A Lightening Strike Heard Around The World

Photo by Steve Rhodes Flickr/creative commons

"Not everything that is faced can be chaged; but nothing can be changed until it is faced." — James Baldwin (1924 – 1987) American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic

Meditation this weekend on Michael Brown and the birth of the BlackLivesMatter movement led me to re-examine my published thoughts from a year ago.

Follow The Money To Ferguson Institutionalized racism, money, greed, and special interests are what makes brown and black young men primary targets and victims, and it is being financed by your hard-earned tax-dollars. (More . . .)

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in Campaigns / End Police Bias / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Combatting the Infection of the Religious Right

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"[Y]ou’re not able to see somebody else as a human being," 

Some may predict that the influence of the religious right is waning as the number of Americans identifying as evangelicals declines, but that misunderstands and underestimates the festering infection of their ideas, already in full flower. You can be an secularist but your world is still affected by the disease of fundamentalist thinking that has made and continues to make a deep impression on our laws and policies. The rubric of religious freedom has been fully distorted to protect racial bigotry and legalize discrimination. President Obama Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Transhuman Erotic Freedom

by Gen Flickr/creative commons

The world’s secret history is strewn with tales of visionaries and pioneers who have advocated for the primacy of erotic joy in connecting each person with the universe at large and endowing each of us with supreme power to shape our own destiny (however that is defined by the individual). For eons, these practitioners have operated in secret to protect this inherited knowledge (and more frequently, their lives) from self-appointed minorities who by their nature suppress this information and fear its neutralizing power. Tantra survives today. More recently, today’s guardians of this secret knowledge have warned us that lifting the veil ...

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in Key Issues / Public Information / Transhuman Erotic Freedom / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

VIDEO: Conforming to Gender is a Disease

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What do you think after watching the video below? If you are trans or gender-non conforming or gender fluid, what was your childhood like? How did we break free of society's false expectations? What do you think society needs to do to make it safe for children to express their own gender identity? We want to know. Send us your video for The Sexual Freedom Project, and we'll send you one of our prized VenusPlusX t-shirts that reads: Sexual Freedom -- You Were Born With it. See more videos.  

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in Public Information / The Sexual Freedom Project / Uncategorized / Videos  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Our New America Is Here and Now

11 Sep 2001, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA --- American flag hangs from rubble of the disaster site of the World Trade Center after terrorist attack. --- Image by © Paul Colangelo/CORBIS Flickr/creativecommons

"Out of the chaos of this prolonged moment and inside the shell of the old system, a new culture, a new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. Call it what you want. But call it something. Stop pretending it’s not happening." (Tom Engelhardt of The Nation Institute and TomDispatch.com)

Below are some highlights from Engehardt's 5 Hallmarks of the New American Order, republished in The Nation magazine, and I urge you to not only read the entire article but print it out and post ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

A Roadmap to #DrawTheLine for Church-State Separation

Many people I speak to and correspond with are looking for an agenda to #DrawTheLine between church and state. As previously stated, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (au.org) is one of the best organizations setting that agenda and tracking our victories. While most of us tend to focus on national politics more than state politics, and even less on local politics, we have to keep in mind that school board members and city council members grow up to be state lawmakers and national candidates, so the front line for most of this work starts ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

What does sexual freedom mean to you?

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We've already heard from hundreds of people who have something to say about sexual freedom, some of whom made it to our highlight reel below. We would love to hear from you via video or essay, and if we publish it we'll send you one of our treasured VenusPlusX t-shirts (featuring the trans Statue of Freedom and "Sexual Freedom -- You Were Born With It"). Join the cast of The Sexual Freedom Project. More videos here. Please note that by submitting original content to us, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use/Release.

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in Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Is the End Game for the Religious Right Really a Civil War? (Part 2 of 2)

Poster by Steve Rhodes Flickr/creativecommons

"[G]ay rights issue has reached an unprecedented 'level of intensity' and put the country on the brink of conflict . . . Talk about a Civil War, we could have another one over this.

. . . If the Supreme Court strikes down the state bans and states across the country fail to convene “a state constitutional convention to re-examine the Constitution . . . we’re going to see a general collapse in the next decade or two.”

-- Foucs On The Family's James Dobson:

In Part 1, yesterday, I posed the question, ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 1 comments

Is the End Game for the Religious Right Really a Civil War? (Part 1 of 2)

by Lawrence OP Depiction of St. James as Santiago Matamoros on

"For some people the future of their faith and of the nation are in danger, threatened by secular forces controlled by Satan himself."  -- Christian right's rage problem -- How white fundamentalists are roiling America (Salon.com)

When I talk to my friend, Michael Rogers, about how the religious right is guided by a political-religious dominionist philosophy demanding the end of our rule of law in favor of (their version of) god's law, he warns me that they won't stop until they force either (or both) a constitutional convention or civil war, reminding me that ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The First Amendment Doesn’t Need Any Defense

The proposed First Amendment Defense Act is Congress's attempt to legalize LGBT discrimination. Aligning with faith groups to diminish the influence of religion in government was one of the chief strategies we developed while meeting with like-minded activists at the recent Netroots Nation and LGBT Netroots Connect. While this includes tactics such as direct contact with welcoming congregations, the nexus of this alignment right now centers on defeating the passage of the nefarious First Amendment Defense Act, the aim of which is "to prevent discriminatory treatment of any person on the basis of views held with respect to marriage." While the  Read More›

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments