Historic Senate vote clears way for gay marriage in state
The state Senate passed legislation Wednesday night that would legalize gay marriage. The bill now goes to the House, where it’s expected to pass easily.
It’s always puzzled me that in a country where heterosexual marriages end in divorce 50% of the time, heterosexuals somehow still think that only heterosexuals should be allowed to marry.
Happily, Washington is poised to become the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage, and I only hope that that number will continue to grow.
I’m continually surprised by how many times I’ve recommended TED Talks — those incredibly thought-provoking, inspiring, often moving products of the various TED conferences held around the world — to people who have never heard of them, for I find them so thoroughly accessible, with each talk lasting no more than 18-20 minutes.
I mean, we can all find time for a few of these a day, or more scattered throughout the week. Right?
This was a challenging video for me, as I suspect it would be for most of my fellow peaceniks. The assertion made by Peter van Uhm, Chief of Defense for The Netherlands, that guns and armies are necessary tools for peace, rubs me the wrong way. And yet, having been raised Jewish, I carry the inherited trauma of the Holocaust, and I’ve struggled my whole life with the question of whether or not violent military action is justifiable in order to save people from oppression or genocide.
Now, I don’t agree with everything that Mr. van Uhm says, but I admire the TED organization for inviting him to speak and present his case, and he does so eloquently, with great sensitivity, and with great respect for his fellow TED presenters and attendees, who are trying to make the world a better, more peaceful place via a variety of other means.
A man from the San Francisco Bay area has fathered 14 children in the last five years through free sperm donations to women he meets through his website — and is now in trouble with the federal government.
The case of Trent Arsenault of Fremont has drawn attention to the practice of informal sperm donation, which physicians and bioethicists call unsafe but some people say is a civil liberties issue…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent Arsenault a cease-and-desist letter late last year telling him he must stop because he does not follow the agency’s requirements for getting tested for sexually transmitted diseases within seven days before giving sperm. The FDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Violators of FDA regulations on human cells and tissues face up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine, according to guidelines published on the agency’s website.
Now, Arsenault states that he does get tested regularly, but even more compelling…
Arsenault says he donates sperm out of a sense of service to help people who want to have children but can’t afford conventional sperm banks. The 36-year-old minister’s son has four more children on the way.
“I always had known through people praying at church that there’s fertility issues,” Arsenault told The Associated Press on Monday. “I thought it would just be a neat way of service to help the community.”
Sounds incredibly reasonable, doesn’t it?
I mean, how many Don Juan types are out there right now, impregnating women left and right the old-fashioned way, and here’s a guy who simply wants to help people, and he’s facing a year in prison and a hefty fine?
His website is loaded with information about himself — his medical records, his lifestyle and diet, even a criminal background check — so it’s hard to argue that he’s being reckless. What emerges is a picture of a pretty extraordinary guy. He’s the son of a pastor and states he’s a churchgoer himself, and yet…
He says he believes his case comes down to constitutional issues of a right to privacy and reproductive choice.
On his website, he includes this quote from the Guttmacher Institute, and he emphatically added the underlining:
…women, in consultation with their physician, have a constitutionally protected right to have an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy—that is, before viability—free from government interference.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Trent will sell out and end up with his own reality TV show, but for now I’m inclined to admire him for his desire to do good.
People say We have been in ignorance 4 so long, how can it all be cleared away quickly, as Zen people claim? How wonderful water tastes.— Buddhism Now (@Buddhism_Now) September 09, 2011
My own experience, and that of others, has shown me the degree to which positive mental attitudes bring happiness to oneself and others.— Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) August 10, 2011
I dare anyone to watch the video and NOT have the word “hippies” come to mind, and I’m reminded of a post I wrote back in April 2010, a lament on the fact that for some, in my opinion too many, the word “hippies” carries a negative connotation.
I watch that video of Do You Realize? and it’s quite bittersweet for me. While it’s heartening to see hippie culture surviving, it breaks my heart to think of how squashed the movement got, as I wrote previously, by cynicism and conservatism.
What I see when I watch that video is a crowd of people being incredibly peaceful, lovingly joining their voices together in song, singing about how precious life is and how we should, together, make the most of every single second. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the pleasure of similar experiences, and while I was raised Jewish and now dabble in Buddhism, I’d have to say that gatherings like that, especially when they involve making music, are really the only church I’ll ever need.
Back in April 2010 I quoted a line by Pete Townshend of The Who, a line that I remembered but couldn’t recall exactly where it came from. Well, I’ve since remembered.
In 1993, Townshend released an album titled Psychoderelict, a concept album about an aging rock star lamenting the fact that back in the late 60s and through much of the 70s artists and their fans really did believe that their music and art, along with their love and community, could change the world for the better.
Townshend’s aging rocker says at one point, “Whatever happened to all that lovely hippie shit?”
Well, despite all the cynicism in our screwed up world, that hippie shit is alive and well and recently showed up in a Los Angeles cemetery. And, it really has very little to do with how people dress or how often they do drugs and drink, and everything to do with a sincere belief that love; peaceful, supportive, inclusive community; and freedom of expression, are the most important things.
You know, I haven’t been very pleased with the government here in Washington State lately. (Just one example.)
