I think we really need to reaffirm now that no amount of homophobia can be acceptable in our culture. There is no such this as harmless or victimless homophobia. All homophobia contributes to violence against us. You can not “disagree” with lgbt people’s “lifestyles” without supporting the rhetoric and legislation that puts us in very real danger.
Homophobia isn’t that black and white though. You can hate the sin and still love the sinner.
OK, as a queer person who grew up in a genuinely loving, caring, utterly wonderful, and still deeply homophobic Church, let me try to fill in what you’re not understanding about this whole “Love the sinner” deal.
When we refer to people like you as “Homophobic” I want to be clear what we’re saying here. This is not a judgment of your intent. We are not describing you as a hateful person, as an aggressive or violent person. But we are saying that your actions and your attitudes participate in and reinforce a system of rhetoric that encourages violence against LGBT people, and, far, far more importantly, that forces millions of LGBT people to live in shame.
That’s really what this comes down to. Not hate. Not violence. Shame.
Consider the point purely theologically. Jesus tells us that to desire a sinful thing is as bad as to act on that desire. My lusting after another mans wife is as bad as actually sleeping with her. My genuine desire to hurt someone is as bad as actually hurting them.
So when you tell me that loving another man is a sin, you’re not just talking about physical acts of intimacy. You don’t get to draw the line there. You don’t get to pretend that I can be bisexual so long as I never actually physically act on it (which is already a terrible burden to place on someone). You’re saying that every time I look at a guy and imagine how soft his lips would be, or think about how beautiful his eyes are, I am sinning. I am a sinner every time a dude walks past me with a tight sweater on that shows of his arms. Every time he has nice hair or a nice smile.
My love, according to you, is a sin. That is the burden you are forcing people to live under. That burden forced me so deep into the closet that I didn’t even know I was there. It forced me to repress every genuine feeling of sexual attraction for other men, and to live for years with those feelings straining to get out, whilst I struggled with the constant guilt and shame that came from having those thoughts.
And I am one of the lucky ones, because I’m alive to have this conversation. Because for many, many LGBT people that guilt and shame manifests as self-harm, substance abuse, low esteem that leads them into abusive relationships, and very often suicide.
You tell yourself that you’re one of the good ones because you don’t hate us. You only hate what we “do”. But what we “do” is living. It’s being alive and whole and a part of this world, and if you genuinely believe that we can’t have that then you might as well put the gun to our heads and pull the trigger. Because you’re already doing that, you just don’t have the guts to admit it.
Germany had so much renewable
energy on May 8, 2016, that it had
to pay citizens to use electricity. It
was so windy and sunny that turbines
and solar power sources were
supercharged, output exceeded
demand, and prices went negative, so
customers were actually paid to
consume energy. Source
Some add the “Scientists politely remind world that clean energy is ready to go, whenever” photo im on mobile
people like to say that superhero movies “aren’t realistic” but what about that time Steve Rogers hurled himself out of a plane without a parachute rather than deal with a friend’s questions about his love life
Just before President Barack Obama announced his appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Latina justice, he said he wanted to choose someone with life experience that provided "a common touch and a sense of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live." On Monday, she put that perspective to work in a fiery dissent in a case involving a potentially illegal police stop, excoriating her colleagues for misunderstanding the police harassment to which people of color are regularly subjected.
"Do not be soothed by the opinion's technical language," Sotomayor, the child of Puerto Rican parents who grew up in the Bronx, wrote to readers of her dissent, to which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also signed on. "This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong."
The case being decided, Utah v. Strieff, has spanned a decade since an anonymous tip in 2006 about alleged drug activity in a South Salt Lake City residence led officer Douglas Fackrell to spend a week surveilling people entering and exiting the house. One day, after watching Edward Strieff visit the house, Fackrell followed him to a convenience store across the street and demanded to know what he'd been doing there. He also asked Strieff for his ID; after running a check on it, learned that he had an outstanding warrant for a minor traffic violation, so he arrested him. During his search, Fackrell found meth and drug paraphernalia on Strieff, who was ultimately charged with illegal possession.
At trial, even the prosecutor conceded that Fackrell's stop of Strieff was illegal, because he had no reasonable suspicion of any criminal activity to justify requesting his ID. But the state asked the judge to allow the drug evidence anyway, arguing that the outstanding arrest warrant merited the search. The trial court allowed the drug evidence to be introduced, and as a result Strieff pleaded guilty to lesser charges, but reserved his right to challenge the search in court. That was a smart move, as the Utah Supreme Court ultimately ruled in his favor and found that the drug evidence, tainted by the illegal stop, should never have been admitted into court.
But on Monday, the US Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, overturned the Utah high court on the grounds that Fackrell's conduct was a mistake, "negligent" behavior that shouldn't lead to the exclusion of the drug evidence. "There is no evidence that Officer Fackrell's illegal stop reflected flagrantly unlawful police misconduct," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. (The decision came on a day when the court was buzzing with erroneous rumors that Thomas was considering retiring.) The majority found Fackrell's conduct mostly harmless and inconsequential, justified by the existence of the outstanding traffic warrant and hardly part of a larger pattern of misconduct.
Sotomayor disagreed vehemently, arguing that the majority, which included liberal Justice Stephen Breyer alongside the court's conservatives, had stripped Strieff's case of its context. "Respectfully," she writes in her dissent, "nothing about this case is isolated."
Sotomayor cited a list of sources that Black Lives Matter activists would cheer: Michelle Alexander and her book The New Jim Crow; Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me; and the Justice Department Civil Rights Division's report on the problems with excessive warrants in Ferguson, Missouri, a city of 21,000 where 16,000 people (including non-residents) had outstanding warrants.
Her point was to show that outstanding warrants are so common, and so widely abused, that they should never be used to justify illegal stops by police. At the time of Strieff's arrest, she noted, Salt Lake City had a backlog of 180,000 outstanding misdemeanor warrants, so many that it was at risk of getting in trouble with the Justice Department. She cited statistics showing law enforcement's frequent use of warrants to stop all sorts of people for no good reason, writing, "Surely we would not allow officers to warrant-check random joggers, dog walkers, and lemonade vendors just to ensure they pose no threat to anyone else."
Sotomayor argued that Fackrell stopped Strieff illegally as part of a drug investigation, knowing that the odds were decent that his target would have an outstanding warrant for something. The Fourth Amendment and decades of Supreme Court precedent, she said, should have caused the fruits of that illegal stop to been thrown out. She reminded her colleagues of the real-world consequences of such "good-faith mistakes," as the majority called Fackrell's actions, describing the indignities inflicted upon people arrested after these sorts of stops: body cavity searches, handcuffing, public humiliation, and a permanent arrest record, among others.
Monday was not the first time Sotomayor has reminded her colleagues about how the real word works. In oral arguments in a death penalty case last fall, she referred to her own jailed relatives to highlight racism in jury selection.
Sotomayor concluded with a reference to Eric Garner, the New York man who was choked to death by police who were harassing him on suspicion of selling single cigarettes. "We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are 'isolated,'" she wrote. "They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere… They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system will continue to be anything but."
White people: Everyone would be safe if EVERYONE had guns!
Cops: *think black people, often CHILDREN, are carrying guns when it's toys and phones and shit* *kills them for it*
Logic: So really only white people are safer with guns, because POC can't have anything that even LOOKS like one or they're killed for it, right?
White people: *crickets*
Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) has had enough of the growing movement to drug test poor people who need government assistance. So on Tuesday, she’s introducing a bill that she says will make things fairer.
Her “Top 1% Accountability Act” would require anyone claiming itemized tax deductions of over $150,000 in a given year to submit a clean drug test. If a filer doesn’t submit a clean test within three months of filing, he won’t be able to take advantage of tax deductions like the mortgage interest deduction or health insurance tax breaks. Instead he would have to make use of the standard deduction.
Her office has calculated that the people impacted will be those who make at least $500,000 a year. “By drug testing those with itemized deductions over $150,000, this bill will level the playing field for drug testing people who are the recipients of social programs,” a memo on her bill notes.
Moore has a personal stake in the fight. “I am a former welfare recipient,” she explained. “I’ve used food stamps, I’ve received Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Head Start for my kids, Title XX daycare [subsidies]. I’m truly grateful for the social safety net.”
Twitter user Arthur Dayne recently moved in with his girlfriend. In hilarious fashion, he details all the little confusing and awesome things that have definitely changed his life for the better… [via 22words]
I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.
I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.
But surely there are also the kids, who - because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird - decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?
Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.
But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?
Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.
So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.
The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.
At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.
They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.
When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.
A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.
The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?
Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.
The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.
Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.
The heroes are genuinely flabbergasted by The Villain Wrangler. At first, some of the heroes try to reason with them.
Heroes: “Can’t you, just, give us their contact details? They’ll never even have to know it was you.”
The Villain Wrangler: “Yeah sure, <rollseyes> because all these evil geniuses could never possibly figure out that it’s me who happens to be the common thread in the sudden mass arrests. Look man, even if it wouldn’t get me killed, it would disappoint the kids. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids would you?”
Heroes: “… no~ but…”
The Villain Wrangler: “Exactly.”
Eventually, one of the anti-hero types gets frustrated, and decides to take a stand. They kidnap the Villain Wrangler and demand that they give up the contents of the little black book of Villains, or suffer the consequences. It’s For the Greater Good, the anti-hero insists as they tie the Villain Wrangler to a pillar.
The Villain Wrangler: “You complete idiot, put me back before someone figures out that I’m missing.”
Anti-hero: “…excuse me?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Ugh, do I have to spell this out for you? Do you actually want your secret base to be wiped off the map? With us in it? Sugarsticks, how long has it been? If they get suspicious, they check in, and then if I miss a check-in, they tend to come barging into wherever I am just to prove that they can, even if they figure out that they’re not being threatened by proxy. Suffice to say, Auntie Muriel really regretted throwing my phone into the pool when she strenuously objected to me answering it during family time. If they think for even one moment that I’ve given them up, they won’t hesitate to obliterate both of us from their potential misery. You do know some of the people in my book have like missiles and djinni and elemental forces at their disposal, right?”
Anti-hero: “Wait, what? I thought they trusted you?!”
The Villain Wrangler: “Trust is such a strong word!”
Villain: “Indeed.”
Anti-hero: “Wait, wha-” <slumps over, dart sticking out of neck>
The Villain Wrangler: “Thanks. I thought they were going to hurt me.”
Villain: “You did well. You kept them distracted, and gave us time to follow your signal.” <cuts Villain Wrangler free>
The Villain Wrangler: <rubbing circulation back into limbs> “Yeah well, you know me, I do whatever I have to. So I’ll see you Wednesday at four at St Martha’s? I’ve got an 8yo burns unit patient recovering from her latest batch of skin grafts who could really use a pep talk.”
Villain: “… of course. Yes… I… yes.”
The Villain Wrangler: “I just think you could really reach her, you know?”
Villain: <unconsciously runs fingers over mask> “I… yes, but, what should I say?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Whatever advice you think you could have used the most just after.”
Villain: <hoists Anti-hero over shoulder almost absently> “….yes.”
The Villain Wrangler wasn’t lying to the Anti-hero. They know that the more ruthless villains would not hesitate if they thought for one second that the Anti-hero would betray them.
But this is not the first time the Villain Wrangler has gone to extreme lengths to protect their identities.
Trust is a strong word. The Villain Wrangler earned it, and is terrified by what it could mean.
Okay this absolutely needs to be a full-length novel or movie, immediately.
oppressive jokes aren’t meant to just put down people they target. they are meant to help oppressors bond with each other.
don’t tell me it doesn’t matter to make such jokes when “there’s no one around to get offended”. don’t tell me to let it fucking slide.
i know why a man makes a misogynist joke when trying to blend into a company of other men. i know why white people make racist jokes about their coworker who is a PoC, and how it’s going to affect their work.
I’m watching a livestream of the President’s ADA address in which he remembers his father-in-law, who had MS, and wonders what more he would have been able to achieve and experience in his life if he had
-been able to use a powerchair sooner
-not been hesitant to go places and do things due to his fear of getting in people’s way by being slow, or burdening his family members in certain situations
this is one of those nuances that nondisabled people, even if they broadly say all the right things, almost never get? Like, President Obama was reminiscing about how his father-in-law always went to events early so he could take his seat before everyone else came in, to avoid getting in their way - but he wasn’t saying this to like, show that as an example of how everyone should think/act about their disability - he was saying, this is a thought pattern that ultimately needlessly limited the life of a wonderful man. Essentially he was saying that ableism, internal and external, makes people’s lives smaller, and being accommodated makes people’s lives bigger, owning their disabilities and having pride makes people’s lives bigger.
so many people just say “look at the heroic lengths this person went to in order to get around the barriers imposed on them as a person with a disability. that is so inspirational.” and I was worried that’s where this speech was going but no, the message was “look at the lengths this person went to in order to get around these barriers. he never should have had to do that. Let’s make a world that doesn’t do this to people.”
Boop is not very good at scratching in the litter box 😂
MY CAT DOES THIS SAME DAMN THING. LOUDLY. And she will keep scratching not-the-litter for like five damn minutes until I yell at her to stop because SHE IS DOING IT WRONG DAMMIT DIANA YOU HAVE ONE JOB COVERING POOPS ISN’T THAT HARD
When a handful of Westboro Baptist Church members showed up Saturday at the funeral of Orlando shooting victim Christopher Leinonen, counterprotesters donning large, white angel wings were there to shield mourners. Members of the Orlando Shakespeare Theater put together the wings as a symbolic but also literal screen between the WBC and funeral attendees. An Orlando Police tweet later proved the efforts to stop the WBC worked.
It’s hard to love someone with mental illness, I know it is. I’ve seen it from both sides. People need to understand how difficult it can be to love me, to love a person with a mental illness.
But please remember loving me, dating me, being in a relationship with me - it won’t fix me. Yes, I need love, I need support, but I don’t need someone to fix me.
I want you to know that if you’re dating Me, you date my mental illness. You date the girl who hasn’t slept at all in 3 days, or has slept for 3 days straight. You date the girl who hasn’t showered in days because it’s just too much effort. You date the girl who calls in work sick because there’s no point in life. You date the person who struggles to go to a shop. The person who cries over something small and seemingly pointless. You date the one who is suicidal one day and high as a kite the next. The person who flinches if you shout.
But you also get to date the person beneath mental illness. I am not my mental illnesses, they’re only a part of me. You also get to date the girl with the loudest laugh. You date the person who wants to raise a family with a dog. The person who wants to make camp fires and look at the stars. The girls who sings a little too loudly. The girl who thinks Sunday’s should be days of adventures and baking.
I want someone that accepts my mental illness, because it is a part of me. Love me for who I am. My mental illness is a result of my story, and without my story I am nothing. I am not a victim, this is me.
I struggle, and some days I don’t see the point in life, but I have good days, I have really good days. You have to take my good with my bad, and love every part of me. You can’t fix me, just love me.
Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) has had enough of the growing movement to drug test poor people who need government assistance. So on Tuesday, she’s introducing a bill that she says will make things fairer.
Her “Top 1% Accountability Act” would require anyone claiming itemized tax deductions of over $150,000 in a given year to submit a clean drug test. If a filer doesn’t submit a clean test within three months of filing, he won’t be able to take advantage of tax deductions like the mortgage interest deduction or health insurance tax breaks. Instead he would have to make use of the standard deduction.
Her office has calculated that the people impacted will be those who make at least $500,000 a year. “By drug testing those with itemized deductions over $150,000, this bill will level the playing field for drug testing people who are the recipients of social programs,” a memo on her bill notes.
Moore has a personal stake in the fight. “I am a former welfare recipient,” she explained. “I’ve used food stamps, I’ve received Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Head Start for my kids, Title XX daycare [subsidies]. I’m truly grateful for the social safety net.”
I am 100% behind this idea.
YESYESYESYESYES
This is brilliant, and should absolutely happen.
Or it shouldn’t happen, and the insane, racist, classist policy of drug testing welfare recipients should be ended immediately.
To be honest, I've never quite grasped the whole "too many people have said that sentence, it now means nothing" concept. If the words are matched by actions, then they clearly are not meaningless. If they are NOT matched by actions, then yes, they are meaningless. I'm looking at you "Thought and Prayers."
Hovertext: The key to a solid relationship is winning all the time.
can we please have a version of drunk history except it’s called drunk mythology and people who know a lot about myths just get hammered and ramble about them with cartoony reenactments going on in the background? because i would totally go on tv and drunkenly kinkshame zeus
PLEASE how do i sign up
Really must finish that video
“I have had an entire bottle of cheap-ass port, and now I am gonna tell you all about the mother-fucking muses.“
