'm to the point where even eating cereal with skim milk gives me a bilious attack (which sort of feels like a heart attack but much less deadly, of course) so I wish I'd done this 2 weeks ago, but the doctor wanted me to lose some weight before the surgery.

I've lost 13 lbs in about 3 weeks...but food is unappetizing as hell right now anyway as I'm nauseated a lot. I highly recommend it as a diet strategy, in the "it works" category, not in the "it's great" one.

Anyhoo..see you all on the other side of the rip out room. I should be in and out the same day, but don't know how soon I'll be up doing the mambo or typing or anything else.

Anyone reading LiveJournal anymore?

Well, okay moving right along, I've never quit getting feedback from stories I've written in the past, although it's been a few years since I truly wrote anything. Lots of aborted attempts and I have stories going on in my head constantly, they just never get written.

I don't know if I want to write fanfiction although it's always been great fun.
Believe it or not, lately the one thing I've been wanting to write is poetry /song lyrics. I used to avoid poetry, but it's all that's in my head these days.

Well, just to let you know, I might be sharing if I write anything decent enough to share.

You all know I'm not shy about sharing, probably the opposite, if anything.

Well, maybe it's the lithium doing it's thing...I just feel like scribbling stuff down again.

I see a surgeon next Thursday to consult about getting the evil gall bladder out. Hopefully not too close to Thanksgiving, but I don't know how much choice I'll have with that, since even on a low to no fat diet it's acting up pretty regularly now.

Went back to the psychiatrist and he upped my depakote dosage and added 600 mg of lithium to the pot.
I do feel a bit more...relaxed on the lithium, but he said pop Xanax (I take a low dose) if I get tense/manic enough to make a lump of coal into a diamond, via shoving it up my arse.

Nothing yet for the depression, but the depression is short lived compared to the mania. I have short intense periods of depression that rapidly cycle in to mania, which is harder to control, it seems.

I was afraid that the things I like about me (which turn out not to be manic at all, they're just my little personality quirks) would disappear, but they haven't. I'm still me, minus some of the annoying/disturbing aspects of mania, like pressured speech(periods of non stop talking about absolutely NOTHING important) and unfocused thinking,night terrors, waves of anxiety attacks and even voices and hallucinations. Yes, I was to that point a few times.


Now, on to the political stuff, which you can skip of that stuff annoys you.

I voted for the first time at age 50 Tuesday. I loved it. My husband frowned at me because he's totally cynical about the political process although you can get him arguing for the Democrats in 2 seconds flat if you push the right buttons.

Part of that is because like me he was brainwashed by Jehovah's Witnesses for years that politics is evil (it probably is, but I'm not sure if it's directly run by Satan as they claim, although each side would gladly claim the other is a demonic tool if they could get away with it) and ungodly (again, a good many things are probably on many people's "ungodly" list that other people regularly indulge in without apparent harm)and hasn't quite gotten over it yet.

Brainwashing is like that...powerful, which is why it's called brainwashing. I still fight persistent feelings of guilt about many things I now do that Witnesses frown upon, like wearing a sweatshirt that says "USA" on it, voting, or eating Christmas cookies. It's hard when you've been told since childhood that the big sky god is frowning at you when you do these things and you will not be on his "been good" list.

Anyway, I voted straight Democrat, simply because even though I'm an Independent, I happen to like what the course we're on now, especially with health care and educational funding. OF COURSE, I'd like to see more jobs and our economy recover, but I never expected that to happen quickly. It's simply not possible, from what I've read about economics, which is rather complicated and all, but not so complicated that even I with my mere high school edumacation can't grasp.

Part of it has to do with what we invested way too much of our economy in, which was the financial sector itself. Too much of our Gross Domestic Product was tied up in the business of banks and finance companies making money off of us. When that happens, economies inevitably fail and fail HARD.

Regardless of political party or who was in office, we let that happen for 30 some years (although GW Bush put the finishing touches on it by deregulating the shit out of Wall Street) and now we're reaping the harvest of a horribly imbalanced economy. This witch's brew took 30 some years to cook up and won't be fixed quickly by anything anyone can cook up.

So, to all you who wonder what the fuck Obama has been doing for you, well...he didn't fix the economy in two short years, it's true. But, if you can show me someone who can, I'll kiss your ass til you bark like a fox.

It's not gonna happen. Neither party is gonna pull a rabbit out of the hat that will make your 401K come magically recover, or strengthen the dollar or bring back hundreds of thousands of jobs.

We're in it for the long haul regardless of who's running this boat. And to take a lesson from history, if that's possible, the Republicans took back power from FDR in '37 in the Congress because everyone was tired of waiting for things to get better and they banked on that big time...and most economists say all it accomplished was a slower recovery from the Depression.
We'll see...let's hope we don't have a historical repeat.

I caught a really big stupid on a political ad out of Missouri this morning. The fact that I was able to do it at 6 in the morning before coffee shows you just how stupid it was.
The Republican candidate for governor was against "putting more money into the Obama health care programs" because it's "government run health care" and Nancy Pelosi and her comrades were going to take 500 million from Medicare for seniors (obvious pandering to the senior vote in a state where the majority of Republican voters are no doubt older folks) and yadda yadda to give more health care to poorer people there, who obviously don't need any help.

Although I just heard the other day on Missouri radio that 70% of the women in Missouri don't have enough insurance or any insurance to pay for regular mammograms nor for breast cancer treatments, but they don't need no stinkin government health care reforms. (yes that was sarcasm....didn't you hear it?)

Hey...isn't Medicare government run health care? Why is a guy who hates it so much in principle, or so he says, promising to increase Medicare funding? Isn't that a vote for increased government run health care too...just the kind his voters want?

I tell you, if some whippersnapper insulted my intelligence that much in a political ad, I'd not only not vote for them, I'd run over his ass with my power scooter.

I'm hoping, probably to no avail, that there are people smart enough to figure out how much they're being bullshitted by some politicians in these ads (and not just Republicans, but so far, I'm stepping in a lot more donkey shit around here than elephant...I think it's partly desperation to win back what was lost in the last election) and just vote issues.

Does anyone just fucking vote issues anymore? Nah, it's all like a small town high school foot ball game where there's a lot of good ol boy ass slapping, nasty boasting and praying to Jaysus win on both sides, but when it's all said and done, someone goes home feeling pretty sore and shitty about losing, because it's all about winning and losing in America, and just how far you'll go to win.