Events

On this Independence Day — Religion: Real and Fake

Stepping back in history for a moment to uncover the birth of religious freedom in this country, and how it was hampered by the Puritans, we are gladly representing a post we delivered a couple of years ago.

Religion: Real and Fake, originally published on July 20, 2012

Society suffers from a severe misunderstanding of the nature and role of religion. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ongoing arguments about the “separation of church and state.” Blame the Puritans.

The basic idea in the U.S. Constitution is one of freedom FROM religion, expressed as “freedom of religion.” The tenets of any religion may not be imposed on its citizens who disagree. This concept is fundamental to the unalienable human right to absolute privacy of person, and pillar of sexual freedom and the bedrock of all other freedoms.

120px-Human_soul-1The pilgrims who came to Plymouth imagined that they could impose their concept of the divine will upon everyone who opposed them, that the free exercise of their religion meant forcing the world into compliance with their beliefs, a severe misdirection victimizing all sincere people. A few years later, Puritan fanaticism swept England herself into a great civil war. Such foolishness has characterized many fanatical conflicts throughout history, and can be seen today in the demands and schemes of theocratic groups worldwide, including today’s America.

A real religion is world religion. One could say there are as many religions in the world as there are people. Even atheists and agnostics objectify “god” and choose to exclude these hobbled, uninspired notions. World religion is superstition- and mythology-free and an immediately accessible and consistent guide to living in tune with the rhythms of cosmic destiny. This vitology—our urge to persist—gives each person a vision of immortality, an unending, improving, and harmonizing ecology of living.

Our faith is one of loving—desiring to do good to one another. This perpetual cycle of love shared is powered by all kinds of love, especially including the erotic, and it gives us a unified power for progress the world has yet to see. Our inherent and inherited capability for sexual pleasure and orgasm (erotic joy) is the living and loving communion that matures us individually to the service of Love and its destiny, and unites us as a team in shared fellowship—a loving siblinghood.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

 

 

Express Your Dissent!

It is unbelievable that in 2014
we are still fighting about women’s
access to basic health care like birth control.

If you agree — say so. Just click here now
to add your name to the dissent.
— Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood

Photo by James Palinsad Flickr/creative commons

Photo by James Palinsad
Flickr/creative commons

In a dramatic 5-4 decision along ideological lines, the Supreme Court today chose to side with corporations over people and set a brand new (and untested) precedent that is just the starting gun for more and more corporations claiming religious freedom superiority over the needs of their employees.

(See a LATE BREAKING UPDATE at the bottom showing the already cascading effect this decision is having in the lower courts, in less than 8 hours.) 

In Burwell v Hobby Lobby, the right-wing justices vacated a portion of the Affordable Care Act that applies to certain for-profit corporations, giving them superior religious freedom rights. They performed this bit of surgery with a dull hack saw. In the the process they perpetuated a fatal misunderstanding of the difference between pregnancy prevention and abortion.

Protecting the free-exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them. — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito

It was a good day to be a boss. And a very good day for all the lawyers who will now thrive because of the havoc this decision will fuel. 

Justice Stephen Breyer and the 3 women Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayer, and Elana Kagan, dissented in consideration of the tens of thousands of working women who are now unable to exercise their religious freedom, or more bluntly, freedom from the religious freedom of others with whom they disagree. Ginsburg called it, “A decision of startling breadth,” and went on to say . . .

The Court’s expansive notion of corporate personhood . . . invites for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith . . . The Court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield . . .

The longstanding, extreme right-wingnuts’ campaign to dismantle any gains in reproductive freedom is driven solely by their theocratic fundamentalist beliefs that dictate that women shouldn’t control their own bodies, or shouldn’t be wanting to have sex in the first place, and that pregnancy prevention amounts to another form of abortion. Their position is that discrimination against women health care is not discrimination at all — it’s okay for your bosses to know better what you need.

Now it’s up to the Congress to provide a contraceptive work-around, if possible. For now, however, working women have to pay twice, first by their labor which entitles them to health care, and then separately outside of their company’s health care program. For example, a working woman now must pay more than $1000 for a IUD, an intrauterine device that prevents pregnancy, in many cases equal to a month’s pay.

There is an irony here because less available contraception will result in more pregnancies which are even more expensive and more of a strain on women’s overall health and their economic opportunities.

This impasse is a perfect example of an inhumane and coercive system that must be replaced with a humane and voluntary association outside of the influence of governments, corporations, and religious hierarchies. Shall birth control, including abortion, be a matter for the growing theocracy or be a matter between a woman and her health care providers? See A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom to understand why VenusPlusX believes issues like these are of supreme importance.

Join us and Planned Parenthood in expressing your dissent so together we can do everything possible to protect and defend women’s health and rights nationwide.

Related . . .

— A possible (very slim) silver lining in today’s ruling

— Some equally bad decisions this session:  McCullen v Coakley, stripping buffer zones at women’s clinics; and, today’s weakening of unions, and the worker benefits they sponsor with Harris v Quinn

— Two very good decisions: Protecting personal privacy in Riley v California Rulingand denying cert rejecting challenge to California’s law banning gay sex therapy.

— When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices, Part 1 and Part 2

— When Free Speech Becomes Sedition

— How Right-wing Nuts are Actually Helping Progressives

UPDATE from SCOTUSblogActing swiftly in the wake of the Court’s ruling on Monday, and relying directly upon that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Monday blocked all enforcement of the mandate against an Alabama Catholic TV network, a non-profit entity. Dozens of cases similar to Hobby Lobby are in the pipeline and now sure to be viewed with more favor.

 

 

 

Supreme Women Don’t Fail Us Now (again)

It was painful last week to hear the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in McCullen v Coakley, siding with abortion protesters’ free speech right to engage women face-to face in the public square and against those advocating for clinics’ privacy and public safety in consideration of the violence, bombings, and cold-blooded murder that beset them long before there was anything akin to a buffer zone. The case ended the a 35-foot buffer zone in Massachusetts, didn’t rule on a handful of other states that had smaller buffer zones, and, the reasoning of each justice varied wildly.

Photo by Paul Weaver Flickr/creative commons

Photo by Paul Weaver
Flickr/creative commons

Abortion has been legal in this country for 40 years (Roe v Wade , 1973), but discrimination against women has been rising at a fast pace due to the machinations of the explosive theocratic fundamentalist’s discrimination politics that are strangling government, and, it seems, the once-hallowed Supreme Court. Because it would be impossible to reverse Roe v Wade in the courts, the Court is giving these abortion protesters free reign to take it out on women they don’t know.

Why can the Supreme Court itself establish such a wide, no-free-speech buffer around its building (hundreds of square feet, for “decorum and public safety”), and Westboro Baptist Church haters now cannot cross a large buffer zone surrounding veterans funerals, but abortion clinics’ bombs, maiming, and death somehow are not worthy?

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick puts it this way . .

While the decision is not monumentally awful in ways some progressives most feared, and certainly affords the state substantial latitude in its future attempts to protect women seeking abortions from harassment, more than anything it seems to reflect a continued pattern of “free speech for me but not for thee” or, at least, “free speech for people who think like me,” that pervades recent First Amendment decisions at the court. . .

. . . Right now, the commentary is pretty predictably split between those who believe that the rights of “peaceful sidewalk counselors” were vindicated, and those who believe those counselors are actually pro-life bullies. The court opts for the gentle counseling characterization, without acknowledging that it was the extreme conduct of the latter group that led to passage of the law, and that, realistically, in the absence of the buffer zone, both types of protesters will be greatly emboldened. I guess from here on in, you won’t know whether you are being intimidated or “gently counseled” until after it’s happened.

This is outright discrimination politics interfering with what should have been a privacy and public safety issue. These are not sweet grandmas trying to talk gently to urge women not to go through with the abortion, these are hellions bent on intimidation based solely on their own personal view of abortion although abortion is something that is entirely legal in this country.

Andrew Gouveia wrote a heart-wrenching op-ed last week in Time magazine, and other horror stories are making the rounds as most women stand in shock that there was no dissent, even from our fellow women on the Court. What were they thinking? I guess we’ll have to wait for their memoirs.

It may be fanciful to think these same women Justices have struck a deal to create a majority tomorrow, Monday, in rejecting Hobby Lobby’s efforts to make corporations exempt from providing health insurance that covers contraceptives (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby) just like some religious entities right now. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers must cover free contraception for women in employee health plans. It is possible, the Court may rule to restrict the exemption to only tightly held private corporations but this would still create a very slippery slope, and set a bad precedent for women’s rights. In their March deliberations, the Justices themselves wondered out loud whether this exemption would let these same companies to disallow coverage for other things such as blood transfusion because their religious beliefs disallow them. And what about protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees?

The possibility of a deal in the works to protect reproductive health for women, might make sense for a court already smeared by some of their bad decisions. It is just a strand of hope against the possibility of another savage and bloody run against human rights.

I’m going to sleep tonight with that strand of hope still alive, that this Supreme Court, especially the women Justices, will find its way to stand up for the law, in this case the Affordable Care Act’s provisions, and the rights of women to control their own health.

However, we have to ask again, what are they thinking?

For more on what’s at stake tomorrow, click here.

Also see: When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices, Part 1 and Part 2

And, if you are curious as to why VenusPlusX thinks this is important, read A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, and catch our unique mix of posts and videos 24/7 that will get us all to that better future we deserve, sooner rather than later.

 

Casa Ruby Awards First Dan Massey Trans Ally Award

Last week, we had another wonderful night out in New York City with our friend and current candidate for the Maryland Senate, Dr. Dana Beyer. The Maryland primary election is today and, win or lose, it’s not an exaggeration to say the force is with her. As a trans woman running against an entrenched old boy who happens to be a gay man, she has been heroic in this campaign (and in her previous campaigns for Maryland Delegate) in presenting voters with a true progressive vision that enfranchises all people, not just special interests, not the status quo.

(l. to r.) Dana Beyer, DC Mayor Vincent Gray, and Casa Ruby Distinguished Service Award recipient, Consuella Lopez Photo by Ted Eytan Flickr/creative commons

(l. to r.) Dana Beyer, DC Mayor Vincent Gray, and Casa Ruby Distinguished Service Award recipient, Consuella Lopez
Photo by Ted Eytan
Flickr/creative commons

Dana related to us what transpired a couple of weeks ago at Casa Ruby, a Latino LGBT services and resource center in Washington, DC, a place that has long been a focus of VenusPlusX’s support. We weren’t able to be in DC to attend Casa Ruby’s second anniversary celebration and be present to witness the award of the first Dan Massey Ally Award, but it’s made me and our family very happy. From Dana’s Huffington Post weekly column . . .

Alison, together with her husband Dan Massey, is responsible for making the D.C. trans community the presence in the city that it is today. Through their support of the DC Trans Coalition, and particularly Casa Ruby, the city’s leading nonprofit supporting the daily needs of its trans citizens, they made their indelible mark on us all.

Two weeks ago I had the honor of awarding the inaugural Dan Massey Ally Award to Dr. Ted Eytan, who is working assiduously to make the Kaiser health system completely trans-inclusive, trans-supportive and culturally competent.

Those words, and this wonderful new award in Dan’s name, are heartening to hear, but I’d like to give a little context.

Before moving last year from DC to Brooklyn, New York, a few months after Dan suddenly left for higher shores, Casa Ruby became sort of second home to the both of us.

Following our close involvement with the 2011 Equality March Host Committee, Dan and I joined with Casa Ruby founder Ruby Corado, the DC Trans Coalition, and many other local lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) activists and organizations to bring about better public safety, healthcare access, and employment, especially for transfolk, work that had been ongoing for more than a decade. The high incidence of local attacks and murders of trans women in and around DC drives these activists who give all of their free time (and money) to make things better in a selfless wayk

In 2011, VenusPlusX helped establish a pop-up coalition of more than a dozen local organizations, at the time called the TLGB Police Watch. (Putting the T ahead of LGB was my brainstorm, to put the emphasis on the most-discriminated-against group in the fold). This group worked together, first listening to some very scary stories from trans victims and eventually translating these sacrifices into community-wide concerns, goals, strategies, and non-violent actions.

The TLGB Police Watch coalition brought solid demands directly to DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, elected city officials, and to the US Attorney for Washington, DC, giving trans activists’ public engagement a much-needed reboot. And, sure enough, the next day, our phones started ringing with positive results. The following spring, Ruby, Dan, and I took our experience to a national audience with a panel at the Philly Trans Health conference (the largest LGBT conference in the country) to reach out to activists from other cities who were seeking help figure out what more they can do. Click here more info. (If you live in a city that needs help to advance trans rights, please let us hear from you via columbia@venusplusx.org.)

This group of activists has stuck together and grown in size, and continues to make strides to protect and advance trans rights in DC. At each turn, they manage to feast of adversity, and time after time rescue success from the jaws of defeat. The largest trans rally the city had ever seen took place in the summer of 2012, attracting hundreds, and more than 100 new volunteer allies committed that day to work with us. (The press under-reported the number in attendance; I hand counted 235 people). I remember sitting at the sidelines with tears swelling to see how far we had come in making ourselves heard. 

Thank you Ruby and Casa Ruby, and thank you Dana, for all that you do. You never seek attention or reward, you just go about doing good to others, the greatest legacy of all.

 

 

VenusPlusX relaunches!

Welcome back to VenusPlusX.

As most of you know at the beginning of 2013 Dan set off suddenly and unexpectedly for the hereafter (WikipediaThe AdvocateHuffington Post). We had just finished our jointly authored book about the erotic connection to spirituality. It’s working title is The Unseen Journey, and we hope to publish it by the end of this year. We will periodically release short excerpts before publication here to stimulate discussion, and the comments and critiques we so avidly crave.

Already available now as a companion reference, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), which will be published as an included Appendix in the new book.

We again want to thank all the well-wishers who have reached out to our family this year. Many of you have asked about Dan’s amazing Memorial Service (February 23, 2013, Josephine Butler House, Washington, DC), so we have put those materials in a special section devoted to him personally.

During the past year our family and our extended family of VenusPlusX advisors have been recalibrating our new multi-plane relationship with Dan, and figuring out what to do next. Well, next is now, April 2014.

VenusPlusX’s has a new look for 2014, and we look forward to picking up where we left off. Our sister site, VenusMasX en espanol, will be getting a similar boost within a couple of months.

Newcomers can find out more about us, and old friends will enjoy our new streamlined navigation. There’s lots of new content, including our Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, to remind our audiences of the diverse mix VenusPlusX puts together everyday, For example . . .

  • End Police Bias and Anti-Trans Violence is one of our continuing national advocacy campaigns with a grassroots component that offers communities help in developing a Transgender Day of Action for their city, using a process designed and proven to bring about systematic and sustainable change. Comparable to “Stop and Frisk,” walking while trans or otherwise gender non-conforming invites the same sort of constitution-crushing behavior by culturally challenged public safety officers who set a tone rarely fair to people of color and anyone else that is different from the white hierarchy.
  • The always inspiring individual Sexual Freedom Project videos. Maybe it’s time for you to join the cast by making your own declaration of sexual freedom by video or essay. And, we’ll send you one of our sought-after VenusPlusX t-shirts.
  • Transleadership and Transunity. This section has been corralled as a safe space to talk about the obstacle to unity faced by our community, both within the trans community and the LGBT community at large.
  • The transcendent aspects of sexual response and its direct connection to our role as cosmic citizens.
  • Sex Education, particularly for young people, since there is so much out there that constitutes harmful mis-information and the even more depraved and dangerous intentional disinformation propagated at all levels of society, from the family, schools, commerce, governments, and organized religion.
  • Sections on Transhuman Erotic Freedom and Sexuality, Freedom, and Cosmic Citizenship focus on dragging sacred sexuality out of the closet to save the world.
  • News [link to archive] and opinions, research studies, conferences, etc., that relate closely to our mission to bring about the New Age of Sexual Freedom. Issues such as net neutrality, de-militarization, and racial freedom are all keys to bringing about a new world that is voluntary and mutually supportive as opposed to inhumane, coercive, and enslaving by those who dare to amalgamate power against their fellow human. Sexual and racial freedom are inherited, inherent, and the bedrock of all other freedoms.
  • And, we have expanded our Library where among other things, you’ll find a handy table of contents to posts that Dan Massey authored or we co-authored with his byline.

Let us know what you think of our new look? To cheer us on, leave a comment, and if you haven’t already, please Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

 

Dan Massey Memorial Service: Eulogy

Additional material from this February 28, 2013 Memorial Service: Introduction, Mayor’s Proclamation, Dan The Activist, Upcoming Book Excerpt, and Printed Program. Also see: WikipediaThe AdvocateHuffington Post, and MetroWeekly.

Dan, 1977

Dan, 1977

I am Joan Wentworth, a friend with a long history with Dan and his family. Within the embrace of that friendship, loyalty, love, and service are themes in this story.

I have always had a deeply intuitive trust that Dan and Alison were innately loyal people. Dan was loyal to his family, friends both new and old, to values that he esteemed, and to the movements that held those values.

For all who knew him, walking with Dan in this life for any length of time was an experience measured according to his thoughtful and personal understanding of LOVE, whether he was propagating the idea that God is Love or that Love is God, Dan meant it, and lived it. There was a measure of urgency about him to put that love into service.

Was Dan ever NOT in service to something of value? I can’t quite remember, but did Dan and Alison EVER go on a vacation to do nothing more than to relax? Maybe once? Wasn’t their whole life, for both of them, dedicated to improving the world? Look at the people whom Dan attracted to his life. Just look around today at the diversity of this group. He saw ideas as movements and created collective units from them. His science community, his spiritual communities, his social activism are all peopled with ideals that motivate and serve; they’re all the same transcendent ideals, really, rooted in the premise that Human beings must be known to be loved, while divine beings must be loved to be known.  My dear friend Dan has been an enigma in my life since I first saw him in 1974 at a Urantia Book Readers conference. I will never forget that first time. He and Alison were that distinguished, fascinating couple—tall, distinctive, and with a lot of hair, and at the time a little bit “scandalous.” I thought they were the perfect hippies, cool, groovy types who would have no trouble believing in supernatural messengers. I heard Dan was a scientist and mathematician, which sounded so elusive, and that Alison was an educator, which I could relate to. Right off, Alison showed a warm personal interest, which was so gratifying and compelling, it made up for what appeared to me to be Dan’s prompt and unabashed critical assessment. He was intimidating. Maybe intimidating is not the word, but if you can recall Dan’s stature and his curious gaze, you can appreciate my unease. Dan was taller than even I, and that for one I was not used to, but he was also “DAN” whom everyone seemed to know and respect. Awesome Dan with Awesome Alison and they were talking to me. When I told Dan I was a Latin teacher, he was quick to let me know that he had chosen MIT over other universities specifically because they did NOT teach Latin there. I think he was smiling when he said it, but either way, he took his leave rather quickly. So, I dutifully assumed my place as the dead-language teacher in his life. Nevertheless, he did talk to me. And here I am close to 40 years later, still the dead-language teacher, but one made so much more alive by my friendship with this awesome couple. Imprinted in my mind forever is also the last time I saw Dan. It was at the wonderful surprise 70th birthday party Alison arranged for him just over a month before he became ill. I sat next to Alison, opposite him. At one moment, I caught him looking intently across the table at her. I wish I could have heard whatever it was he was saying to himself. His gaze was contemplative, and perplexed. He seemed appreciative, but a bit stunned. How in the world had she managed to surprise HIM? How HAD she outwitted him? No one had before her— Alison gave Dan his first and most memorable surprise birthday party. The classicist in me compels me to point out that Penelope was the one and only person ever to outwit Odysseus. And she did it with the test of their marriage bed, immovable and built from an ancient olive tree ever rooted in the ground. It was their secret sign, the secret of the bed only those two knew. Dan and Alison surely have their exclusive secret sign. To my mind that makes them epic heroes. And then, of course, in an apparent deliberative display of one-upmanship, Dan managed to surprise her, too, by leaving just over one month later. How lucky were we 17 people present at that celebration of Dan’s 70 years of living. There were photos all along the table of Dan as a boy and a young man, etc.  And there he sat, center table, surrounded by his children and their spouses, people whom he cherished in his life, by extended family, and the beautiful woman who has loved him for 40 years. He had to have been happy. I am touched to the core by the vision of that Last Supper. I spent many, many years following Dan and Alison around, from New Hampshire to Massachusetts to Virginia and finally to DC. Alison became my dearest of friends and most intimate adviser. Dan hung over our visits like a benevolent mind spirit! He was always somewhere in the house working on something–something fascinating, I guessed. He worked a lot, always. He would pass by on his way out to work, dressed neatly in a business suit, with his hair close-cropped, but he was wearing Birkenstocks on his feet, which I always thought was the right touch of eccentricity for a scientist. Before the children came, I did not actually see Dan much, but once the house gave birth, he was a constant presence. He was always talking to them, teaching them something, just playing with them. Our families became close. My daughter, Bree, babysat for both Ross and Tiye for years. I became godmother in case anything unforeseen should happen. I depended on their friendship and love in ways neither of them could possibly fully know. That is what love does—it grows imperceptibly, as you get to know each other. Human beings must be known to be loved. With these human beings, it was easy. Dan’s level of brilliance gave a surge to the depth of my own insights. I did not always understand what he was saying, in fact if I am honest, I rarely understood what he was saying, but I listened with the chaste enthusiasm of a schoolgirl who adores her teacher because he is so smart and so cute! Gradually over the years, I had opportunities for solo conversations with Dan. Always the professor, he gave freely of his knowledge, to put it mildly. I got the complete history of the occult foundations of Washington DC on one long ride from Union Station to Great Falls in Dan’s cool I’m-still sexy-black Lexus two-seater sportscar. I think my question was something like, “So, do you like DC?” I figured out that I needed only to ask one question, make one simple inquiry, and I would be the beneficiary of a long and fascinating narrative, full of tangents and supportive references. Sometimes he even remembered I was there. I wish I could remember every single word. He told me that he hoped Obama would win in 2008 because he was the ethical candidate and the survival of our world depended on moral revision, or something like that. Once the Supreme Court redefined “human,” in terms of corporations, Dan declared the end of the world, as we know it (not exactly his words, either.) The next I knew he had discovered the Transhumanist movement, or for all I knew he had invented it, and was setting out to transform it. When Dan and Alison came to NYC, they always included me somehow. I hold onto so many precious dinner conversations that jarred me out of complacency. How often would I finish correcting Latin tests and find myself an hour later engaged in an explanation of the joys of erotic robotics. Then I had to go home, ALONE, to digest, all of it, which after that, seemed unfair. Alison was always able to help me understand Dan’s ideas by transforming them into literary metaphor. My mind is full of images that somehow translate into ideas deeper than any I could explain in words. Alison is the queen of metaphor and the great interpreter of her husband/partner. She has that NJ street-wise pragmatism combined with a literary eloquence that could filter Dan’s “esoteric cogitations” (and hers) for me. So much in Dan’s recent years seems full of wonder. The dead-language teacher in me has to resist finding myth in his story. It would be so easy to mythologize him. There is his three-fold evolution from Scientist to Urantian to Transhumanist, from husband to father to Transgenderist. We find ourselves remembering his life here in a building dedicated to one of his most precious life’s goals—equality. From his ivory tower of information theory, to his highly tangible defense-systems innovations, all the way to his transcendent social activism, Dan used his mind for the Good. He clarified for me God the Supreme and led me to envision God the Ultimate. Dan made practical sense of where all this living and experiencing was really taking us. He seemed to know for sure. And he did. I really do believe that Dan knew he was immortal and that we were, too.  He was so TRANS, always ‘trans-ing’ some obstacle or other. Now he has transitioned and transcended, and who knows what else he is doing there. Reading the numerous testimonials that started pouring in on line I gained a humbling insight into who Dan was and will remain to those who knew him. It seems he had so many incarnations that each of us probably has our own version of him. Dana says his manner was “respectful but firm, and though Dan and Alison both had strong opinions, they never demanded compliance.”  (adapted) Dan was opinionated. Davis adds, “His tremendous intellect was matched by a compassionate heart and generous sense of humor.” Dan was funny. Lee offers: “Dan, never hesitant to express his truth-seeking beliefs—blew the roof off a UB event when he went ‘off-script’ and boldly challenged many of the pre-conceived “pure revelation” concepts that many held so conservatively.” (adapted) Dan was NOT conservative. There is no disputing he was intelligent, or that he was formidable. Either way, his mind was a gift for all of us. Living with Dan must have been something like living with an intellectually challenging Socrates, who was a real handful, they say. But that spirit of confrontation is exactly what propels spiritual evolution. Dan was not a lazy religionist, nor could he abide those who were. He tamed and trained his own genius in service to greater values and expected as much from others. Alison used to say that when she passed on, I would inherit Dan–second wife she called me! As if I could ever have presumed to manage Dan. Love him, yes, but delight him, no. Only Alison could do that, only Alison, and everyone knows that. Their bond is a melding of 2 hearts and 2 minds: his math, her literature; his facts, her meanings. The goal of each: something very valuable–a true love relationship, enviable and beautiful to see. Dan’s earth family is relatively small in number, but these four people are all larger than life each in his/her own way. Surely I seem naïve, awed perhaps, when I talk about the Masseys, but in my own defense, I am a literature teacher, I earn my money from hyperbole. Hyperbole is a poetic device suiting for description of this family. Tiye is everything from a ballet dancer, a blogger, an artist, a scholar, a linguist, a health expert, a good wife, a loving daughter, a tough-love kind of sister, a loyal friend, and a precious godchild (that’s the short list), and she has managed all that along with the wise selection of her wonderful husband, Carles, in just 27 years. She is a Massey. That is fact, not hyperbole. Nor can her love for her dad or for her mom be exaggerated. Ross is a larger than life character, too. He is already running the world, you know, in his own way and he is only just 30. What 17-year old goes to Cal Tech and in his first year starts tutoring upperclassmen? Who finishes Cal Tech with a year to spare? Who goes to Cal Tech in the first place and learns to drink beer? Ross has his dad’s irony, irreverence, and wry humor. His reserved and benign presence is the embodiment of both his mother and father. When I see Ross, I hear Dan and I sense Alison. Yet he is so vividly his own person. I can’t see either Alison or Dan on skis out running an avalanche on any mountain anywhere, particularly in Alaska. I am not convinced that was an intelligence test, but Ross passed it, thank God, and he has found the wisdom to choose a partner as spirited as he is. Caroline, Carles, you have the best of paradigms to model. Your partners have observed a partnership in their parents that is select. Dan and Alison raised their kids in an atmosphere of freedom, the freedom to do the right thing as each understood it—no jealous interference, no pre-made prejudices. Alison shared with me Dan’s marriage mantra: “Marriage is a state of perpetual divorcement to which both parties agree every morning to try one more time.” It’s like Aphrodite’s bath. Each time she bathed she restored her virginity. What a great idea! Who has ideas like that? And, finally — to my dearest, Alison. You have made me laugh over the years more than anyone I know. You and Dan made humor an art form. Please try to remember all the peculiar perspectives, all the terse witticisms, all the hilarious ironies you and Dan nurtured over the course of your years together. Keep laughing, and keep us laughing, please. It is the best way to preserve each other, to remember each other. As it is said, “humor is the antidote to the exaltation of ego,” which I guess means being funny is a preservative. Alison left me with a final and lasting image of Dan. She described his body, lying on the bed at 8:30 am Monday, January 28, 2013: “He looked like a pharaoh, like a Pharoah. ” Thank you Dan-Alison, Ross, and Tiye for your friendship, your loyalty, and your love. I love you.      

Until we meet again . . .

Dan and I have just spent the last a couple months retooling our website to focus more directly on the campaigns that have become the most important to us, and finishing our book on erotic communion that we have been researching and writing for the last 3 years. Look for more info on both.

For now, we have to report that Dan at 70 put down his keyboard on January 28, and after a short and painless illness took his last breath on this earth. He arose anew to carry on with the joyful immortality he and his family enjoy, only now in different form. When you chance to live day-by-day in the eternal-infinite, the now that can so easily escape our grasp, it’s not surprising that a transition like this is pervaded by peace and grace, lessening emotional pain, joyous in the unfolding of a new reality.

Dan and I have spent the last 4 decades in partnership and parenthood dedicating ourselves to Love and service, seeking Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in all our actions and decisions. While we often fell short, there is not anything that was and is more important in shaping who we are and want to be. In sharing his thoughts of late, Dan centered on one phrase to illuminate what we must do to make our world better, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

For information on Dan’s Memorial Service in Washington, DC, on Saturday afternoon, February 23, contact columbia@venusplusx.org. In lieu of flowers, Dan requested that a contribution be made to Casa Ruby instead, or a charity of your choice. A newly endowed Dan Massey Transleadership Scholarship Fund might be your choice, as well.

We are compiling many of your notes and letters in a book that will have blank pages and photographs for anyone that wants to contribute their thoughts, or you could send them to columbia@venusplusx.org at any time to be included in this special keepsake.

For more, click through to Wikipedia, The Advocate, and Huffington Post.

International Transgender Day of Remembrance in DC

This month’s official DC Transgender Day of Remembrance honors all of those who have died in the strucggle for equality, and their families, as activists rededicate themselves to help answer today’s community concerns.

Celebrated internationally, the Transgender Day of Remembrance in DC will take place at 6 PM, Tuesday, November 20, 2012, at the DC Metropolitan Community Church, 474 Ridge Street NW (just north of M Street, near the Green and Yellow Mount Vernon Square Metro Station), and organizers hope the public will attend.

Earline Budd, Executive Director of Transgender Health Empowerment (THE), and Day of Remembrance planning group member, notes, “Each year this event proves to be better and better, and more empowering for the community.”

Ms. Budd is happy to report, “Also this year, just a few days before the DC Transgender Day of Remembrance, Whitman-Walker Health, Casa Ruby DC, DC Trans Coalition (DCTC) , and THE are co-hosting a community conversation on improving transgender health,” at 7 PM on Thursday, November 15, also at the DC Metropolitan Community Church. Presentations by health providers, advocates, and public policy experts will focus on the significant challenges Transgender individuals have in accessing culturally competent health care, including primary medical care, HIV/AIDS care, mental health care, and addiction services.

 

 

Voting while trans and the problems you might face

New voter ID laws have created costly barriers to voting for many trans people. And much worse, the debate about voter ID laws have made even the idea of voting harder. so many of us may feel discouraged from even trying to vote on election day, according to National Center for Trans Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling. “Our message is don’t let them scare you into giving up your vote.”

I know that this is  tough to face. Honestly, who wants to walk into a voting site as a trans person and present an ID that doesn’t completely match up with your physical identity? This seems like reliving many of the past identity issues we’ve faced at some point and have had to really fight hard to overcome. The thing is, we survived it. It did not break us, so don’t let the fear of reliving these emotions stop us from doing the most important thing this country needs us to do at this time: VOTE!

Voter ID laws are dangerous. State legislatures have enacted them attempting to solve a fake problem. And as a result, transgender people–students, veterans, low-income people of color, and older Americans–risk being denied ballots this year. Can you believe this? If we dont stand up and do all that we can, I see this problem getting bigger and bigger.  So the first step is voting. Do all that you can and vote. This is our country, too, and we do have a voice.

What was the first law about sex? And what’s going to be the last one?

(También en español) “The ‘raging frenzy’ of the sex drive, to use Plato’s phrase, has always defied control. However, that’s not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law.” From Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire by Eric Berkowitz)

In 2007, while Eric Berkowitz was writing about legal history as a journalist, a friend posed the question, “What was the first law about sex?  Curious as always, Eric found that the first known laws, from Ancient Mesopotamia, were highly preoccupied with sex. He followed the trail and unearthed a bounty of details spanning millennia. He was intrigued, challenged, and entertained and now we all can be too with the 2012 much-lauded publication of Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire. Check out the book’s cool website.

Eric discovered that many early sex laws sprung from the belief that the sex lives of individuals could bring risk to everyone — one person’s pleasure could be society’s destruction. And this tradition of insinuating the government into our sex lives “for the good of all” carries forth to the present day, as any glance at a newspaper shows.

After more than a year of research in Los Angeles and three years  in Paris writing the book, Eric’s joyful fascination with the subject matter permeates every page-turning chapter. We are drawn into this fascination through his scholarly but entertaining and often heart-rending analysis of  the flashpoints of sex, law, and politics throughout history. Eric fills the void between dry legal academic offerings, which no one reads, and the generally research-free books in the open market.

This book is also a roadmap of how sex laws provide a window into how societies define themselves. It’s a fresh and completely different point of view that will stoke your own desire for sexual freedom, renewing your drive to eradicate bullied and needless laws about sex, particularly the more modern regressive laws against women and other sexual minorities.

Talking recently, Eric said he’s not against laws about sex. Rather, laws should concern restricting violence and intimidation. He advocates for a world where all other laws about sex, particularly punitive sex registries marking people for life, have become part of our own ancient history.

Eric will be participating in this weekend’s Sexual Freedom Summit (September 21-23, Silver Spring, MD, produced by  Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance), and is slated to be a part of the much anticipated Author’s Roundtable on Sunday. Look for more about Eric and his book here next week.

“Keep pushing, and push harder,” is how Eric summarizes his call to action aimed at committed sexual freedom advocates. “Keep the pressure up [to end these laws], and especially consider that those living in poverty are always the last to derive benefits from society’s advances in terms of access to healthcare and freedom from police bias.”

If you want to find out more about the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance and their views on sexual health education and other key issues of sexual freedom, such as sex work and reproductive justice, you can attend Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit in September.  Also, you can attend Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit (September 21-23), where Alison Gardner and Dan Massey, VenusPlusX’s founders who work closely throughout the year with Woodhull as members of its Advisory Council, will be presenting their workshop session, “Sacred Sexuality and Erotic Communion, the Human Experience.”