2020
Why churches fear gay marriage | Salon News
Richard Rodriguez' thought-provoking article -
"While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures."
FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: Prop 8 Myths
This is interesting - I trust Nate Silver's take on statistics, and it looks like prop 8's passage may be more generational than race/religion-related. I mean, of COURSE it's religion-related, but within same race/religion groups, voters over 65 voted more for and younger voters voted more against. That makes more sense to me. And is, in a way (as stated in the article), more hopeful for the future of equality.
YouTube - The West Wing - bible
President Bartlet totally PWNS the "Dr. Laura" character, Jenna Jacobs, on Old Testament Biblical Law. Awesome. Homosexuality is an abomination, and also... death is the punishment for working on the sabbath, selling your children into slavery is condoned, the punishment for planting two different crops side by side is stoning, mixing two types of thread into one fabric is punishable by burning, etc, etc - just awesome.
Utah Legislators Call Mormon Leadership’s Bluff on LGBT Rights
This will be interesting. But even if they DO support "equal" rights in these areas - haven't we learned? Separate is NOT equal.
Gay marriage is a question of love - Countdown with Keith Olbermann- msnbc.com
This is powerful, and I have to say that I like ~reading~ Olbermann much more than watching him. There is a link to a video, too, if you like watching/listening better. It's all about honoring LOVE. Honoring commitment. HONORING marriage for what it ~should~ be.
Why Gay Marriage Was Defeated in California - TIME - Annotated
In this case, fear, unfounded fears fanned by propaganda of religion-based beliefs, won out over hope and fairness. So sad, and so ironic that African Americans, who voted in record numbers for a candidate that gave them hope, also voted against equal rights for another group, crushing ~their~ hope.
'Buy Nothing Day' a sign of the times? | Crave - CNET
This article is a good synopsis of Buy Nothing Day and other ways to fight rampant, senseless consumerism
Op-Ed Contributor - Dying of Consumption - NYTimes.com
"...there is a deeper, potentially positive, meaning to all this: Consumers are now abandoning the asset-dependent spending and saving strategies they embraced during the bubbles of the past dozen years and moving back to more prudent income-based lifestyles."
This is right on! The "MasterCard, I'm Bored!" mentality has got to change - we have come to believe that we are entitled to anything we want, even if we can't afford it. That is NOT the "American Way" as some people seem to think.
Zakaria: A More Disciplined America | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com
Excellent article by the brilliant Fareed Zakaria - serious and yet very hopeful at the same time. We have the chance to go back to being ourselves - our best selves, and that is a good thing.
Forget commercialism! The new realities of consumption and the economy.
"Spending our way to prosperity? Not this time around.
As a “New Dream” economist, I am asked all the time: won’t consuming less hurt the economy? When there’s less spending, people get laid off, their incomes fall and businesses, especially small ones, go bankrupt. This question is especially urgent today, given that the recession is deepening and spreading. George Bush was widely (and rightly) criticized for suggesting shopping as the patriotic response to 9/11. Would Barack Obama be wrong if he suggested the same?
Short answer: Yes. But with this topic, there’s rarely a short answer. So here’s the longer one."
tags: consumer, economy, politics
New Dream Blog » Blog Archive » Holiday shopping–just don’t
"We can find better ways to support one another than funneling our money through giant multinationals in hopes that some trickles down to its employees."
tags: economy, consumer, politics, environment