There can be no doubt that support for same-sex marriage is gaining momentum, which is fine with me. News abounds all over the internet, including major network type media outlets. By March or so, the issue is expected to make it to the Supreme Court. As much as this is an issue whose time is come, it is also a “push button” issue, one sure to evoke emotional responses as people hide behind pre-structured belief systems that preclude thinking. I mean, once people say things like “Christian” or “right,” the issue is thought through or at least parroted and no thinking is necessary.
I am not surprised that the lovely stirrer up of right wing thought, Fox News, is already getting folks stirred up for March. My job, at least in part, is to put things in context. By this I mean human — maybe clinical medical and psychiatric, but mostly human — context. The world is a pretty awful and foreboding place. It is also a lonely place, where a lot of people have trouble making dyadic, or one to one, relationships. Read more on Gay Marriage? Anything Between Humans Is Good With Me…
Filed under News, relationships by on Mar 5th, 2013. Comment. 
It’s called freedom of religion, folks. That means you have the right to worship as you please, even if you’re in prison, even if you’re Muslim, and even if you’re Taliban.
Prison is horrible. More horrible than anyone who has never been in or near one can imagine. I know. I worked inside prisons, back when someone might have had at least a little respect for credentials like mine. This was before they started over-disciplining doctors and forcing their asses out of those august institutions in favor of cheaper folks, like nurse practitioners. Read more on Freedom of Religion in Prison…
Filed under News, Prisons, Religion by on Feb 19th, 2013. Comment.
I am old enough to remember having briefly met then-senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, at a synagogue breakfast in my hometown – a suburb of Boston. He had donned a skull cap, and shook hands with my parents as well as with me. I talked little in those days, which is a testament to how young I was. I could stand unaided, and the senator shook hands with me.
Bill Clinton courts the Jewish vote
Years later, his was one of the first presidential elections I tried to follow. People were very worried that he was Catholic. In our neighborhood, anybody I knew who was not Jewish seemed to be Catholic. It had never bothered me. I remember seeing on television some news-reporting-human asked him about his need to be obedient on the Pope, being a Catholic and all, and how that could limit his ability to serve. He gave what I thought then was a good answer, about not being obliged to do anything the Pope happened to say, but saying his service to the people of the United States came first. I had thought that a good answer at the time.
My parents had all kinds of concerns, as did many Jews of their generation, even though they habitually voted Democrat. Read more on Whose Beliefs Do You Follow? Your Own!…
Filed under Religion by on May 12th, 2011. Comment.