Should we tolerate GAYS? No (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kohlhatkar (uprisingradio.org), S.N. Walters, Tolerance Trap 1

The Tolerance Trap

Texas Governor Rick Perry, speaking in San Francisco last week, likened being gay to being an alcoholic. “Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle...” he said, “you have the ability to decide not to do that.”

“I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic,” he added, “but I have the desire not to do that. And I look at the homosexual issue the same way.” 

 

His controversial remarks come on the heels of the Texas Republican Party expressing its support for so-called “reparative therapy” for homosexuality -- a discredited counseling treatment to “cure” people of homosexuality.

• AUDIO: Segment with Suzanna Walters (entire show)
• David Feldman asks, "Is Rick Perry gay?" answers, yes
• VIDEO: There IS a cure for homosexuality! (Rated R)

What's Republican Perry doing with that pig in his mouth, cannibalism, swallowing? (DFS)

 

We're here, please tolerate us

The progressive response to the idea that homosexuality is a choice is the assertion that people who are gay are born that way, perhaps with a gene that makes them prefer people of their own sex, or in Judeo-Christian terms, “God made them that way.”

Westboro Baptist vs. US Army

Northeastern University Sociology Professor Suzanna Walters has a problem with this approach. She maintains that using the “born this way” approach to gay liberation reduces the LGBT movement to one that will be happy with “tolerance” or “acceptance” by mainstream American society.

 

Gays are evil! God hates them! (Westboro)

But is tolerance something worth fighting for? In asking to be tolerated, aren’t gay rights advocates simply asking society to tolerate the LGBT community like one tolerates anything that is uncomfortable or undesirable?

What does Buddhism say?

In her ground breaking book The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions Are Sabotaging Gay Equality, Walters demands liberation over acceptance and warns against declaring victory for gay rights too soon.

Analyzing pop culture’s depictions of gay characters, the marriage equality movement, scientific research into homosexuality, and religious approaches, she makes the case that nothing less than full equality and a societal transformation is worth fighting for. More

GUEST: Prof. Walters is Director of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, author of All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America.

Bob/David explain Overcome, a Christian Center for Reparative Therapy

Love, Sexuality, and Awakening: Retreat

Ven. Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni (awakeningtruth.org) and Dr. Sharon Beckman-Brindley (metta.org); Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Fragrant blossoming lotus flower, the symbol of opening (tvladusi/flickr.com)

 

Dr. Beckman-Brindley, Ven. Thanasanti

The theme of this retreat is our relationship with various facets of love as part of a path of Buddhist awakening. "Love" includes a broad range of experience -- from a sense of friendliness and compassion, to appreciation toward ourselves, to the desire to release our masks and defenses and rest in a shared intimacy with others [a loss of self and merging with someone or something larger].

Sometimes in our daily life, this shared intimacy is expressed through romantic sexual involvement. [Other times it is sought diving within through asceticism and spirituality.] Ultimately, resting in love, we can embody an unconditional love that has no expectations, where love is an essential quality of "being" rather than a state or circumstance we long for [a trait rather than a temporary state].

 

Time for reflection (true-enlightenment.com)

This will be an eight precept retreat in which we refrain from killing and harming, and from stealing, any sexual activity, incorrect speech, and/or substances which cloud the mind. There will be two meals and an evening snack. We will begin the week using the Foundations of Mindfulness in silent practice. After a few days of silence, we will introduce sessions of Insight Dialogue to explore the theme.

It runs from Saturday May 23-30 in Loveland, Colorado, at Sunrise Ranch within easy access of Denver Int'l airport, yet secluded from the bustle of city life, in the Rocky Mountain foothills. Program contact: Katherine Wolfe (wolfalohalani@gmail.com). More 
 
ELIGIBILITY: This retreat is suitable for anyone self-identified as a woman who has a regular meditation practice and has done a seven-day mindfulness retreat.

DONATION: The teachings are offered on a dana basis (the Pali word for "generosity," the Buddhist practice of giving to one’s capacity).

SCHOLARSHIP: Dana has played an essential role in the Buddhist tradition. In the spirit of this tradition, Awakening Truth does not want cost to be an obstacle to participation and so, are committed to offering financial assistance to those who need it. If you cannot attend the retreat due to cost, please contact the retreat committee: 720-295-1321 or awakeningtruth.retreats@gmail.com.

SPONSORED BY: Awakening Truth, a 501(c)3 organization based in Colorado with the intention of supporting Buddhist nuns, bringing the teachings into the modern world and building a training monastery for [blended-Theravada] Forest Tradition bhikkhunis.

TEACHERS

Sharon Beckman-Brindley, Ph.D., is a Senior Insight Dialogue Teacher who teaches Insight Dialogue retreats worldwide. A clinical psychologist, she has served as team leader for Metta’s Relational Insight Meditation Program; she also serves on the Metta Programs Teachers Council. She has practiced vipassana (insight) meditation for over 30 years. Since 2001 she has studied and practiced the Dhamma and Insight Dialogue intensively with Gregory Kramer. She is also a co-founder and a guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, Virginia and is a graduate of the Community Dharma Leaders Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She also has over 30 years of practice as a psychotherapist, who has led workshops and retreats on meditation and its integration with psychotherapy for over 15 years. She is a stepmother and a grandmother and lives with her husband and their two cats in Charlottesville.
 
Amma Thanasanti Bhikkhuni is a guest in Metta’s Teacher Training program. She has been meditating for over 30 years, a [Theravada or more eccentric American monastic] Buddhist nun for over 20 years, and has been teaching internationally for over 15 years. He work spans rigorous understanding of Buddhist teachings, non-dual meditation, depth psychology, subtle body energies, and the Divine Feminine. She teaches meditation as an art and skill, integrating body, heart, and mind with finesse and compassion. She founded Awakening Truth [whose rainbow motif suggests a particularly welcome climate for lesbians and gays], whose mission is to create a nun (bhikkhuni)'s training monastery and seeks ways for monastics and lay practitioners to work together to support whole-life practice. She is currently based at the Shakti Vihara Hermitage in Colorado Springs.

Sex on the screen: No longer taboo?

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Nicholas Barber (Culture/BBC.co.uk, Jan. 8, 2014)

"Blue is the Warmest Colour," a French coming-of-age-story (Sundance Selects)

 

Sex on screen: No longer taboo?

The recent cinema movies "Blue is the Warmest Colour" and "Nymphomaniac" have attracted attention for their graphic sexual content. Is this explicit trend more than skin deep?

 

Troubled, sure, but smarter than us.

The most talked-about eight minutes in cinema last year [2013] were in the French film, "Blue is the Warmest Colour." The movie’s graphic lesbian sex scene was so explicit and prolonged -- frankly, it looked exhausting -- that Abdellatif Kechiche’s three-hour coming-of-age drama could have been dismissed as pornography.

It's out of control (Bjork)

And yet, while there was much debate concerning the morality of a 52-year-old male director telling two naked young actresses [Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos] to contort themselves into human reef knots, the film won the Palme d’Or ["Golden Palm"] at the Cannes Film Festival and went onto garner rave reviews. Most critics accepted that "Blue is the Warmest Colour" wasn’t a blue movie -- but an honest, unflinching portrayal of first love.

It wasn’t a one-off, either. When you scan the list of 2013’s films, you could be forgiven for thinking that today’s directors have sex on the brain....

Lust is a terrible thing ("Mondo Amore" Williams/laluzdejesus.com).

  

Gwyneth Paltrow [America's most hated celebrity] and Mark Ruffalo...appeared in "Thanks for Sharing," a drama about a support group for sex addicts. 

 

Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan made "The Look of Love," a biopic of Paul Raymond, one of Britain’s wealthiest strip-club proprietors and pornographers.

  

Outrageous celebrity sex quotes

Another biopic, "Lovelace," featured Amanda Seyfried as the star of the revolutionary 1970s hardcore hit, "Deep Throat." And Joseph Gordon-Levitt, last seen in "Looper"... chose a different kind of film for his debut as a writer-director. In "Don Jon," he played a New Jersey bartender who watched porn on his computer several times a day, despite having Scarlett Johansson (another Avengers star) as his girlfriend. More

Demi Moore's new boy toy?

Lindsay Lohan's X-rated laptop

Awards season gone wild

• Fútbol: The Beautiful Game Feb. 2, L.A., USA
• Cosquin Folk Festival Jan. 25-Feb. 2, Argentina
• India Art Fair Jan. 30-Feb. 2, New Delhi, India
• Mozart Week, Jan. 22-Feb. 2, Salzburg, Austria
• Sundance, Jan. 16-Jan. 26, Utah, United States
• VIDEO: Best of 2013 clips

Pussy Riot: "Words Will Break Cement" (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly (Eds.); Masha Gessen, Words Will Break Cement, Terry Gross (Fresh Air)

Pussy Riot collective as punks, Lobnoye Mesto, Red Square, Moscow (Denis Bochkarev)

 

Nadia, the face of Pussy Riot

Because of the Winter Olympics that are coming to the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Russia, next month, Pres. Vlad Putin had Pussy Riot (the feminist collective) members released a few weeks early. They did not ask for the amnesty, nor would they have accepted it. They had no choice, and far from thanking Putin, they are condemning the atrocious gulag system that almost approaches the misery of the US Prison System with its death penalty, torture, homosexual rape, and widespread indefinite solitary detention. No other country is as bad as us, the U.S. But Russia has its own forms of abuse -- overworking inmates, starving them, threatening them... WHYY's Fresh Air with Terry Gross talks with Russian lesbian, mother, feminist, wife, journalist Masha Gessen about Pussy Riot, members of whom she interviewed after their release from prison.

"In war, you're either a collaborator or a resister. You don't get a choice to be neutral." 

- Masha Gessen

 

Wisdom Quarterly, being forced to choose, chooses to resist. Pussy Riot and Gessen do, too.

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel angry over NSA spying
• Telling schools to ease up on racist "zero tolerance"
• Governor wants New York to legalize marijuana

The Passion of Pussy Riot

Pussy Riot in glass cage in Moscow court, 10-10-12 ( Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Words Will Break Cement (256 pages, $16)

Masha Gessen is a prominent journalist who is also a lesbian and an outspoken LGBT rights advocate in Russia. After Russia passed two anti-gay laws in June (2013), she decided it was time for her, her partner, and their children to leave. In late December, they moved to New York.

 

"The only thing more creepy than hearing someone suggest the likes of you should be burned alive is hearing someone suggest the likes of you should be burned alive and thinking, 'I know that guy.'"

 

That's what Gessen wrote recently, referring to an experience she had with one of Russia's most virulent homophobic public figures.

 

Gessen is the author of a critical book [A Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladamir Putin] about President Vladimir Putin, published in 2012. Her new book is about Pussy Riot, the Russian group that has used punk rock as a form of performance art to protest against Putin. 

I have face! - Putin

Its most famous "action" was in February 2012 inside a Moscow cathedral [in allegedly atheist Russia, which was never atheist but always quietly Christian and Buddhist] where band members danced and played air guitar as their boom box played what they called "A Punk Prayer":

"Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out
...The phantom of liberty is up in heaven,
Gay pride sent to Siberia in a chain gang
...Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist!"

 

The action resulted in the arrest of three members of the group. Two of them, Nadezhda [Nadia] Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were sentenced to two years in prison.

  

Straight host Terry Gross (nymag)

"Not coincidentally, their arrest ... launched Putin's crackdown on the opposition and on his critics, which has lasted for the last two years," Gessen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

"So, in a way, both their performance and their arrests marked the beginning of a new political era in Russia."

 

As part of Putin's pre-Olympics prisoner amnesty, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released last month, two months before their sentences were up. Gessen's new book is called Words Will Break Cement: The Passion Of Pussy Riot.

Interview Highlights

On the working conditions inside the women's prison where Nadezhda Tolokonnikova served time:

 

What had happened at her penal colony was that the sewing factory that has served as the lifeblood of every women's penitentiary institution in Russia, and many of the men's ones, was taking on more and more orders, so the inmates were forced to work longer and longer hours. By the end of the summer, the workday was about 17 hours... LISTEN TO INTERVIEW (37:52)

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