Horoscope Front Page: "Today's Date: Dec. 27
Aquarius 1/20 - 2/18
This is a terrific day for you, dear Aquarius, and you will find that your emotional state of mind is wonderfully upbeat. Things should be naturally flowing your way, and there is an instinctual knowing that you have about things that will help you navigate through whatever rough waters may come your way - if any. Take this opportunity to secure commitments from others and nail down plans that you intend to complete."
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Gay News From 365Gay.com
Was Jesus Gay?
by Matt Johns 365Gay.com Los Angeles Bureau
Posted: December 25, 2004 12:01 am ET
Was Jesus Gay?
(Los Angeles, California) As Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus few of them will be told in their churches and Cathedrals anything about the sexuality of Jesus, yet a growing group of Biblical scholars believe that Christ may have had at least one sexual relationship with another male.
Noted Methodist theologian Rev. Theodore Jennings Jr. and Dr Morton Smith, a world renowned Bible scholar, say there is irrefutable evidence that Jesus was at least bisexual. Dr Rollan McCleary of the University of Queensland, in Australia, says he has discovered through his research that three of the disciples were gay.
Prof. Smith points to a fragment of manuscript he found at the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem in 1958 which he says alludes to Jesus having a homosexual relationship with a youth he raised from the dead. The fragment shows that the full text of St. Mark, Chapter 10 (between verses 34 and 35 in the standard version of the Bible) includes the following passage:
"And the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God".
Rev. Jennings, a professor at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary, points to the Gospel of St. John. In his book "The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives From the New Testament," Jennings writes that the reference in St John about "the disciple Jesus loved" was actually a reference to Jesus' gay boyfriend.
Jennings also claims the centurion's servant who was healed by Jesus actually was the centurion's gay boyfriend and that Jesus did not denounce their relationship.
Dr McCleary spent three years researching “gay spirituality”. His book, "Signs for a Messiah" says that Jesus and at least three of his disciples were gay, and Christianity in general is built on “gay principles”.
McCleary says that Christianity needs to recognize its homosexual roots and abandon the practice of alienating gays and spreading homophobia.
British gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell says even though the information about Jesus' sexuality remains scant, "there is certainly no evidence for the Church's presumption that he was heterosexual. Nothing in the Bible points to him having desires or relationships with women. The possibility of a gay Christ cannot be ruled out."
"Since there is no proof of the heterosexuality of Jesus, the theological basis of Church homophobia is all the more shaky and indefensible," Tatchell said.
"Large chunks of Jesus' life are missing from the Biblical accounts. This has fuelled speculation that the early Church sanitized the gospels, removing references to Christ's sexuality that were not in accord with the heterosexual morality that it wanted to promote", said Tatchell.
The Vatican has denounced the research by Jennings, Smith and McCleary as "heretical". It has also been denounced by Southern Baptists and evangelical Anglicans.
When recently asked if his research might be tainted because he is gay, McCleary said: "You could see that either way. You could also say that heterosexual people have their eyes wide shut on the matter, that they don't want to see that Jesus would have been of gay disposition.
"You maybe have to be gay to read the signals and to see things and research things which other people wouldn't," he added.
©365Gay.com 2004
Was Jesus Gay?
by Matt Johns 365Gay.com Los Angeles Bureau
Posted: December 25, 2004 12:01 am ET
Was Jesus Gay?
(Los Angeles, California) As Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus few of them will be told in their churches and Cathedrals anything about the sexuality of Jesus, yet a growing group of Biblical scholars believe that Christ may have had at least one sexual relationship with another male.
Noted Methodist theologian Rev. Theodore Jennings Jr. and Dr Morton Smith, a world renowned Bible scholar, say there is irrefutable evidence that Jesus was at least bisexual. Dr Rollan McCleary of the University of Queensland, in Australia, says he has discovered through his research that three of the disciples were gay.
Prof. Smith points to a fragment of manuscript he found at the Mar Saba monastery near Jerusalem in 1958 which he says alludes to Jesus having a homosexual relationship with a youth he raised from the dead. The fragment shows that the full text of St. Mark, Chapter 10 (between verses 34 and 35 in the standard version of the Bible) includes the following passage:
"And the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God".
Rev. Jennings, a professor at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary, points to the Gospel of St. John. In his book "The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives From the New Testament," Jennings writes that the reference in St John about "the disciple Jesus loved" was actually a reference to Jesus' gay boyfriend.
Jennings also claims the centurion's servant who was healed by Jesus actually was the centurion's gay boyfriend and that Jesus did not denounce their relationship.
Dr McCleary spent three years researching “gay spirituality”. His book, "Signs for a Messiah" says that Jesus and at least three of his disciples were gay, and Christianity in general is built on “gay principles”.
McCleary says that Christianity needs to recognize its homosexual roots and abandon the practice of alienating gays and spreading homophobia.
British gay rights advocate Peter Tatchell says even though the information about Jesus' sexuality remains scant, "there is certainly no evidence for the Church's presumption that he was heterosexual. Nothing in the Bible points to him having desires or relationships with women. The possibility of a gay Christ cannot be ruled out."
"Since there is no proof of the heterosexuality of Jesus, the theological basis of Church homophobia is all the more shaky and indefensible," Tatchell said.
"Large chunks of Jesus' life are missing from the Biblical accounts. This has fuelled speculation that the early Church sanitized the gospels, removing references to Christ's sexuality that were not in accord with the heterosexual morality that it wanted to promote", said Tatchell.
The Vatican has denounced the research by Jennings, Smith and McCleary as "heretical". It has also been denounced by Southern Baptists and evangelical Anglicans.
When recently asked if his research might be tainted because he is gay, McCleary said: "You could see that either way. You could also say that heterosexual people have their eyes wide shut on the matter, that they don't want to see that Jesus would have been of gay disposition.
"You maybe have to be gay to read the signals and to see things and research things which other people wouldn't," he added.
©365Gay.com 2004
Friday, December 24, 2004
Today's Date: Dec. 24
Aquarius 1/20 - 2/18
Old demons and dreams are on the agenda today, dear Aquarius. Would you have liked to be an artist? Are you sure about that? If you are an artist already, would you like to be more prominent, or richer? Be wary of such daydreaming because it takes you away from enjoying your real life. To live in the "here and now," to embrace what you already have will ultimately give you the same satisfaction as those who are richer, or more famous.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Norman Solomon | Media in the Winter of Our "Disremorse": " Media in the Winter of Our 'Disremorse'
By Norman Solomon
YubaNet.com"
Go to Original
Media in the Winter of Our "Disremorse"
By Norman Solomon
YubaNet.com
Friday 03 December 2004
Early in the coldest season, optimists think of the day after solstice. It's predictable: the hemisphere will start tilting toward more light and warmth. But in the politics of human societies, there's no reliable way to tell how long a bone-rattling chill will last - or how far it might go. A government's harsher policies could provoke kinetic revulsion and progressive resurgence. Or the dominant political atmosphere might have an overall effect of strengthening and perpetuating itself.
By now, the 2004 electorate has been spliced and diced to the culinary standard of American punditry. Countless journalists have joined with other analysts to explain what it all really means. But the news media still don't tell us much about underlying aspects of mood that can't be broken out with poll numbers. Wooden questions yield data about stiff answers. Fact-based reporters may not offer much more human truth than a fact-based phone book.
Today, in the real world of the United States - in this closely and fiercely divided country - large numbers of people see President George W. Bush as despicable. But the tenor of daily reporting does little to incorporate such assessments into the mix of media coverage. And the conciliatory noises coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill are misleading; they don't reflect the hostility that persists at the grassroots.
Potentially volatile, the rage toward Washington's current rulers is percolating underneath the recent often-cutesy news items about upticks of interest in emigrating to Canada and fantasies of blue-state secession. The extensive foreboding in the present-day United States is often of a character and vehemence that mainstream U.S. media reporting is either unwilling or unable to evoke.
Many millions of Americans would tell a suitably inquiring journalist that they don't really regret John Kerry's loss - that what they find horrific is the new four-year lease on the White House for an administration with an unrepentant track record of mendacity and extreme ideological zeal.
With two federal branches under the control of those zealots, the final arbiter of the third branch - the Supreme Court - is now under severe threat of wink-and-nod judicial fundamentalism. More than ever, in this context, journalism is a thin yet vital reed. Protection of civil liberties and abortion rights is at imminent risk. Yet the news media keep giving enormous deference to the USA's bastions of consolidated economic and electoral power.
Absent from daily news coverage is remorse.
So, the major media outlets of the United States are entering this winter in a resolute state of "disremorse" - about 180 degrees from any sense of national apology or expressed regret. In the aftermath of a 51 percent victory for the Rove-Cheney-Bush regime on Election Day, the breast-beating and halo-preening exercises have intensified. And while a cast of characters - Ashcroft, Powell, Ridge, etc. - heads toward the exits, virtually interchangeable players step into their roles.
With all the comings and goings, remorse is still light-years away as top officials speak and news media report. No need to mention people who don't have a home; no need to focus on the children and adults with paltry health care, or on the overall human impacts of so much scarcity in the midst of great wealth. These profound concerns really matter in people's lives. Yet it's as though the reigning politicians and media have found ways to take our minds off our minds.
The nerve-blocking anesthetics of mass media impede the flow of feeling in unauthorized directions. Cause and effect are disconnected, so that it seems unavoidable and natural for children to live in poverty across town or for U.S. troops to be killing and dying in Iraq. Right now, it's a struggle to disrupt the numbing media chatter about miscalculations and mistakes - to insist on acknowledgment of moral culpability. America's winter of disremorse is not about nature, it's about a lack of nurture for what remains frozen: our capacity to innovate and cooperate sufficiently to stop the "leaders" who destroy life in our names.
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be found at normansolomon.com.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Saturday December 4, 2004
© Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org
By Norman Solomon
YubaNet.com"
Go to Original
Media in the Winter of Our "Disremorse"
By Norman Solomon
YubaNet.com
Friday 03 December 2004
Early in the coldest season, optimists think of the day after solstice. It's predictable: the hemisphere will start tilting toward more light and warmth. But in the politics of human societies, there's no reliable way to tell how long a bone-rattling chill will last - or how far it might go. A government's harsher policies could provoke kinetic revulsion and progressive resurgence. Or the dominant political atmosphere might have an overall effect of strengthening and perpetuating itself.
By now, the 2004 electorate has been spliced and diced to the culinary standard of American punditry. Countless journalists have joined with other analysts to explain what it all really means. But the news media still don't tell us much about underlying aspects of mood that can't be broken out with poll numbers. Wooden questions yield data about stiff answers. Fact-based reporters may not offer much more human truth than a fact-based phone book.
Today, in the real world of the United States - in this closely and fiercely divided country - large numbers of people see President George W. Bush as despicable. But the tenor of daily reporting does little to incorporate such assessments into the mix of media coverage. And the conciliatory noises coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill are misleading; they don't reflect the hostility that persists at the grassroots.
Potentially volatile, the rage toward Washington's current rulers is percolating underneath the recent often-cutesy news items about upticks of interest in emigrating to Canada and fantasies of blue-state secession. The extensive foreboding in the present-day United States is often of a character and vehemence that mainstream U.S. media reporting is either unwilling or unable to evoke.
Many millions of Americans would tell a suitably inquiring journalist that they don't really regret John Kerry's loss - that what they find horrific is the new four-year lease on the White House for an administration with an unrepentant track record of mendacity and extreme ideological zeal.
With two federal branches under the control of those zealots, the final arbiter of the third branch - the Supreme Court - is now under severe threat of wink-and-nod judicial fundamentalism. More than ever, in this context, journalism is a thin yet vital reed. Protection of civil liberties and abortion rights is at imminent risk. Yet the news media keep giving enormous deference to the USA's bastions of consolidated economic and electoral power.
Absent from daily news coverage is remorse.
So, the major media outlets of the United States are entering this winter in a resolute state of "disremorse" - about 180 degrees from any sense of national apology or expressed regret. In the aftermath of a 51 percent victory for the Rove-Cheney-Bush regime on Election Day, the breast-beating and halo-preening exercises have intensified. And while a cast of characters - Ashcroft, Powell, Ridge, etc. - heads toward the exits, virtually interchangeable players step into their roles.
With all the comings and goings, remorse is still light-years away as top officials speak and news media report. No need to mention people who don't have a home; no need to focus on the children and adults with paltry health care, or on the overall human impacts of so much scarcity in the midst of great wealth. These profound concerns really matter in people's lives. Yet it's as though the reigning politicians and media have found ways to take our minds off our minds.
The nerve-blocking anesthetics of mass media impede the flow of feeling in unauthorized directions. Cause and effect are disconnected, so that it seems unavoidable and natural for children to live in poverty across town or for U.S. troops to be killing and dying in Iraq. Right now, it's a struggle to disrupt the numbing media chatter about miscalculations and mistakes - to insist on acknowledgment of moral culpability. America's winter of disremorse is not about nature, it's about a lack of nurture for what remains frozen: our capacity to innovate and cooperate sufficiently to stop the "leaders" who destroy life in our names.
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be found at normansolomon.com.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Saturday December 4, 2004
© Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org
Christian Killers? by Laurence M. Vance: "There is no doubt that many of the soldiers responsible for the recent death and destruction in Fallujah are Christians. And there is no doubt that many Americans who call for more death and destruction in Iraq and elsewhere are Christians as well."
Friday, December 03, 2004
Horoscope Front Page: "Today's Date: Dec. 3
Aquarius 1/20 - 2/18
The last several days have been a bit of an ordeal, so you may be surprised by the brightness of the day ahead. Although you may not necessarily be trying to assert yourself more than usual, you will receive compliments and congratulations from many sources. Baffling, isn't it? Let yourself take advantage of the joys ahead without subjecting them to too much scrutiny, dear Aquarius."
note, went to the hospital twice this past weekend, god, blog it all
Aquarius 1/20 - 2/18
The last several days have been a bit of an ordeal, so you may be surprised by the brightness of the day ahead. Although you may not necessarily be trying to assert yourself more than usual, you will receive compliments and congratulations from many sources. Baffling, isn't it? Let yourself take advantage of the joys ahead without subjecting them to too much scrutiny, dear Aquarius."
note, went to the hospital twice this past weekend, god, blog it all
Gay News From 365Gay.com: "Gay Teens Barred From School Dance
by The Associated Press
Posted: December 3, 2004 11:02 am ET
Gay Teens Barred From School Dance
(West Jordan, Utah) A school principal refused to let two gay 17-year-old boys attend a high-school dance as a couple without permission from their parents.
Tom Worlton, the principal at Copper Hills High School, said he was concerned for the safety of the boys who might be taunted by others.
'There's a danger, and I believe the parents ought to be aware of that,' Worlton said Wednesday. 'If parents were OK with it, I'd make no judgment.'
Jason Atwood, a 17-year-old senior, said Worlton's condition smacked of discrimination and kept him and his boyfriend from attending the dance.
Atwood's father wouldn't sign a permission slip for fear that it would absolve the school of responsibility if anything were to happen to his son.
Dani Eyer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said state law requires schools to promote tolerance and protect students from harassment. 'Would you require a note for a disabled student to go to a dance?' she asked.
Worlton said he rejected the allegation of discrimination, adding, 'Unless someone can convince me that it's an unfair policy, we'll live with it.'
Supporters and members of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, led by Atwood, held all-day protests this week just off school property.
Reactions from passers-by ran from support to obscenities, snowballs and glares.
Atwood sported a bump on his head from a soda can he said was thrown from a car Wednesday, a reminder of what he's up against.
'It's something no student should experience, especially in a place where they're supposed to be learning,' he said. 'But it's something I've been dealing with since I was 13, and I've been raised to stand up for what I believe in.'
�Associated Press 2004"
by The Associated Press
Posted: December 3, 2004 11:02 am ET
Gay Teens Barred From School Dance
(West Jordan, Utah) A school principal refused to let two gay 17-year-old boys attend a high-school dance as a couple without permission from their parents.
Tom Worlton, the principal at Copper Hills High School, said he was concerned for the safety of the boys who might be taunted by others.
'There's a danger, and I believe the parents ought to be aware of that,' Worlton said Wednesday. 'If parents were OK with it, I'd make no judgment.'
Jason Atwood, a 17-year-old senior, said Worlton's condition smacked of discrimination and kept him and his boyfriend from attending the dance.
Atwood's father wouldn't sign a permission slip for fear that it would absolve the school of responsibility if anything were to happen to his son.
Dani Eyer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, said state law requires schools to promote tolerance and protect students from harassment. 'Would you require a note for a disabled student to go to a dance?' she asked.
Worlton said he rejected the allegation of discrimination, adding, 'Unless someone can convince me that it's an unfair policy, we'll live with it.'
Supporters and members of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, led by Atwood, held all-day protests this week just off school property.
Reactions from passers-by ran from support to obscenities, snowballs and glares.
Atwood sported a bump on his head from a soda can he said was thrown from a car Wednesday, a reminder of what he's up against.
'It's something no student should experience, especially in a place where they're supposed to be learning,' he said. 'But it's something I've been dealing with since I was 13, and I've been raised to stand up for what I believe in.'
�Associated Press 2004"
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
I'm not expecting to get any tips. I'm glad that you have a good doctor. Did you try to get in touch with him before going to the hospital? He might have called in a script for you? I'm going on with this thing called life. It seems rather bleak right now, but it always has been that way, so it doesn't really bother me much. I do tend to act out, I'm sure that you can identify with that. I hope that we can come out of all of this to a better place. I refuse to give up. I think good things are still going to happen. If everything material is manna, then why should we focus on it?
PS I painted some tonight it seems to help.