Link post: things that have struck me this morning

whoknew44

...The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying
prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon. ...

ozarque

She could do magic
as well as anyone;
she was highly skilled.
...

... Two people have died and a total of 19 were treated at one of three medical centers Thursday night when participants collapsed after a New Age-type sweat lodge experience near Sedona. ... [Yavapai County Sheriff Steve] Waugh also said that [James Arthur] Ray, who led the sweat lodge ceremony, refused to talk to investigators on site and returned to California. ...

... The “solo experience in the forest” was a “vision quest” in the uninhabited country around the ranch following the 36-hour fast. On the day of the sweat lodge fiasco, participants were served a buffet breakfast in the morning, then sat through a few hours of seminars before the sweat lodge got going around 3:00. Near as I can make out, the sweat lodge session went wrong somewhere around 4:30, and had become a multi-victim emergency scene by 5:00. ...

... As I said earlier, “Remember all of these when we’re asking why participants stayed in James Ray’s misbegotten sweat lodge beyond the limits of their own endurance.” If you have the sense God gave a soda cracker, you do not (1.) promise people results that will both transform them to the point of temporarily estranging them from themselves, and automatically provide them with the means to endure that transformation; (2.) put them through multiple exercises that are both psychologically and physically challenging; (3.) push them to test their own limits, and give them the impression that bailing out of the exercises is wussy, a defeat, and a waste of their ten thousand dollars; and (4.) fail to monitor them closely for signs of distress. ...

browngirl

[U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker] challenged the backers of California's voter-enacted ban on same-sex marriage Wednesday to explain how allowing gay couples to wed threatens conventional unions, a demand that prompted their lawyer to acknowledge he did not know.