The Freest Countries in the World Are:
The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa.
And this is sad that the world’s oldest and strongest democracy, the U.S., is not among them and it is not expected to be any time soon. U.S. was the sixteenth country in the world to grant its women the right to vote. Why sometimes things so obvious take so much energy to be proved?
I, Andrew, take you, Aaron,
to be no other than yourself.
Loving what I know of you,
trusting what I don’t yet know,
with respect for your integrity,
and faith in your abiding love for me,
through all our years,
and in all that life may bring us,
for better or worse,
for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health,
till death do us part,
I accept you as my husband
and pledge my love to you.
I am convinced that the struggle for marriage is right, and absolutely just. But sometimes I think to myself: “Aren’t we just perpetuating a wrong model?”
“When Ronald Reagan and Jesse Helms get down to serious logrolling on “family policy”, they are men promoting men’s interests… Is their bond in any way congruent with the bond of a loving gay male couple? Reagan and Helms would say no–disgustedly. Most gay couples would say no–disgustedly. But why not? Doesn’t the continuum between “men-loving-men” and “men-promoting-the-interests-of-men” have the same intuitive force that it has for women?”
Eve Sedgwick
Miracle’s truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.
Take what’s still given: in a room’s rich shadow
a woman’s breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.
Adrienne Rich, Miracle Ice Cream
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Billie Holiday
Lewis Allen
And could they hear me I would tell them:
O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,
Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached
By time and the elements; but there is a line
You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it
Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses
Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.
The bottom of the sea is cruel.
Hart Crane, Voyages I.
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken…we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God…We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.”
John Winthrop
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
Advocate 365
News Watch
Song of Myselves 