The Lotus Sutra

Namo Amituofo - Pure Land (1 Mala - 108 Repetitions)

Guan Yin Song

Green Tara Mantra: Throat Chanting

Green Tara Mantra (108 Repetitions)

Saintly Man? - That Mitchell & Webb Look - BBC Two

L'Animateur

L'Animateur
Uploaded by PeteRock. - Watch original web videos.

Un marionnettiste un peu particulier propose une version personnelle d'Adam et Eve aux habitants d'une planète... 

Glenn Beck is NOT Martin Luther King Jr.

Banking on hunger | SocialistWorker.org

Banking on hunger | SocialistWorker.org

Betw33n Worlds

Welcome back

Pure Theta

TheRiver

Infinite Bliss (Alpha binaural beats) Unisonic Ascension

Mila's Daydreams

LINK

8: The Mormon Proposition

Download at Atheist Movies

Target's Financial Backing of Anti-Gay Politician - SFist

Target's Financial Backing of Anti-Gay Politician - SFist

Wayne Besen: Jesus and the Son of Scam

Wayne Besen: Jesus and the Son of Scam

JONAH's "Ex-Gay" Psychological Striptease

Suit Against Wal-Mart Highlights Medical Marijuana Patient Discrimination

Last week, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart which could have significant implications for thousands of seriously ill Americans across the country who legally use medical marijuana under state law, but still face employer discrimination because of the continued stigma attached to the medicine that brings them relief. 

Joseph Casias, a 30-year-old married father of two, was wrongfully fired from his job at a Wal-Mart store in Battle Creek, Michigan after he tested positive for marijuana following a drug screening. Casias is a legal, registered medical marijuana patient in Michigan. He takes marijuana on the recommendation of his oncologist to help relieve the effects of sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor that was the size of a softball when diagnosed. 

This treatment became a legal option for Casias in 2008, after Michigan voters passed the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (MMMA), which provides protection for the medical use of the drug under state law. In accordance with the law, Casias never used marijuana while on the job, nor did he ever work under the influence of marijuana. In fact, during his time at Wal-Mart, Casias was able to rise from an entry-level stocking position to a managerial role, and along the way, he was named the store's 2008 Associate of the Year. 

In late 2009, Joseph twisted his knee at work. He was given a drug test after being sent to the doctor's office and, predictably, failed that test due to his lawful use of medical marijuana. Wal-Mart then fired him because he failed the test, despite the company's knowledge that he was lawfully using marijuana for pain treatment and not under the influence of the drug while at work. 

The ACLU's lawsuit charges that Wal-Mart wrongfully terminated Joseph in violation of the protections of the MMMA. The Casias case will have great significance not only for Joseph's own life and livelihood but also for thousands of patients around the country in the 14 states and the District of Columbia where medical marijuana is legal. 

Medical marijuana patients already face enough of a challenge trying to treat what are often life-threatening illnesses, such as cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis. They shouldn't have to worry about their jobs, as well. 


ACLU


Let Wal-Mart know what you think

Facing the Future as a Media Felon on the Gulf Coast | FUBAR AND GRILL

It is now a felony to take more photos of birds like this, wading through oil that broken booms have trapped in rookeries

Facing the Future as a Media Felon on the Gulf Coast | FUBAR AND GRILL

RainyMood.com

RainyMood.com

Quiz Show (Bible Contradictions)

Franz Kafka- 127 years today

Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883 – June 3 1924) is one of the most influential fiction writers of the early 20th century; a novelist and writer of short stories whose works, only after his death, came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of 20th century literature. 

He was born to middle class German-speaking Jewish parents in Prague, Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The house in which he was born, on the Old Town Square next to Prague's Church of St Nicholas, today contains a permanent exhibition devoted to the author. 

Kafka's work—the novels The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) andAmerika (1927), as well as short stories including The Metamorphosis (1915) and In the Penal Colony (1914)—is now collectively considered to be among the most original bodies of work in modern Western literature. Much of his work, unfinished at the time of his death, was published posthumously. The writer's name has led to the term "Kafkaesque" being used in the English language. 

“We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours. And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.” 

— Franz Kafka 

Posted by Parabola Magazine

Copy of The Metamorphosis

Sorry. I like them.

The Brand Vultures – Keds & Co.. Category: Reader Commentaries from The Berkeley Daily Planet - Tuesday June 29, 2010

After reading this little conniption fit I must have a pair! Either that or go burn down some stores and kill a few dozen people. I'm truly torn between the two.

The One True God

A Stonewall Veteran, 89, Misses the Parade

By MANNY FERNANDEZ

At noon on Sunday, thousands of marchers filled Fifth Avenue for New York City’s annual gay pride parade. Nearly six miles away, on the sixth floor of a nursing home in Brooklyn, the frail, white-haired woman in beige pajamas and brown slippers in Room 609 sat motionless at the edge of her bed, staring out her window.

She touched the medallion on her necklace — an image of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes — and fiddled with one of her rings.

“This one,” she said of the ring on a pinky finger, “I hit a guy so hard I knocked the stone out, and I hadn’t gotten around to put it back yet.”

She had forgotten that the gay pride march was Sunday. Her mind and her memory are not as sharp as her wit and her tongue. She said she had been living there, at the Oxford Nursing Home, for years (she arrived in April). She was not sure how old she was (she will be 90 in December).

The woman in Room 609, Storme DeLarverie, has dementia. She is but one anonymous elderly New Yorker in a city with thousands upon thousands of them. And many of those who marched down Fifth Avenue on Sunday would be hard pressed to realize that this little old lady — once the cross-dressing M.C. of a group of drag-queen performers, once a fiercely protective (and pistol-packing) bouncer in the city’s lesbian bars — was one of the reasons they were marching.

Ms. DeLarverie fought the police in 1969 at the historic riot at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village that kicked off the gay rights movement. The first gay pride parade in 1970 was not a parade at all but a protest marking the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

Some writers believe Ms. DeLarverie may have been the cross-dressing lesbian whose clubbing by the police was the catalyst for the riots (the woman has never been identified). While others are adamant that Ms. DeLarverie was not that woman, no one disputes that she was there, and no one doubts that the woman who had been fighting back all her life fought back in the summer of 1969.

At one point on Sunday, she said she was not struck by the police. At another moment, she said a police officer had hit her from behind. “He wound up flat on his back on the ground,” said Ms. DeLarverie, a member of the Stonewall Veterans’ Association. “I don’t know what he hit me with. He hit me from behind, the coward.”

Ms. DeLarverie has struggled in recent years with a confluence of housing, mental health and legal issues. In 2009, a social services group, the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, was appointed her legal guardian by a judge. In March, she was hospitalized after she was found disoriented and dehydrated at the Chelsea Hotel, her home for decades. No one occupies her room on the seventh floor of the hotel, but it remains unclear if she will ever return.

A small group of friends, including some of her neighbors at the Chelsea Hotel, visit her regularly. A social worker with the nonprofit group SAGE, which provides services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender older people, has been assisting Ms. DeLarverie since 1999, when she was at risk of eviction from the hotel.

Some of her friends said they had been frustrated by the way she was treated by the authorities and others, and they expressed disappointment that Ms. DeLarverie’s troubles have not been a widespread concern for many gay and lesbian activists.

“I feel like the gay community could have really rallied, but they didn’t,” said Lisa Cannistraci, a longtime friend of Ms. DeLarverie’s who is the owner of the lesbian bar Henrietta Hudson, where Ms. DeLarverie worked as a bouncer.

“The young gays and lesbians today have never heard of her,” Ms. Cannistraci said, “and most of our activists are young. They’re in their 20s and early 30s. The community that’s familiar with her is dwindling.”

Ms. DeLarverie’s friends said they were disturbed because she spent most of her days inside the nursing home and they had not been allowed to take her outside, even for walks.

Leah Ferster, chief services officer for the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged, said she was not aware that that was a concern among her friends. “We have to make sure she’s medically capable and able, and if that was true, then we would be glad to speak with her friends and see if we can come up with a safe plan and have her go out for a few hours,” she said.

Ms. DeLarverie’s first name is pronounced STORM-ee, like the weather, but in Room 609 on Sunday, she was calm, chatty, graceful. Her life has been flamboyant, boundary-breaking, the stuff of pulp fiction.

Friends say she worked for the mob in Chicago. The drag-queen group she performed with decades ago, known as the Jewel Box Revue, regularly played the Apollo in Harlem (she dressed as a man and the men dressed as women). She was photographed by Diane Arbus. She carried a straight-edge razor in her sock, and while some merely walked to and from the gay and lesbian bars in the Village, friends said, she patrolled.

Sitting at the edge of her bed, her mind turned again to the parade, where, in the past, she had been a fixture. She said she had a message for those who took part in the celebration. “Just be themselves, like they’ve always been,” she said. “They don’t have to pretend anything. They’re who they are.”

Ms. DeLarverie asked what time it was, and what time the march started. At one point, she took off her slippers and seemed to look for her shoes. “I think they started already,” she said. “They’re probably wondering where I am.”

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

SOURCE

Family Guy - Stewie's First Hustler Magazine

Ohmi Gallery

LINK

Sassy Gay Friend: Eve

Mind Deep A Mindfulness Practice Blog

LINK

Namo Amituofo,8,Namo Amitabha....

Amida

Gay McDonald's Ad Spoof

Touchdown Jesus Struck By Lightning

The obscenity of gay exorcism

 
The obscenity of gay exorcism

Wile E. Coyote finally gets the Road Runner

Tell EPA: Take away BP's billions in federal contracts

Dear Friend,

It's time to stop playing BP's games and make the company take
responsibility for the pattern of reckless behavior that led to the
growing Deep Horizon disaster in the gulf.

The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to bar BP from
receiving U.S. government contracts. Suspension of BP contracts would mean
the loss of billions of dollars and effectively stop the company from
drilling in federally controlled oil fields both on and offshore.

I just signed the petition to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson asking her to
impose "discretionary debarment" and strip BP of all federal contracts.
You can take action too by clicking on the link below.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/epa_bp/?r_by=9308-2704780-hB3ambx&rc=mailto1

FoxNews.com edits out applause in Obama's West Point speech

D.C. Douglas PSA For Tea Party And FreedomWorks Critics

Living Under the Constant Fear of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" | Gay Rights | Change.org

“Stories from the Frontlines: Letters to President Barack Obama” is a new media campaign launched to underscore the urgent need for congressional action and presidential leadership at this critical point in the fight to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT).  Every weekday morning as we approach the markup of the Defense Authorization bill in the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and a coalition of voices supporting repeal, will share an open letter to the President from a person impacted by this discriminatory law.  We are urging the President to include repeal in the Administration’s defense budget recommendations, but also to voice his support as we work to muster the 15 critical votes needed on the Senate Armed Services Committee to include repeal.  The Defense Authorization bill represents the best legislative vehicle to bring repeal to the president’s desk.  It also was the same vehicle used to pass DADT in 1993.  By working together, we can help build momentum to get the votes!  We ask that you forward and post these personal stories.

Living Under the Constant Fear of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" | Gay Rights | Change.org

Family Guy: Reliving His Youth

Male Escourt and Baptist Minister

Tricycle Jodo Shinshu: The Way of Shinran

Over the past few years, Tricycle has featured a number of articles about Jodo Shinshu, or Shin Buddhism, which developed from the insight of Shinran (1173-1263), a Japanese monk that Rev. Dr. Alfred Bloom calls a "towering figure" in Buddhism. Read the articles below to get a sense of Shinran and his teachings, and the modern practice of Jodo Shinshu.

LINK

Tell UNC: Don't Revoke $80K ROTC Scholarship for Lesbian Student | Change.org

Tell UNC: Don't Revoke $80K ROTC Scholarship for Lesbian Student | Change.org

'Lucien' the escort: Anti-gay minister George Allan Rekers is homosexual who bought nude massages

'Lucien' the escort: Anti-gay minister George Allan Rekers is homosexual who bought nude massages

METAMORPHOSIS

METAMORPHOSIS
(unabridged)

WRITTEN BY
Franz Kafka

NARRATED BY
Michael Scott

Metamorphosis, first published in 1915, is the story of Gregor Samsa, a young traveling salesman who lives with his family and financially supports his parents and younger sister. One morning he awakes to discover that during the night he has been transformed into a horrible vermin. Although somewhat of a horror genre, the story is often very funny as Gregor, his family and those around him deal with their own transformations as a result of this odd predicament.

The analogies of this story are unending. The Metamorphosis has been stated to represent Gregor's personal alienation and the effect of his deadening job, the problems in his family and how the demands placed on him have forced him to become a terrible being and the alienation of aged or disabled individuals confined to a bedridden state of existence.

The Metamorphosis, though sometimes emotionally disturbing in its content, is an important and classic work to include in your listening library. Read more on Wikipedia

LINK

Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy" - Page 1 - News - Miami - Miami New Times

Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy" - Page 1 - News - Miami - Miami New Times

Tim Minchin - Pope Song (Warning - Offense Possible)

Sexuality and Socialism -Sherry Wolf

Let's Improve Our Collective Karma!

From: NamoAmituofo moonpointer@gmail.com

 

Let's Improve Our Collective Karma!













http://moonpointer.com/new/2010/04/lets-improve-our-collective-karma

__._,_.___

Stjepan Hauser: Largo from the opera Xerxes by G.F. Handel

Thanks to Antonius Subia.

Wheel of Time (2003) - Werner Herzog

81 min | avi | 384Kbps | 656x368 | 29fps | 900MB | Color | English

IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0331080/

Review:
Wheel of Time is a 2003 documentary film by German director Werner Herzog about Tibetan Buddhism. The title refers to the Kalachakra sand mandala that provides a recurring image for the film. The film documents the two Kalachakra initiations of 2002, presided over by the fourteenth Dalai Lama. The first, in Bodhgaya India, was disrupted by the Dalai Lama's illness. Later that same year, the event was held again, this time without disruption, in Graz Austria. The film's first location is the Bodhgaya, the site of the Mahabodhi Temple and the Bodhi tree. Herzog then turns to the pilgrimage at Mount Kailash. The film then focuses on the second gathering in Graz. Herzog includes a personal interview with the Dalai Lama, as well as Tibetan former political prisoner Takna Jigme Zangpo, who served 37 years in a Chinese prison for his support of the International Tibet Independence Movement.

Download thanks to foreignmoviesdll.com

TWO Expresses Solidarity With South Park After Muslim Extremist Threats

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, April 22, 2010 Contact: Wayne Besen Phone: 917-691-5118 E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org TWO Expresses Solidarity With Creators of South Park After Muslim Extremist Group Makes Threats Religious Extremism And Censorship Are Dangers To LGBT Equality  NEW YORK -- Truth Wins Out expressed strong support for Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of Comedy Central's South Park, after they faced calls for violent reprisals following an episode that showed the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. Such religious extremism and intolerance threatens all Americans, particularly the gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender community, says TWO. "We stand in solidarity with the creators of South Park and strongly defend their freedom of speech," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "Our liberty demands that we fight back against intolerant fanatics - no matter what the religion - who believe they can bully and intimidate to get their way. If zealots have a problem with South Park, they can turn the channel. If we cave into their demands, the LGBT community will be one of the first to feel the chilling effects and suffer the consequences." Following the controversial episode, a fringe Islamic website, RevolutionMuslim.com, warned Parker and Stone that they could face retribution. The website included a graphic photo of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered in 2004 after making a documentary on violence against Muslim women. "We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show," the website reads. "This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them...They're going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It's just the reality." "The goal of these extremists is to foment fear and create an atmosphere of self-censorship," said TWO's Besen. "This would essentially lead to an unwritten blasphemy law that would curtail creative freedom. We must not allow this to happen or other fringe religious organizations will view threats of violence as a legitimate strategy to meet their demands." Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that monitors religious extremism, fights anti-gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender misinformation campaigns, and educates about the lives of LGBT people.   -

This could be any of us.

The way Gays are treated in the United States. Just a reminder that "freedom and justice for all" is a lie and always has been.

Greene v. County of Sonoma et al.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.
One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.
Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.
What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.
Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.
With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O'Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O'Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

SOURCE

Stop Sarah Palin's "Nature" show

Dear Friend,

The media conglomerate Discovery Communications used to be known for their
earth-friendly offerings. But they've just paid millions to Sarah Palin to
host a "nature" show, despite her decidedly anti-environmental stance: She
vocally advocates for habitat-destroying oil drilling, she denies global
warming is a human-caused threat, and she spearheaded a brutal
wolf-slaughter program as governor of Alaska.

It's one thing if Fox News gives Sarah Palin a platform. But when
Discovery Communications -- home to the Discovery Channel, the "Planet
Earth" series, the Science Channel, Animal Planet, and TreeHugger.com --
gives a show to Sarah Palin, it undercuts everything the Discovery brand
has come to represent.

Anti-environmentalism has no place in the Discovery Communications lineup.
Join me in demanding that the company cancel "Sarah Palin's Alaska" before
it airs. Just click on the link below to send your message.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/palin_discovery/?r_by=8720-2704780-0WwCkxx&rc=mailto1

Jesus is REALLY excited to see you at church today.

Picture is not the same one but you get the idea.

Even in death, African gays are still abused

 This Friday Feb. 5, 2010 photo shows Ousmane Diallo holding a picture of his son Madieye Diallo at his shop in Thies, Senegal. Madieye Diallo's body had only been in the ground for a few hours when a mob descended on the cemetery with shovels. They yanked out his corpse, dragged it from the weedy cemetery, spit on its torso and dumped it in front of the home of his elderly parents. A wave of intense homophobia is washing across Africa, where homosexuality is already illegal in at least 37 countries. (AP Photo/Ricci Shryock)

 

Case in Senegal shows the intensity of homophobia in Africa

The Associated Press

updated 12:01 a.m. ET, Sun., April 11, 2010

THIES, Senegal - Even death cannot stop the violence against gays in this corner of the world any more.

Madieye Diallo's body had only been in the ground for a few hours when the mob descended on the weedy cemetery with shovels. They yanked out the corpse, spit on its torso, dragged it away and dumped it in front of the home of his elderly parents.

The scene of May 2, 2009 was filmed on a cell phone and the video sold at the market. It passed from phone to phone, sowing panic among gay men who say they now feel like hunted animals.

"I locked myself inside my room and didn't come out for days," says a 31-year-old gay friend of Diallo's who is ill with HIV. "I'm afraid of what will happen to me after I die. Will my parents be able to bury me?"

A wave of intense homophobia is washing across Africa, where homosexuality is already illegal in at least 37 countries.

In the last year alone, gay men have been arrested in Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. In Uganda, lawmakers are considering a bill that would sentence homosexuals to life in prison and include capital punishment for 'repeat offenders.' And in South Africa, the only country that recognizes gay rights, gangs have carried out so-called "corrective" rapes on lesbians.

"Across many parts of Africa, we've seen a rise in homophobic violence," says London-based gay-rights activist Peter Tatchell, whose organization tracks abuse against gays and lesbians in Africa. "It's been steadily building for the last 10 years but has got markedly worse in the last year."

Desecration of bodiesTo the long list of abuse meted out to suspected homosexuals in Africa, Senegal has added a new form of degradation — the desecration of their bodies.

In the past two years, at least four men suspected of being gay have been exhumed by angry mobs in cemeteries in Senegal. The violence is especially shocking because Senegal, unlike other countries in the region, is considered a model of tolerance.

"It's jarring to see this happen in Senegal," says Ryan Thoreson, a fellow at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission who has been researching the rise of homophobia here. "When something like this happens in an established democracy, it's alarming."

Even though homosexuality is illegal in Senegal, colonial documents indicate the country has long had a clandestine gay community. In many towns, they were tacitly accepted, says Cheikh Ibrahima Niang, a professor of social anthropology at Senegal's largest university. In fact, the visibility of gays in Senegal may have helped to prompt the backlash against them.

Wedding sparks a backlashThe backlash dates back to at least February 2008, when a Senegalese tabloid published photographs of a clandestine gay wedding in a suburb of Dakar, the capital. The wedding was held inside a rented banquet hall and was attended by dozens of gay men, some of whom snapped pictures that included the gay couple exchanging rings and sharing slices of cake.

The day after the tabloid published the photographs, police began rounding up men suspected of being homosexual. Some were beaten in captivity and forced to turn over the names of other gay men, according to research by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Gays immediately went into hiding and those who could fled to neighboring countries, including Gambia to the south, according to the New York-based commission. Gambia's erratic president declared that gays who had entered his country had 24 hours to leave or face decapitation. Many returned to Senegal, where they lived on the run, moving from safehouse to safehouse.

In March 2008, Senegal hosted an international summit of Muslim nations, which prompted a nationwide crackdown on behaviors deemed un-Islamic, including homosexuality.

The crackdown also coincided with spiraling food prices. Niang says political and religious leaders saw an easy way to reach constituents through the inflammatory topic of homosexuality.

"They found a way to explain the difficulties people are facing as a deviation from religious life," says Niang. "So if people are poor — it's because there are prostitutes in the street. If they don't have enough to eat, it's because there are homosexuals."

Muslum sermonsImams began using Friday sermons to preach against homosexuality.

"During the time of the Prophet, anytime two men were found together, they were taken to the top of a mountain and thrown off," says Massamba Diop, the imam of a mosque in Pikine and the head of Jamra, an Islamic lobby linked to a political party in Senegal's parliament.

"If they didn't die when they hit the ground, then rocks would be thrown on them until they were killed," says Diop, whose mosque is so packed during Friday prayer that people bring their own carpets and line up outside on the asphalt.

Sermons like Diop's were carried on the mosque's loudspeakers as well as in Senegal's more than 30 newspapers and magazines.

Around this time, in May 2008, a middle-aged man called Serigne Mbaye fell ill and died in a suburb of Dakar.

His children tried to bury him in his village but were turned back from the cemetery because of widespread rumors that he was gay. His sons drove his body around trying to find a cemetery that would accept him. They were finally forced to bury him on the side of a road, using their own hands to dig a hole, according to media reports.

The grave was too shallow and the wind blew away the dirt. When the decomposing body was later discovered, Mbaye's children were arrested and charged with improperly burying their father.

In the town of Kaolack three months later, residents exhumed the grave of another man believed to be gay. In November 2008, residents in Pikine removed a corpse from a mosque of another suspected homosexual and left it on the side of the road.

The grave-robbing has shocked even hardened gay activists, such as Nigerian Davis Mac-Iyalla.

"People have done horrible things (in Nigeria). I have seen people spit on coffins and people spit on graves," he said. "But it stopped there."

Diallo's deathAmong the people who appeared in the photograph published from the gay wedding was a young man in his 30s from Thies. He was an activist and a leader of a gay organization called And Ligay, meaning "Working together," which he ran out of his parents' house.

He was HIV-positive and on medication.

When the tabloid published the photograph, Diallo went into hiding, according to a close friend who asked not to be named because he too is gay. Unable to go to the doctor, Diallo stopped taking his anti-retrovirals. By the spring of 2009, he was so ill that his family checked him into St. Jean de Dieu, a Catholic hospital in downtown Thies, says the friend.

He was in a coma when he died at 5:50 a.m. on May 2, 2009, according to the hospital's records. Although the hospital has a unit dedicated to treating HIV patients, the young man's family never disclosed his illness, according to the doctor in charge.

Several gay friends tried to see Diallo in the hospital but were told to stay away by his family, says the friend.

When the AP tried to speak to Diallo's elderly father at his shop on the main thoroughfare in Thies, his other children demanded the reporter leave. One sister covered her face and sobbed. Another said, "There are no homosexuals here."

Hours after he died, his family took Diallo's body to a nearby mosque, where custom holds the corpse should be bathed and wrapped in a white cloth. Before the family could bathe him, news reached the mosque that Diallo was gay and they were chased out, says the dead man's friend. His relatives hastily wrapped him in a sheet and headed to the cemetery, where they carried him past the home of Babacar Sene.

"A man that's known as being a homosexual can't be buried in a cemetery. His body needs to be thrown away like trash," says Sene. "His parents knew that he was gay and they did nothing about it. So when he died we wanted to make sure he was punished."

Video of desecrationThe video footage captured on a cell phone shows what happened next. His thin body was placed inside a narrow trough in the middle of the bald cemetery dotted with clumps of weeds. Then you hear shouting.

The shaky image shows a group of men jerking around the edges of the grave. One of them straddles the pit and shovels away the fine gray dirt until you can see the shrouded body. It's still inside the trough when they tie a rope around its feet.

They yank it out, cheering as the body bends over the lip of the grave. The shroud catches on the ground and tears off, revealing the dead man's torso.

Rassul Djitte, 48, watched from behind the wall of a nearby school. He had not known Diallo personally, but says he felt a stab. "People were rejoicing," he says. "They dragged him past me and his body left tracks in the sand. Like a car passing through snow."

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Teabonics

These are signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests.

They all feature "creative" spelling or grammar.

This new dialect of the English language shall be known as "Teabonics."

LINK

Kuan Yin: Androgynous spirit of compassion

Buddhists celebrate the birth of Kuan Yin, androgynous spirit of compassion, on the day before Easter this year -- a holy synchronicity.

I didn’t know about this “coincidence” when I invited gay author Toby Johnson to write the following piece to post on Kuan Yin’s feast day as part of the GLBT saints series here.

Upon reflection, it seems appropriate that Kuan Yin was born the day before Christ rose to new life. After all, Jesus is the Christian embodiment of compassion. I am pleased to present Kuan Yin on Holy Saturday, as churches hold Easter vigils. As Johnson says, Kuan Yin is wonderful for LGBT people and our allies because he/she unites male and female. 


Read the rest at Jesus in Love

Notice the mustache on the last image.