http://cedarseed.livejournal.com/

Thought you might find it interesting, as I did.

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Re-post this in an email, or on another site if you believe love makes a marriage!

Oh
My
God.

I have to agree with Danny Boy here. How is it that our generation sits by and watches our politicians maintain their “nebulous relationship to the truth”? But then, what can we do? I liked Danny Boy’s suggestion that we refuse the lies at least in our own hearts. Know that it is happening, remain aware and awake, and refuse these lies.

On another note, the Bush administration spends $62 million per year on outside PR contracts. PR contracts, folks! This is almost twice the amount of the Clinton administration in it’s second term. Considering the affect that we know media and advertising have on our country’s frame of mind… What if pro-choice or environmental or gay rights groups were getting the same funding – and spending that money in the same ways – as Christian or pro-life groups were? Would there be a shift in our country?

Here is the link to the program transcript:

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcriptNOW129_full.html

But can the images to which we expose ourselves during our awake time, intentionally or unintentionally, have an effect on our conscious lives? Can they help to create patterns of behavior that we may not even realize are being forged? If someone were to have asked me that a few weeks ago, I would have answered, “Yes, of course.” But I wouldn’t have really understood the implications. Now I do.

I have had a lifelong challenge (I just changed that word from “struggle” to “challenge”. Aren’t I a good, empowered girl!) with weight and body image issues. Since the age of twelve, I have been told in one way or another that I am FAT. First by the jealous girls at school because I developed early and had boobs and all the boys loved me – I was by no means overweight, then by the TV shows I watched. I had a brief respite during my college career, entering what was the void of training to be a professional classical musician. But a few years later, back into the downtown San Francisco workforce I went, surrounded by billboards and beautiful-skinny-stylish-trendy people. Right alongside those were the donut and cookie shops. Nice.

In the recent years of my life there have been triumphs and there have been errors in judgment. I have completed a triathlon, which has completely changed for the better my view of myself in terms of physical activity and endurance. I have fasted twice for five months at a time in desperation to become more “beautiful”. I have also managed to, for the first time in my life, lose weight using only natural means – eating well and exercising regularly. Imagine that! And now I am on the path to permanently changing old patterns of behavior, being gentle and patient with myself. I refuse the urges to become desperate and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Now if only I could get rid of that negative voice inside of me, I could do all of these things and actually feel GOOD about myself at the same time! But that’s a blog for another day…

About a year or so ago, I let my sister in on the secret that I LOVE to get my hands on trash mags at the doctor’s office, or as a special treat on a plane trip. You know, People, US Weekly, and yes, (oh, this is so embarrassing), even Star. Well, for my birthday in September, she got me subscriptions to US Weekly and Star magazines. Ooh I was so excited!! Trashy reading material at my disposal, 24/7. Stars once a week and US Weeklies once a month! Woo hoo! I thought it was silly, and fun, and entertaining. I never looked at them longingly, or consciously felt worse about myself after reading a bit. I read them from time to time, not every day or anything, and never thought about them otherwise. Again, it was just silly, fun and entertaining.

I have had the incredible fortune of enlisting a fabulous intuitive life coach to help me move towards my goals and get more connected with my passion. In only my second meeting with her, I was telling her of my challenges with that negative voice inside of me. [Note: She knows nothing of my little obsession with trash mags.] And as I was telling her about the things that I wanted to do but didn’t feel like I could because I was too fat, or not good enough, she stopped me. She said she just wanted to put something out there, and if it made sense to me that we could explore it some more. She said that as I was saying these things, she was reading my energy an she kept seeing…magazine photos. WHAT???

Apparently, the contents of these magazines have infiltrated my subconscious!!! Yikes! I had no idea to what extent. When my coach pointed out to me that these magazines promote the notion that it is perfectly acceptable to judge women based on superficial factors, my response was, “That’s the way the world works, isn’t it?” And her response to me will stay with me for the rest of my life and be a benefit to my children, “Well, that may be, but that doesn’t matter to ME because those aren’t MY values.” So obvious, but so far from my reality at that point. Have I really been so brainwashed as to think that I have to buy into this sick way of thinking? Apparently so.

I have now begun a trash diet. No more gossip, no more news except from non-mainstream sources, no more celebrity mags. It’s high time to turn my attention inward and stop wasting my energy on useless garbage.

Like my mother used to say – Why do you want to fill your head with that crap?

This is a cautionary tale. How many things do you expose yourself to during the day that might come back to bite you in the ass? Don’t underestimate the power of the images with which we are bombarded on a daily basis. Media outlets have developed sophisticated and insidious ways to get to our subconscious. Beware.