black holes and gray matter. in one thousand tangos.

             
National Cathedral to Host 1st Same-Sex Weddings As the nation’s most prominent church, the decision carries huge symbolism. The 106-year-old cathedral has long been a spiritual center for the nation, hosting presidential inaugural services and funerals for Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last sermon there in 1968. The cathedral draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. […] The Very Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral’s dean, said performing same-sex marriages is an opportunity to break down barriers and build a more inclusive community “that reflects the diversity of God’s world.” “I read the Bible as seriously as fundamentalists do,” Hall told the AP. “And my reading of the Bible leads me to want to do this because I think it’s being faithful to the kind of community that Jesus would have us be.” [photo]

National Cathedral to Host 1st Same-Sex Weddings

As the nation’s most prominent church, the decision carries huge symbolism. The 106-year-old cathedral has long been a spiritual center for the nation, hosting presidential inaugural services and funerals for Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last sermon there in 1968. The cathedral draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. […]

The Very Rev. Gary Hall, the cathedral’s dean, said performing same-sex marriages is an opportunity to break down barriers and build a more inclusive community “that reflects the diversity of God’s world.”

“I read the Bible as seriously as fundamentalists do,” Hall told the AP. “And my reading of the Bible leads me to want to do this because I think it’s being faithful to the kind of community that Jesus would have us be.” [photo]

“

I’ve been forced to explain homosexuality to my kids (aged 3 and 4) because their uncle is gay. This incredibly difficult and traumatic experience went as follows:

Child: Why does Uncle Bob go everywhere with Pete?
Me: Because they’re in love, just like Mummy and Daddy are.
Child: Oh. Can I have a biscuit?

We’re all scarred for life. Scarred, I tell you.

”
KateP’s comment on Guardian’s Archie gay marriage comic sells out in face of boycott call  (via cocklordsimone)

(via brooklynmutt)

matthewgallaway: Don’t ask me why — or actually, it’s basically in response to the unrelenting number of gay suicides in the “it gets better” era — but I decided to write a 5000-word essay for The Atlantic lol my own blog, on what I’m calling the “suicide impulse,” which is not exactly going to be a revelation but is still worth discussing (or I think so, anyway), or basically an impulse that I think exists in EVERY gay (loosely defined) just by virtue of having been denied the opportunity as adolescents to channel or express our inner lives in ways that roughly speaking could be considered healthy/constructive or at least not rooted in self-destruction/self-mutilation, meaning that even if we don’t kill ourselves when we’re ten or twelve (and even if we’re not bullied or beaten to death, which I was not), we already understand the very strong appeal of doing so (even thirty or forty or fifty years later), and all too often only need to push a knife that’s already there a few inches deeper to finish the job. GPOY at ten when despite having sweet seventies hair and basically every other social advantage, I was first seriously entertaining thoughts of killing myself. 

matthewgallaway:

Don’t ask me why — or actually, it’s basically in response to the unrelenting number of gay suicides in the “it gets better” era — but I decided to write a 5000-word essay for The Atlantic lol my own blog, on what I’m calling the “suicide impulse,” which is not exactly going to be a revelation but is still worth discussing (or I think so, anyway), or basically an impulse that I think exists in EVERY gay (loosely defined) just by virtue of having been denied the opportunity as adolescents to channel or express our inner lives in ways that roughly speaking could be considered healthy/constructive or at least not rooted in self-destruction/self-mutilation, meaning that even if we don’t kill ourselves when we’re ten or twelve (and even if we’re not bullied or beaten to death, which I was not), we already understand the very strong appeal of doing so (even thirty or forty or fifty years later), and all too often only need to push a knife that’s already there a few inches deeper to finish the job. GPOY at ten when despite having sweet seventies hair and basically every other social advantage, I was first seriously entertaining thoughts of killing myself. 

Citing the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama administration denied immigration benefits to a married gay couple from San Francisco and ordered the expulsion of a man who is the primary caregiver to his AIDS-afflicted spouse. Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia, were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. They have lived together 19 years, mostly in an apartment in the Castro district. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Makk’s application to be considered for permanent residency as a spouse of an American citizen, citing the 1996 law that denies all federal benefits to same-sex couples.[…] “I’m married just like any other married person in this country. At this point, the government can come in and take my husband and deport him. It’s infuriating. It’s upsetting. I have no power, no right to keep my husband in this country. I love this country, I live here, I pay taxes and I have no right to share my home with the person I married.”

Citing the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama administration denied immigration benefits to a married gay couple from San Francisco and ordered the expulsion of a man who is the primary caregiver to his AIDS-afflicted spouse.

Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia, were married seven years ago in Massachusetts. They have lived together 19 years, mostly in an apartment in the Castro district. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied Makk’s application to be considered for permanent residency as a spouse of an American citizen, citing the 1996 law that denies all federal benefits to same-sex couples.[…]

“I’m married just like any other married person in this country. At this point, the government can come in and take my husband and deport him. It’s infuriating. It’s upsetting. I have no power, no right to keep my husband in this country. I love this country, I live here, I pay taxes and I have no right to share my home with the person I married.”

“You can have as many debates about gay marriage as you want, and over the last 22 years of campaigning for it, I’ve had my share. You can debate theology, and the divide between church and state, the issue of procreation, the red herring of polygamy, and on and on. But what it all really comes down to is the primary institution of love. The small percentage of people who are gay or lesbian were born, as all humans are, with the capacity to love and the need to be loved. These things, above everything, are what make life worth living. And unlike every other minority, almost all of us grew up among and part of the majority, in families where the highest form of that love was between our parents in marriage. To feel you will never know that, never feel that, is to experience a deep psychic wound that takes years to recover from. It is to become psychologically homeless. Which is why, I think, the concept of “coming out” is not quite right. It should really be called “coming home.”” —Andrew Sullivan (above with husband): Why Gay Marriage is Good for Straight America

“You can have as many debates about gay marriage as you want, and over the last 22 years of campaigning for it, I’ve had my share. You can debate theology, and the divide between church and state, the issue of procreation, the red herring of polygamy, and on and on. But what it all really comes down to is the primary institution of love. The small percentage of people who are gay or lesbian were born, as all humans are, with the capacity to love and the need to be loved. These things, above everything, are what make life worth living. And unlike every other minority, almost all of us grew up among and part of the majority, in families where the highest form of that love was between our parents in marriage. To feel you will never know that, never feel that, is to experience a deep psychic wound that takes years to recover from. It is to become psychologically homeless. Which is why, I think, the concept of “coming out” is not quite right. It should really be called “coming home.””

—Andrew Sullivan (above with husband): Why Gay Marriage is Good for Straight America

©2011 Kateoplis