#Marital Congress

[trofysisters]

Анфиса

Из-за значительного понижения в должности моральный дух Анфисы упал. Чтобы поддержать жену и поднять ей настроение, Эдуард решил показать ей водолаза и нырнуть в унитаз. (Due to the significant demotion, Anfisa's morale dropped. To support his wife and cheer her up, Eduard decided to show her a diver and dive into the toilet)

Но ничто не улучшает самооценку, как блестящая победа над террористами. И пусть Анфисе много лет, и она уже не наденет миниюбку и колготки в сеточку - униформу секретного агента, но спасти мир она еще способна, что и сделает через полтора часа на новой должности. (But nothing improves self-esteem like a brilliant victory over terrorists. And even though Anfisa is many years old, and she will no longer wear a miniskirt and fishnet tights - the uniform of a secret agent, she is still capable of saving the world, which she will do after an hour and a half in her new position)

Если Анфиса обладает многолетним опытом и знанием о несправедливости мира, то ее сын, Давид, еще юн, наивен и считает себя идеальным кандидатом в члены Конгресса. Он и представить не мог сколько грязи и лжи на него выльют соперники: - У Вас грязные руки! Коррупционер! - Я всегда мою руки с мылом и невинен, - оправдывался Давид. - Девственник! Вы не исполняете супружеский долг, не исполните долг и перед народом! Ваша жена - светлая! Вы расист! - Я не женат, и мы не спим вместе. Я не расист, я - метис, - пытался отбиваться Давид, но тщетно. Он выбыл из предвыборной гонки и сильно растерял харизму. (If Anfisa has many years of experience and knowledge of the injustice of the world, then her son, David, is still young, naive and considers himself an ideal candidate for member of Congress. He could not even imagine how much dirt and lies his rivals would pour on him: - Your hands are dirty! Corrupt official! - I always wash my hands with soap and am innocent, - David justified himself. - Virgin! You do not fulfill your marital duty, and you will not fulfill your duty to the people! Your wife is light! You are a racist! - I'm not married, and we don't sleep together. I’m not a racist, I’m a mestizo, - David tried to fight back, but in vain. He dropped out of the election race and lost much of his charisma)

Пока Давид учился противостоять нападкам конкурентов, Эдуард поддерживал его дух музыкой. (While David was learning to withstand the attacks of competitors, Eduard supported his son’s spirit with music)

Вскоре с миссии вернулась Анфиса снова в должности Космического пирата. И всё внимание Эдуарда переключилось на нее. А сын справиться сам, он же - сильный мужчина. (Soon Anfisa returned from the mission as a Space Pirate again. And all of Eduard’s attention switched to her. And the son can handle it on his own, he is a strong man)

Неудивительно, что, втайне мечтая о других мужчинах, Анфиса их не замечала (даже если они стояли прямо у нее за спиной и сигнализировали о готовности), желая только своего мужа. (It is not surprising that, secretly dreaming of other men, Anfisa did not notice them (even if they stood right behind her and signaled their readiness), wanting only her husband)

В свой выходной день Эдуард по приглашению старого друга поехал на прогулку в Лавку мастеров. Как настоящий мужчина он думал только о жене и о том, чем ее порадовать, например, изумрудными сережками. (On his day off, Eduard, at the invitation of an old friend, went for a walk to the Craftsmen's Shop. Like a real man, he thought only about his wife and what to please her with, for example, emerald earrings)

Даже проводя время со старым другом, он мечтал об Анфисе, и по окончании прогулки купил ей букет цветов. Не муж, а мечта! (Even while spending time with an old friend, he dreamed of Anfisa, and at the end of the walk he bought her a bouquet of flowers. Not a husband, but a dream!)

За это время Давид почти в совершенстве овладел ораторским искусством. Соперники думали, что он их не переиграет? Он их уничтожит! (During this time, David almost perfectly mastered the art of oratory. Did his opponents think that he wouldn’t beat them? He will destroy them!)

#sims 2 #devchata #anfisa #david

[deadpresidents]

How accurate is this?

I think they have most of the Presidents in the right spot, but there are a couple of massive mistakes. Gerald Ford and Franklin Pierce should actually be in "Life of the Party".

Franklin Pierce was one of the most popular people in Congress because he liked to drink and party so much. He basically had to quit politics because his wife hated how much fun he was having -- and when she found out that he had been nominated for President after he secretly allowed his supporters to float him as a candidate in 1852, she fainted. He didn't become emo Franklin Pierce until after all his kids died (which, to be fair, can be a downer) and his wife started believing that God took them so that he wouldn't be distracted from his work. That was a marital argument that he had a hard time winning once he got elected President behind-her-back and their last surviving son was killed in a gruesome train accident right before his inauguration. But back in his Congressional days, he was a blast.

Gerald Ford was always the most popular guy in the room whether it was in school, in a football locker room, on a ship in the Pacific Ocean in World War II, in a law office, in the House of Representatives, or in the White House. Nobody had anything bad to say about Gerald Ford when he died, and that was a pretty amazing accomplishment for a lifelong politician who lived until he was 93. And if you don't think Gerald Ford knew how to party, don't forget that the world's most famous substance abuse rehabilitation facility was established by and named after his wife, Betty.

Ronald Reagan was great on television and he was devoted to his wife, Nancy, but he was not the life of the party. His first wife, actress Jane Wyman, divorced him partly because of that. While he was genial and good-natured and good company, there are many, many stories of "friends" who had known him for decades being shocked when he would come up and introduce himself as if it was the first time. There was always a distance and intense privacy to him according to his biographers.

I love John Adams, but he himself would be offended if you said he was "somewhat fun." He was a grumpy and serious genius.

Benjamin Harrison's nickname was "the human iceberg," and that should probably be its own category. James K. Polk belongs in that category with him because as writer Charles G. Sellers wrote, "Politics had become his whole life aside from which he had no aspirations, intellectual interests, recreation, or even friendships."

Andrew Jackson did have a giant block of cheese at his Inaugural reception, but he also ditched the party.

#Presidents #History #Presidential History #Politics

[sgiandubh]

T is the weakest link, find out the truth about his “real” life and we will have answers to so many of our questions.

Dear Weakest Link Anon,

I couldn't agree more, based on my own (and other like minded people's) research. We knew Mordor's national sport is Compulsive Lying, but the contrast between cold, hard, real facts and the absurd narrative that is never questioned across the street is still shocking.

I explained many times already the reasons that prevent me from publishing and commenting my findings. I can only encourage you to make a simple research on public business databases. It's all on screen, of course...or, in this case, it's all on those websites. Costs are low.

His real life has nothing glamorous about it.

And yes, I know the main argument peddled by the Idiot Twins all day long, every day God makes: a legal document is FACT, TRUTH and an undisputable sign of marital bliss.

These people mentally live in a grotto (calm down, it's about Plato, here). So, according to them, the following legal document MUST come from a legit democratic country, right?

Right?

This is a quote from Stalin's Constitution, ratified by the Eighth Congress of Soviets of the USSR in December 1936, just after the First Moscow Trial of the Party's dissident groups.

By 1937, the Great Purge was building up momentum. The privacy of millions was violated, while many (so many) were tortured, tried in haste and disposed of. Millions of letters were opened, their content scrutinized. The madness temporarily stopped in earnest only with the outbreak of WWII. 1.2 million people were killed in the process.

At the very same moment, other millions of people firmly, even sincerely, believed it was all for the best, FACT, TRUTH and the only possible way reality should look like.

Like in Stalin's Soviet Union, critical examination and contextualization seem to be forbidden in the Land of the Soviets Best Fans Ever. Any questioning or unorthodox behavior is met with kindness: 'the mental ward' is the last trend. It immediately made me think about the fact that in the same Soviet Union, after the war, dissidents were not labeled as political criminals, but as 'psychiatric ward patients'.

The easiest, cheapest and most effective way of ostracizing. And one of the main reasons C's Oscar promo campaign was a resounding flop.

Meanwhile, tax debts, failed projects and flimsy whereabouts seem to tell the pertinent story for your ask, Anon.

#anon #fandom #shitshow

[stiltonbasket]

prompt for cultivation baby au: wangxian's night in the xuanwu's cave.

Twelve hours after Jiang Cheng and the others escape from Mount Muxi, Wei Wuxian risks wading into the lake and discovers that the underwater passage to the stream in the maple wood has been blocked behind the tortoise’s body.

“It’s sleeping right beside the opening,” he whispers, when he and Lan Zhan are safe in a tunnel of rock too narrow for the Xuanwu’s neck and head. “Judging by the current in the water, that passage was the only way out.”

Lan Zhan’s white face turns three shades whiter. Wei Wuxian bites back a curse at the sight of him, spattered with blood from the puncture wounds the Xuanwu had left in his calf, and hurries to his side with outstretched arms and assurances already bubbling on his lips.

"We'll find a way out," he says, in the soft, soothing tones he uses on the baby disciples at Lotus Pier. "And if we can't, Jiang Cheng will be back before we're in any danger of starving. He might even bring Jiang-shushu with him, and since Jin Zixuan must be heading for Lanling—"

"No one will be coming for me," Lan Zhan chokes. "The Cloud Recesses have burned, and my brother is missing. I do not know if he and Shufu are still alive."

He bows his head, thoroughly defeated, and lets out a wretched sob.

“If we survive this—and we must, for I do not doubt you—there might be nothing left for me to return to.”

Wei Wuxian wraps an arm around his waist.

“Then you’ll come home with me,” he vows. “If your clan is lost, you can be part of mine. I’ll never leave you, Lan Zhan. I swear it.”

Lan Zhan cries a little more, and then, thankfully, he sleeps: as peacefully and deep as a child at rest, though he has nothing to lie on but Wei Wuxian’s thigh tucked beneath his head. For his part, Wei Wuxian sits against an outcrop of rock and nibbles on some of the food he squirreled into his girdle the day before yesterday; Jiang-shushu advised him and Jiang Cheng to keep their supplies in their qiankun bags at all times, and there should be enough water and preserved meals for two or three days.

“Are you hungry?” he asks gently, when Lan Zhan wakes. “I have food and water, but we’ll have to be careful with it.”

His friend shakes his head. “I will drink a little, if you can spare it. But I have no stomach for food.”

So Lan Zhan drinks, and rests again. Six hours later, he rouses himself completely and waits for another half-shichen before waking Wei Wuxian, who was dozing in a pile of old maple leaves by the fire.

“We must kill the Xuanwu before we can escape, or it will smell my blood in the water,” Lan Zhan says grimly. “I could act as bait to help you escape alone, but there is no guarantee that the Xuanwu would let you go after it finished with me. That branding iron Wang Lingjiao used was cursed.”

“Was it? Oh,” Wei Wuxian mutters, wincing as he puts his fingers to his bosom and draws them away bloody. “You’re right. This isn’t going to heal for days.”

“I cannot fight in this state.” Lan Zhan gestures to the wound in his leg. “Nor can I leave you to face the beast alone. We are hurt and hungry and thirsty, and the Xuanwu would have been a deadly foe in the best of circumstances.”

Wei Wuxian shrugs. “Then we’ll have to wait until your leg heals over.”

“Yes, but—” and here Lan Zhan hesitates, with his next words weighing so heavily on his tongue that Wei Wuxian can almost see them. “There is no telling how long it might take. The sooner we leave, the better, and I know a way we can bolster our lingli enough to heal within the next three or four hours.”

“You do? What is it?”

Lan Zhan swallows and drops his gaze to his lap.

“Dual cultivation.”

Wei Wuxian’s jaw drops open. He stares at Lan Zhan with the blood draining from his face, half-convinced that he had not heard his friend correctly, and pales all over again at the realization that he had.

“Dual cultivation? You mean-”

“Not as marital congress,” Lan Zhan says hurriedly. “With a sufficiently strong golden core, two people can engage in dual cultivation chastely, as long as they bring their meridians into close contact.”

“And it would heal you?” Wei Wuxian has done his fair share of research into dual cultivation, mostly because of Pan Gaolin’s concern that Shijie’s golden core would not be compatible with Jin Zixuan’s, but most of the cultivation texts in the library at Lotus Pier assumed that the parties involved would be husband and wife. “Do you know how to do it?”

“I would have to circulate my lingli through my spiritual veins for ten minutes without interruption, and then combine it with yours. My golden core must be weaker than yours just now, so...”

According to Wei Wuxian’s textbooks, the act of dual cultivation was only ever easy when both partners were equally matched; if one was weakened by illness or injury, like Lan Zhan is now, their diminished spiritual energy would serve as a metaphorical spark to ignite the other’s golden core and bring the first one back into balance, beginning the process of true dual cultivation.

“So you’ll have to start first,” Wei Wuxian surmises, shifting a little closer to the dying embers of the fire. “All right, then. Let’s do it.”

In later years, long after the Sunshot Campaign was over, Wei Wuxian would recall that night as a kind of blur—an uncomfortable blur, since he spent two hours sprawled on his bed of dried leaves with the backs of his hands pressed against the stone floor of the cave, while Lan Zhan lay on his side at Wei Wuxian’s left to spare his wounded leg.

Accepting Lan Zhan’s spiritual energy into his own golden core was perhaps the strangest thing Wei Wuxian had ever felt. It was a foreign feeling, like plunging into a cold bath in the middle of summer—but then something clicked into place deep within his dantian, and Wei Wuxian ignited.

He was still the man lying on the icy rock of the Xuanwu’s cavern with Lan Zhan’s cheek burning against his—still tired and hungry and thirsty, though his discomfort was starting to fade by then—but all of a sudden, he found himself standing on a wall painted white, carrying two jugs of Gusu’s tianzi xiao on his arm and looking at Lan Zhan for the very first time.

Lan Zhan looked back, his fine lips parted in awe, and Wei Wuxian saw himself reflected in his friend’s gaze and gasped.

Was I really this beautiful when you first saw me? he asked wordlessly, as one of Lan Zhan’s hands slid beneath his head to cushion it from the hard ground. I had just flown twenty miles to Caiyi and back, and my robes were more sweat than cotton, and you—

Zhiyin, heart’s ease, Lan Zhan’s thoughts sang back at him. The only one who knew me, recognized in an instant.

What was it that the books at Lotus Pier said?

Once someone has taken a partner in cultivation, whether within marriage or outside it, it is almost certain that they will never have another.

That should have held him back when Lan Zhan proposed it, Wei Wuxian thought to himself, in the minute corner of his mind that Lan Zhan could not touch in the midst of their cultivation. He was always a romantic, he dreamed about marrying a dashing maiden and being a father some day, and yet...

And yet—

Oh, he realized, and the knowledge burned inside him like the fire of Lan Zhan’s lingli in his veins.

What else could it have been?

I love him.

#wangxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #cultivation baby sizhui au #my fic #please reblog for more prompt fills! #>:3c

[lothiriel84]

Kiss from a Rose

The wedding day dawned bright and crisp before either of them could even stop to consider the wisdom of discussing their respective expectations on married life in general, and this marriage in particular.

A North and South ficlet. Asexual!John Thornton.

Between the necessary planning for their impending wedding and the amount of work involved in restarting operations at the mill, John and Margaret found themselves with very little time on their hands, and what little they could spare was hardly ever spent in meaningful conversation. Quite early in their comparatively short engagement period they were made to sit through a stern lecture on how engaging in improper behaviour had led many a respectable young couple to rashly anticipate their vows, and the dire consequences that might result from such an irretrievable misstep; after that, it did not take long for Mrs Thornton to wash her hands of the entire affair, and take herself to visit the Watsons’ for the remainder of the duration.  

Truth be told, John was quite offended that his mother could believe him capable of acting in such a disreputable manner; he had always prided himself in the calm and collected manner he conducted himself among female company, and although he would admit he might not have adhered to the strictest rules of propriety with regards to one’s betrothed, he could scarcely see how a few stolen kisses would be inducement enough to engage in marital congress outside the sacred bounds of wedlock. If asked, Margaret might have voiced a very different opinion on the subject – or rather, considered it very briefly in her most private musings, before dismissing it out of hand as entirely improper as well as unbefitting of a lady of her station.  

The wedding day dawned bright and crisp before either of them could even stop to consider the wisdom of discussing their respective expectations on married life in general, and this marriage in particular. Armed with very little beside the half-remembered advice imparted by his own father, John approached his wedding night with far more anxiety than anticipation, and was met with the thoroughly unpleasant surprise of finding himself unequal to the task. To her credit, Margaret soldiered on with remarkable equanimity, but even in her determination not to displease her husband she could not entirely conceal her disappointment that the marriage bed should not reveal itself as everything her cousin Edith had made it out to be.  

“Am I not pleasing to you?” she enquired tremulously a few nights later, as he furiously scrubbed his body clean of any proof of yet another failed attempt at consummating their marriage.  

“I am sorry,” was all he could muster, when every fibre of his being screamed for the warm comfort of her embrace. But even that, he did not deserve; not when he could not give her what a wife rightfully expected of her husband.  

He was a failure in every respect, and it would be a kindness to let her go before their love turned sour and she started resenting him just as she used to at the beginning of their acquaintance. There was still time to petition for an annulment, he reflected somewhat grimly as he tossed and turned all night in the solitude of his empty bed.  

Margaret burst into tears as soon as he broached the subject the next day, accused him of falling out of love with her so soon after their exchanged promises of eternal fidelity; his own heart breaking, he stood unmoved, quietly explained that he could never ask of her that she should sacrifice her prospects for a marriage in name only, and that he only wished he had known sooner that he could not be a proper husband to her. Angrily, she forbade him from ever mentioning the word ‘annulment’ in her presence again, and declared that as she had spent one and twenty years a maiden, she felt reasonably sure she could carry on as such for as long as was necessary – and if that turned out to be her entire life, that was a sacrifice she was prepared to make for the privilege of being allowed to share it with him.  

At this point John reminded her, not unreasonably, of the impossibility of any children resulting from such pathetic mockery of a marriage, should those difficulties persist for an indefinite amount of time.  

“Have you really never,” she ventured after a long pause, her cheeks reddening at her own boldness. “Not even in your youth?” 

“Of course not,” he frowned, drawing himself up to his full height at the perceived insult to his character. “I may not be a gentleman, but you must know I would never conduct myself as lowly as that.” 

Margaret bit her lip, hesitated for just a moment, then plunged on. “You’d be surprised how many a gentleman – that is to say, I have heard stories – and even our dear Fred, well, you know how it is. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was very young, and I remember Papa giving him a very strong talking-to on that particular occasion. I feel sure he conducted himself as honestly as he could after that, but as Mama used to say, a man’s needs are very powerful, and can scarcely be expected to endure as patiently as a woman can.” 

Stunned into silence, John found himself powerless to do anything but stare at his wife in the closest to utter confusion as he had experienced in the entirety of his life, and spared a silent prayer of thanks for the sudden appearance of the maid, for he was not sure how he could be expected respond to such an extraordinary pronouncement.  

He was nothing but relieved when Margaret quietly informed him she was indisposed, not two days later. He knew that meant he was not expected to approach her for about a week, and that was enough for him to slowly begin to relax, and finally allow himself to settle in the quiet intimacy of their new shared life. He loved nothing more than spending an evening in his wife’s company, with no further expectation placed on him than keeping up with her lively conversation, and plying her with tender kisses which tasted just as sweet as in the early days of their engagement.  

No mention was made of Margaret’s complaints being long over; and if their kisses grew bolder with every passing evening, it was never remarked upon, not until they found themselves in an entirely compromising position on the small settee in John’s study – a wedding present from Fanny, bless her heart – and neither of them willing to put an immediate end to the proceedings.  

The small pang of anxiety John experienced as Margaret reached for the fastening of his trousers was quickly done away with as their mouths met again in their well-practiced dance; as if in a dream, he watched her push the material of her dress out of the way, his hands instinctively closing around her waist as she lowered herself on his lap.  

Afterwards, she cradled his head very tenderly on her bosom, and waited for his shuddering breaths to subside. “Was it so very bad?” she asked of him, her lips butterfly-like on his eyelids, his cheeks, as if begging forgiveness for being too demanding a wife.    

Laughter bubbled out of him, unexpected. “Ought I not be the one to enquire after the wellbeing of my bride, rather than the other way round?” 

“John,” she chided him, her clear eyes searching his face for any sign of discomfort. “I need to know, if...” 

“I shall live,” he conceded, somewhat wryly. “And it was not so much unpleasant as it was – new, and not at all like I expected it to be.” 

“We needn’t to – again, if you’d rather not,” Margaret shook her head, a determined look on her face. 

“I never said that,” he said, very seriously, intent as he was in tracing the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. “I’ll have you know I am prepared to bear many an unpleasanter hardship for the sake of my wife’s continued happiness, and granting her the blessing of children besides.” 

Her gaze softened immediately at the mention of children. “Oh, that I could bear you a son with your features.” 

“Or better yet, a daughter with yours,” he smiled in reply, and pressed a lingering kiss on the very spot his thumb had just finished caressing. “But we ought at least remember to lock the door, next time we make an attempt to produce one.” 

Margaret laughed, blushed, and promptly hid her face in the crook of his neck.  

#North and South #John Thornton #Margaret Hale #Margaret/John #asexual character #post-canon #I wrote a thing #Asexual Awareness Week #Ace Week

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Steve Benen

As the current Congress got underway, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy assured his members that he’d honor something called the “72-hour rule” — an informal commitment that assured Representatives that they’d have a few days to read legislation before it reached the floor for a vote.

With a dangerous debt ceiling deadline looming, and time running out, there was some speculation that House Republican leaders would simply waive the rule and advance the bipartisan “Fiscal Responsibility Act” faster. McCarthy, for good or ill, stuck to the policy.

Apparently, for some, that’s not quite good enough. For example, Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a House Freedom Caucus member, told reporters yesterday that he considers it an “insult” to only have a few days to read the bill.

The South Carolina Republican — perhaps best known for misspelling “marital law” while pushing the Trump White House to deploy the military to nullify the 2020 election — took the same message to Fox News, arguing, “It’s like the Pelosi days. You gotta pass it before you read it.” Norman added, “[W]e ought to have a lot more time” than 72 hours.

First, the fact that Republicans continue to screw up an innocuous 2010 quote from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains disappointing.

Second, let’s not forget that the Fiscal Responsibility Act is only 99 pages. “War and Peace” it is not. What’s more, we’re talking about double-spaced pages, with a large font, generous margins, and a modest number of words per page.

Even a slow reader could get through this bill pretty easily in an afternoon.

Rep. Ted Lieu had a little fun at his far-right colleague’s expense. “Let’s do some math,” the California Democrat wrote on Twitter. “If GOP Rep Ralph Norman works 8 hours a day, that’s 24 hours over 3 days to read 99 pages. That comes out to reading a little over 4 pages every hour. And these are double spaced text pages. Alternatively, he can have AI summarize the bill for him in 1 [minute].”

Evidently, despite his complaints, the South Carolinian has apparently read enough of the bipartisan deal to know he doesn’t like it: Norman condemned the agreement as “insanity” a few hours after it was announced.

#us politics #news #msnbc #Steve Benen #op eds #maddowblog #2023 #rep. kevin mccarthy #republicans #conservatives #gop policy #gop platform #gop #Fiscal Responsibility Act #Rep. Ralph Norman #house freedom caucus #aaron rupar #Fox News #Rep. Ted Lieu

[spookyradluka]

"For black women the consequences of the even sex ratio were also severe. Once slaveholders realized that the reproductive function of the female slave could yield a profit, the manipulation of procreative sexual relations became an integral part of the sexual exploitation of female slaves. Few of the calculations made by masters and overseers failed to take a slave woman’s childbearing capacity into account. This was particularly true after Congress outlawed the overseas slave trade in 1807. The slave woman’s “marital” status, her work load, her diet all became investment concerns of slaveholders, who could maximize their profits if their slave women had many children."

- Ar'n't I a Woman? Revised addition by Deborah Gray White

#intersectional feminism #feminism #book quotations #feminist literature #feminist #feminist theory #intersectional feminism 101 #intersectionality #intersectional politics #anti slavery #slavery tw #racism tw

[whynotreinventmyselfeveryday]

Human Rights Day

Today, the 21st of March, is Human Rights Day, a public holiday in South Africa commemorates the events in Sharpville, Gauteng in 1960.

South Africa may be most well known internationally for the racist, oppressive regime known as Apartheid, which can be simplified to a system of governance that sought to dehumanise non-white residents of South Africa while strongly benefitting the white minority. The “pass laws” refer to various acts of the parliament of the Apartheid government to the effect of restricting the freedom of black people within South Africa. The end-goal was to treat African black South Africans as migrants within metropolitan areas, requiring a pass (known as a “dompas”) in order to enter these areas - otherwise, they were required to stay within the land designated for them, known as “homelands” or “bantustans”. It is important to note that while these laws were enacted by the Afrikaaner apartheid government, the history of oppression within South Africa is a long and complicated one, and the British occupation before the Apartheid regime in part helped sow the seeds for what followed. In fact, in 1952, the ‘Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents Act’ was passed, which consolidated a number of pre-existed laws, and which abolished passes and replaced it with a “reference book” - a rename that fooled no one.

No woman is fooled by the "Reference Book." We know that this is the same as a pass. If a woman is found without this book or if all the papers inside are not in order, she will be pushed into the Kwela-Kwela and taken to gaol. Her children will be left motherless.

TO PAY 3/6 FOR THIS ''REFERENCE BOOK'' IS TO BUY SLAVERY

In 1960, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), fueled by anger at an increasingly oppresive regime, called on African men to leave their dompas at home and turn up at their nearest police station, giving themselves up peacefully for arrest. What started as a peaceful demonstration was escalated to violence, in particularly in the town of Sharpville, Gauteng, where police opened fire on unarmed civillians, killing 69 protestors and injuring a further 180, many of whom were shot whilst fleeing. This tragedy is now known as the Sharpville massacre, and helped expose the deliberate violence and human rights violations against black South Africans that were committed by the Apartheid regime.

The Constitutional Assembly of the first democratically elected government of South Africa first adopted the new Bill of Rights on 8 May 1996. The government declared 21 March, Human Rights Day, to commemorate and honour those who have fought and died for our liberation and for the rights we enjoy today. The Bill of Rights is enshrined within the constitution of the democratic Republic of South Africa, meaning that it requires a 2/3 majority for any changes to it, making it difficult for anyone, including the government, to revise these rights. Among others, this include:

Equality- Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth. No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds.

Human dignity- Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.

Life - Everyone has the right to life.

Slavery, servitude and forced labour - No one may be subjected to slavery, servitude or forced labour

Freedom of expression -Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes

freedom of the press and other media;

freedom of artistic creativity;

academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.

The right does not extend to—

propaganda for war

incitement of imminent violence

advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.

Assembly, demonstration, picket and petition - Everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions.

Freedom of movement and residence - Everyone has the right to freedom of movement

Language and culture - Everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of their choice, but no one exercising these rights may do so in a manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights.

sources in the comments.

#sa #south africa #history #human rights day #police brutality tw

[jimysm]

I recently watched a TV news on TikTok about Divorce bill. The house of the committee has approved a divorce proposal that will provide additional options for married couples seeking legal ways of separation in the Philippines. In addition to this, apart from the shorter and cheaper process, it is expected that it will also help those who have experience abuse and abandonment. The divorce proposals have gone through the House Committee on Population and Family Relations, but their passage in the current nineteenth congress is still uncertain. Additionally, it mentions that in the previous thirteenth congress, the proposals were submitted multiple times without making any progress.

"til death do us apart is wonderful. Marriage is beautiful but only for those who get it right" said by Representative Pantaleon Alvarez. One of a woman's dreams is to marry the right man and build her own family with the person she loves. However, many marriages do not end up in a happy relationship due to the prevalence of abuse, especially among women. Many men continue to cheat, even though they are already married, which leads to separation. The debate surrounding divorce in the Philippines is like a tug-of-war, with opposing sides pulling at the threads of tradition and modernity. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, divorce emerged as a beacon of hope, breathing new life into the realm of marital freedom and self-empowerment in the Philippines.

#Performance Task 1 part 2

[todaysdocument]

Public Law 67-346: An Act Relative to the Naturalization and Citizenship of Married Women ("Cable Act"), 9/22/1922.

Under this Act, American women who married foreign citizens were no longer required to take the nationality of their husbands.

File Unit: Laws of the United States, 1922, 67th Congress, 2nd Session, Part 2, Public Acts 256-364, 1789 - 2013

Series: Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789 - 2013

Record Group 11: General Records of the United States Government, 1778 - 2006

Transcription:

H.R. 12022.                        (Public. . . . NO. [Handwritten] 346   67th CONGRESS)

Sixty-seventh Congress of the United States of America;

At the Second Session,

Began and held at the City of Washington, on Monday, the fifth day of December,

one thousand nine hundred and twenty-one.

AN ACT

Relative to the naturalization and citizenship of married women.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the right of any woman to become a naturalized citizen of the United States shall not be denied or abridged because of her sex her because she is a married woman.

SEC. 2. That any woman who marries a citizen of the United States after the passage of this Act, or any woman whose husband is naturalized after the passage of this Act, shall not become a citizen of the United States by reason of such marriage or naturalization; but, if eligible to citizenship, she may be naturalized upon full and complete compliance with all requirements of the naturalization laws, with the following exceptions:

(a)  No declaration of intention shall be required;

(b)  In lieu of the five-year period of residence within the United States and the one-year period of residence within the State or Territory where the naturalization cord is held, she shall have resided continuously in the United States, Hawaii, Alaska, or Porto Rico for at least one year immediately preceding the filing of the petition.

SEC. 3. That a woman citizen of the United States shall not cease to be a citizen of the United States by reason of her marriage after the passage of this Act, unless she makes a formal renunciation of her citizenship before a court having jurisdiction over naturalization of aliens: Provided, That any woman citizen who marries an alien ineligible to citizenship shall cease to be a citizen of the United States. If at the termination of the marital status she is a citizen of the United States she shall retain her citizenship regardless of her residence. If during the continuance of the marital status she resides continuously for two years in a foreign state of which her husband is a citizen or subject, or for five years continuously outside the United States, she shall thereafter be subject to the

[page 2]

H. Art. 12022 - 2

Same presumption as is a naturalized citizen of the United States under the second paragraph of section 2 of the Act entitled "An Act in reference to the expatriation of citizens and their protection abroad," approved March 2, 1907. Nothing herein shall be construed to repeal or amend the provisions of Revised Statutes 1999 or of section 2 of the Expatriation Act of 1907 with reference to expatriation.

SEC. 4. That a woman who, before the passage of this Act, has lost her United States citizenship by reason of her marriage to an alien eligible for citizenship, maybe naturalized as provided by section 2 of this Act: Provided, That no certificate of arrival shall be required to be filed with her petition if during the continuance of the marital status she shall have resided within the United States. After her naturalization she shall have the same citizenship status as if her marriage had taken place after the passage of this Act.

SEC. 5. That no woman whose husband is not eligible to citizenship shall be naturalized during the continuance of the marital status.

SEC. 6. That section 1994 of the Revised Statutes in Section 4 of the Expatriation Act of 1907 are repealed. Such repeal shall not terminate citizenship acquired or retained under either of such sections nor restore citizenship lost under section 4 of the Expatriation Act of 1907.

SCC. 7. That section 3 of the Expatriation Act of 1907 is repealed. Such repeal shall not restore citizenship lost on the such section nor terminate citizenship resumed under such section. A woman who has resumed under such section citizenship lost by marriage shall, upon the passage of this Act, have for all purposes the same citizenship status as immediately preceding her marriage.

[Signature]

Speaker of the House of Representatives.

[Signature]

President of the Senate pro tempore.

[Handwritten]

Approved

September 22, 1922,

[signature] Warren G Harding.

#archivesgov #September 22 #1922 #1920s #citizenship #immigration #naturalization #women's history #marriage

[thehauntologicalsociety]

Paperhouse is a 1988 British dark fantasy film directed by Bernard Rose. It was based on the 1958 novel Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. The film stars Ben Cross, Glenne Headly and Gemma Jones. The original novel was the basis of a six-episode British TV series for children in the early 1970s which was titled Escape Into Night.

While suffering from glandular fever, 11-year-old Anna Madden draws a house. When she falls asleep, she has disturbing dreams in which she finds herself inside the house she has drawn. After she draws a face at the window, in her next dream she finds Marc, a boy who suffers with muscular dystrophy, living in the house. She learns from her doctor that Marc is a real person.

Anna sketches her father into the drawing so that he can help carry Marc away, but she inadvertently gives him an angry expression which she then crosses out, and the father (who has been away a lot and has a drinking problem, putting a strain on his marriage) appears in the dream as a furious, blinded ogre. Anna and Marc defeat the monster and shortly afterward Anna recovers, although the doctor reveals that Marc's condition is deteriorating.

Anna's father returns home and both parents seem determined to get over their marital difficulties. The family goes on holiday by the sea, where Anna finds an epilogue to her dream.

Charlotte Burke - Anna Madden, Ben Cross - Dad, Glenne Headly - Kate Madden, Elliott Spiers - Marc, Gemma Jones - Dr. Sarah Nichols, Jane Bertish - Miss Vanstone, Samantha Cahill - Sharon, Sarah Newbold - Karen.

Marianne Dreams is a children's fantasy novel by Catherine Storr. It was illustrated with drawings by Marjorie-Ann Watts and published by Faber and Faber in 1958. The first paperback edition, from Puffin Books in 1964, is catalogued by the Library of Congress as revised.

Marianne is a young girl who is bedridden with a long-term illness. She draws a picture to fill her time and finds that she spends her dreams within the picture she has drawn. As time goes by, she becomes sicker, and starts to spend more and more time trapped within her fantasy world, and her attempts to make things better by adding to and crossing out things in the drawing make things progressively worse. Her only companion in her dreamworld is a boy called Mark, who is also a long-term invalid in the real world.

#Paperhouse #1988 #Bernard Rose #Marianne Dreams #1958 #Catherine Storr #Escape Into Night

[real-time-twilight]

Breaking Dawn in Real Time

September 14th, 2006 (Thursday)

Moon Phase: Last Quarter 🌗

🌄 Sunrise: 6:52 AM

🌅 Sunset : 7:33 PM

Breaking Dawn, Pgs. 483-524 (from line 10)

Ch. 24 ("Surprise")

Ch. 25 ("Favor")

Ch. 26 ("Shiny")

6:00 AM (Approx.) - Bella asks Edward if he misses her as she was when she was human

6:50 AM (Approx.) - Bella asks Edward how long vampire honeymoons generally last, given their insatiable and tireless nature, Edward replies that it varies-- that it is simply a matter of learning up balance priorities, but that Rosalie and Emmett's was particularly long-lasted and insufferable; Edward also explains that he is the best read and most proficient in a number of hobbies and disciplines simply because he never had too much free time, being the only un-mated member of the family.

7:20 AM (Approx.) - Edward suggests that they should conclude their marital congress for the moment and go see their daughter

7:22 AM (Approx.) - Edward literally sniffs out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt for Bella in their enormous, silk gown-filled closet

7:23 AM (Approx.) - Edward and Bella arrive at the house to find Renesmee destroying the silverware for fun; Bella thanks Esme for the cottage; Emmett makes impertinent jokes about Edward and Bella's marital activities

7:25 AM (Approx.) - Edward realizes that the absent Jacob has gone to see Charlie and that Charlie is likely coming to the house; Jacob enters and announces that Charlie is be there soon

7:26 AM (Approx.) - Edward and Bella admonish Jake for his recklessness; Jake explains that he didn't tell Charlie about vampires, only about the wolves, and that Charlie insisted on a strictly need-to-know basis for all things supernatural

7:30 AM (Approx.) - The Cullens help Bella prep for Charlie's visit by giving her quick pointers on how to act human; Alice says Charlie will arrive in five minutes

7:35 AM (Approx.) - Charlie arrives and sees Bella; Edward lies and says Renesmee is his niece to explain her resemblance, but given her resemblance to Bella, Charlie is not fooled, but accepts that it is part of the need-to-know; Charlie spends the day at the Cullen House

7:00 PM (Approx.) - On his way out to go have dinner with Billy and Sue, Charlie holds Renesmee for the first time

7:10 PM (Approx.) - Bella, fed up with Emmett's sustained teasing (especially him making innuendos during Charlie's visit) decides to make good on a promise she made to Edward several months earlier and challenges Emmett to an arm wrestling match, with a bet attached - that if she wins Emmett has to shut up about her sex life

7:13 PM (Approx.) - Bella easily wins the arm-wrestling match and happily destroys a boulder for her daughter's entertainment; the setting sun comes out and Bella experiences the effect of her skin sparkling for the first time

#twilight saga #twilight renaissance #bella cullen #edward cullen #renesmee cullen #charlie swan #jacob black #emmett cullen #real time twilight #breaking dawn ♟️ #breaking dawn in real time #breaking dawn

[69balcony]

Larry Kramer Speech at Cooper Union

“The Tragedy of Today’s Gays”

November 21, 2004

I think this has been the most difficult speech I have ever had to write and to deliver. It is a long speech. I pray you will bear with me until its end.

It is an attempt to give you some idea of who and what we are up against. It is also an attempt to discuss our ability to deal with these.

I recently learned about two dear friends, both exceptionally smart and talented and each in his own way a leader of our community. One, in his middle age, has sero-converted. The other, in his middle-age, has become hooked on crystal meth. Both of them are here with us tonight.

I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and more aware and I do, I do, I totally do. And I think we’re more tuned in to what’s happening, tuned into the moment, tuned into our emotions, and other people’s emotions, and we’re better friends. I really do think all these things.

To us it defies rational analysis that this incompetent dishonest man and his party should be re-elected. Or does it?

I hope we all realize that, as of November 2nd, gay rights are officially dead. And that from here on we are going to be led even closer to the guillotine. This past week almost 60 million of our so-called “fellow” Americans voted against us. Indeed 23% of self-identified gay people voted against us, too. That one I can’t figure.

The absoluteness of what has happened is terrifying. On the gay marriage initiatives alone: 2.6 million against us in Michigan. 3.2 million in Ohio. 1.1 million in Oklahoma, 2.2 million in Georgia. 1.2 million in Kentucky. George Bush won his Presidency of our country by selling our futures. Almost 60 million people whom we live and work with every day think we are immoral. “Moral values” was top of many lists of why people supported George Bush. Not Iraq. Not the economy. Not terrorism. “Moral values.” In case you need a translation that means us. It is hard to stand up to so much hate. Which of course is just the way they want it. Please know that a huge portion of the population of the United States hates us. I don’t mean dislike. I mean hate. You may not choose to call it hate, but I do. Not only because they refuse us certain marital rights but because they have also elected a congress that is overflowing with men and women who refuse us just about every other right to exist as well. “Moral values” is really a misnomer; it means just the reverse. It means they think we are immoral. And that we’re dangerous and contaminated. How do you like being called immoral by some 60 million people? This is not just anti-gay. This is what Doug Ireland calls “homo hate” on the grandest scale. How do we stand up to 60 million people who have found a voice and a President who declares he has a mandate?

The new Supreme Court, due any moment now, will erase us from the slate of everything possible in no time at all. Gay marriage? Forget it. Gay anything, forget it. Civil rights for gays? Equal protection for gays. Adoption rights? The only thing we are going to get from now on is years of increasing and escalating hate. Surely you must know this. Laws and regulations that now protect us will be repealed and rewritten. Please know all this. With the arrival of this second term of these hateful people we come even closer to our extinction. We should have seen it coming. We are all smart people. How could we not have been prepared?

They have not exactly been making a secret of their hate. This last campaign has seen examples of daily hate on tv and in the media that I do not believe the world has witnessed since Nazi Germany. I have been reading Ambassador Dodd’s Diary; he was Roosevelt’s ambassador to Germany in the 30’s, and people are always popping in and out of his office proclaiming the most awful things out loud about Jews. It has been like that.

All Mary Cheney is is a lesbian! Even her mother is hateful! That Cheney must be one fucked-up kid to stick around that family. I hope she doesn’t want to teach school. One of the reelected Congress persons vows to make it illegal for lesbians to teach school.

I know many people look to me for answers. Perhaps that is why many of you are here. You want answers? We’re living in pigshit and its up to each one of us to figure out how to get out of it. You must know that by now. Crystal meth is not an answer. You must know that by now. And quite frankly statistically it is only happening to so few of us that it is hard to get anyone worked up about that problem. Just as it hard to get worked up about a middle-aged man with brains who sero-converts. You want to kill yourself. Go kill yourself. I’m sorry. It takes hard work to behave like an adult. It takes discipline. You want it to be simple. It isn’t simple. Yes it is. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. These are the answers. It takes courage to live. Are you living? Not so I can see it. Gay people are all but invisible to me now. I wish you weren’t. But you are. And I look real hard.

No one likes to be told to grow up. It’s insulting. But these are always the answers. They will always be the answers. The only answers. There will never be any other answers. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. Be proud of yourself. Be proud you are gay. I don’t know why so many find all this so complicated. But then I am 69 years old and have less patience for the many problems I had myself when young. It is one of the privileges of getting old.

It is 25 years since 100,000 of us marched on Washington.

The Aids service organizations are all about to collapse. No money. And the problem is too big to handle anymore. We have not slowed this thing down at all. $100 billion we’re spending on Iraq. This is a conscious choice by our “leaders” and by a large portion of the population of this country. They have in their infinite and never-ending cruelty decided this was the most effective thing to do with 100 billion dollars that might also end Aids, and a few other things like worldwide hunger. But the cabal doesn’t care about these. People say: well we can’t take care of the rest of the world. That is so stupid. The rest of the world is us. We are so intertwined geopolitically that we cannot separate ourselves off into parts, into sections. Those days are over. If they ever were here. We have everything required to save the world except the will to do it. In a recent New Yorker piece Michael Specter writes that because of Aids Russia is on its way to disappearing. Disappearing. Imagine that.

The immense knowledge we have learned about Aids has provided us with precious little more than that knowledge. HIV/AIDS is now the worst disaster in recorded human history. In parts of Africa 7000 people are infecting each other each and every day. We who are here are idiots if we think this fact is not going to alter our lives mightily. If your company loses enough world markets, which it most certainly will, you are going to lose your job. You will not have health insurance, for a start. And for a finish. Economies are simply going to collapse. This is already happening.

In 1990, that is some nine years into what was happening, 46% of gay men in San Francisco were still fucking without condoms.

60% of the syphilis in America today is in gay men. Excuse me, men who have sex with men.

Palm Springs has the highest number of syphilis cases in California. Palm Springs?

I do not want to hear each week how many more of you are becoming hooked on meth.

HIV infections are up as much as 40%.

You cannot continue to allow yourselves and each other to act and live like this!

One of these days the miraculous drugs we have to keep us alive are going to stop working. Our systems cannot process these extreme chemotherapies indefinitely. That is what we are on. We are on daily chemotherapy. No one wants to call it that. We call it the cocktail. We are on chemotherapy! Chemotherapy either kills the disease or kills us! What are we going to do when they don’t work any longer?

Some 70 million people so far are expected to die. “July 3, 1981, Rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals.” When I first started yelling about whatever it was there were 41 cases. THERE ARE NOW OVER 70 MILLION WHO HAVE BEEN INFECTED WITH HIV. Somebody up there is really listening, don’t you think? There is no way that all infected people can be saved. No one ever says that out loud. Have you noticed? Somehow in some dream world we are going to get treatment into 70 million people. It is never going to happen. IT IS TOO LATE. We told them. But they didn’t do anything. Did you notice? Nobody every does anything. I hope it’s finally dawning on you that maybe they didn’t and don’t want to. So, in case you haven’t noticed, we have lost the war against Aids. I thought I’d tell you that, too. I hope you might have noticed. I can’t tell.

The President refuses to buy generic drugs for dying people. He is still saying he is waiting to hear if they are safe. These drugs have been approved. In some cases for several years. Does this sound like a President who wants to save anyone?

I do not understand why some of you believe that because we have drugs that deal with the virus more or less effectively that it is worth the gamble to have unprotected sex. These drugs are not easy to take. There are many side effects. Not life but certainly comfort threatening. I must allow at least one day out of every week or two to feel really shitty, to have no sleep, to be constipated, to have diarrhea, to require blood tests and monitoring at hospitals or in doctors’ offices, and to have the shakes. The shakes, which come often, are not useful with a mouse or reading a newspaper or with a lover in your arms. And I don’t enjoy eating anymore. Keeping on weight is a constant problem. I have dry mouth. I get up six or seven times a night to pee. Many of the meds we are now taking are new meds and were approved quickly and side effects have a sneaky way of showing up after FDA approval, not before. I recently discovered that I was taking an FDA approved dose of Viread that has turned out to be five times the amount I actually need. We are all probably taking too much or too little of every single one of our drugs. Doctors don’t want to test for this; tests are not readily available. You have to do a lot of homework yourselves on these drugs. Is a fuck without a condom worth not being able to taste food? Obviously for too many of you it is.

My lover often sits on top of me to make me eat. The first time this happened I was in the hospital just after my liver transplant and I wouldn’t eat and Dr. Fung said I had to eat, or else I would die, and I just couldn’t eat (do you know how strange this is to someone who was always on a diet?). It was New Year’s Eve. We were in beautiful downtown Pittsburgh. David had brought a hamper filled with my favorite dishes. And I could not eat anything. Furiously he crawled into bed with me, boots and all, and started to cry. “We haven’t come this far for you to die because you won’t eat,” he screamed, tears streaming down his face. I will never forget that. I will never forget this man I love so much in bed with me with his snowy boots on starting slowly to spoon into me whatever he’d made and I trying so desperately hard to swallow it, looking at him, this man I love so much, doing this for me, both of us now bawling our eyes out and hugging each other in this strange bed in this strange town, wondering how we got here.

It’s so wonderful being a gay person. I said that before. I’m going to say it again. I love being gay. And I love gay people. I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and more aware and I do, I do, I totally do. And I think we’re more tuned in to what’s happening, tuned into the moment, tuned into our emotions, and other people’s emotions, and we’re better friends. I really do think all of these things. And I try not to forget them.

Since the very first day of this plague we have been given, almost as if by some cosmic intentionality, American leaders who most assuredly wish us dead. There can no longer be any way to deny this fact. Each day brings more and more acts of hatred. Tell me it is not so. Tell me that the amount of good that is being attempted is not totally and intentionally overwhelmed by the evil. Point out to me how this is not so. I cannot see it. I have been unable to see it since July 3, 1981. I thought it was because it was a tricky virus. That is what we have been told. It’s a very tricky virus. I hoped for a while. But we are being played for chumps and it has been so since July 3, 1981. And we never saw it.

We of course continue to be in our usual state of total denial and disarray. Whatever structure the gay world had, if we ever had one, is gone. Our organizations stink. Almost every single one of them. I cannot think of one single gay organization that despite the best will in the world is now anything but worthless to us. Oh maybe one or two. We have no power. Nobody listens to us. We have no access to power. The cabal disdains us totally. We are completely disposable. It is a horror show. There is not one single person in Washington who will get us or give us anything but shit and more shit. I’m sorry. This is where we are now. Nowhere. And you expect me to cry for you if you get hooked on meth or can’t stop the circuit parties or the orgies. OK, I feel sorry for you. Does that change nything? I would say I feel sorry for myself, but I don’t. I know I am fighting as hard as I can. I may not be getting anywhere but I am trying. It’s exhausting and I have to do it every day, every single day, like taking my meds which if I stop I know my body will cease doing something or other. I have accidentally missed a few days of meds and boy do I know fast that was a mistake.

I fear for us as a people. Is that crazy? I am always being called crazy by somebody. I love being called crazy. That’s a sign to me that I’m on the right track. Maybe it takes a crazy person to see into the future and see what’s coming. Straight people say “my how much progress gay people are making. Isn’t that Will and Grace wonderful.” If it’s so wonderful why am I scared to death? More and more I am filled with dread. That is my truth that I bring to you today. Larry is scared. Do you see what I see? I don’t think so. Most gay people I see appear to me to act as if they’re bored to death. Too much time on your hands, my mother would say. Hell, if you have time to get hooked on crystal and do your endless rounds of sex-seeking, you have too much time on your hands. Ah, you say, aren’t we to have a little fun? Can’t I get stoned and try barebacking one last time. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND! At this moment in our history, no, you cannot. Anyway, we had your fun and look what it got us into. And it is still getting us into. You kids want to die? Because that’s what I sometimes think. Well, then, die.

You cannot continue to allow yourselves and each other to act and live like this!

And by the way, when are you going to realize that for the rest of your lives, probably for the rest of life on earth, you are never going to be able to have sex with another person without a condom! Never! Every time you even so much as consider this I want you to hear my voice screaming like crazy in your ears. STOP! DON’T! NEVER! NO WAY, JOSE! Canadian scientists now warn that even partners who are both un-infected should practice safe sex. As I understand it, more and more new viruses and mutant viruses and partial viruses that are not understood are floating around. Are you ready for that one?

Does it ever occur to you how much you have been robbed by both your country and your behavior? America let the men who should have carved out a space for you in the social discourse, the development of your history and being, America let these men who should have been your role models die. So there is this big empty space in which you live. And you don’t know where to go or how to fill it in. This is not my original thought but Michael Brown’s of the NYU gay student organizations that helped to bring me here, who gave me this to think about. It is sad for a young gay person to feel this way.

I had people to follow and many of you have not. No baton was passed to you. In a way you must start everything over. You must invent a world from which you can move forward from. This is both an extraordinarily exciting challenge and a terrifying one, one that can just as easily leave you by the wayside as make a new man of you. I say man because it is gay men who appear to have the greatest difficulty, it seems to me, in moving forward, getting off their particular dime.

Many of you deny the horrors of what happened to your predecessors. That is something I do not understand. Every moral code I know of requires respect for the dead. I often hear that many of you don’t want to know about them or admit to them. You disdain anyone older who was there.

This is denial of a most destructive nature. You cannot move forward without accepting your past. I am going to say that again. We cannot move forward without accepting and understanding our past. We were as varied as you are. We were no different, really. We were very different from those who preceded us. We were the first free gay generation and we were murdered because of our freedom. And yes you were robbed of this freedom that for obvious reasons could not be passed on to you as your heritage. So instead of being understanding of all this, you condemn your predecessors to non-existence and flounder into a future that you seem unable to fashion into anything you can hold on to that gives you emotional sustenance. You refuse to be part of any community. But if you don’t have any community you have no political strength. You are too busy denying and disassociating to know that. You do not seem able, it seems to me, to fashion your future. To discover what you want. You don’t even ask what you want. You don’t even ask what you need. Your needs are as mighty as needs always have been, but you don’t ask what they are, which amazes me. How can you not have curiosity about your future as a gay person? Don’t you want to go anywhere? Do you want to stay where you are? That is too bad if you do because we are about to enter a place more monstrously worse. You can deny that, as you deny those of us who went before you, but just know that down this path of your numerous denials lies your own continued destruction, the continuing destruction of gay people as gay people, which this cabal of haters I shall shortly describe, and its supporters, which are legion, are intent on accomplishing with increasingly ruthless vengeance. If you do not fight back you will be murdered in ways just as hideous as the ways in which we got murdered.

Every single president since 1981 has denied our existence and denied the existence of AIDS. And we let them get away with it. Oh a few thousand of us fought for the drugs that we got but many millions of us did nothing and of course an enormous number of them died. They died because they lost their health along their journey of non-involvement and their lack of responsibility to their brothers and sisters. Instead of learning from this lesson, you are repeating it. And you are acting like this with your health intact, many of you, which strikes me as even more perverse than what your dead predecessors did to destroy themselves.

Does it occur to you that we brought this plague of aids upon ourselves? I know I am getting into dangerous waters here but it is time. With the cabal breathing even more murderously down our backs it is time. And you are still doing it. You are still murdering each other. Please stop with all the generalizations and avoidance excuses gays have used since the beginning to ditch this responsibility for this fact. From the very first moment we were told in 1981 that the suspected cause was a virus, gay men have refused to accept our responsibility for choosing not to listen, and, starting in 1984, when we were told it definitely was a virus, this behavior turned murderous. Make whatever excuses you can to carry on living in your state of denial but this is the fact of the matter. I wish we could understand and take some responsibility for the fact that for some 30 years we have been murdering each other with great facility and that down deep inside of us, we knew what we were doing. Don’t tell me you have never had sex without thinking down deep that there was more involved in what you were doing than just maintaining a hard-on.

I have recently gone through my diaries of the worst of the plague years. I saw day after day a notation of another friend’s death. I listed all the ones I’d slept with. There were a couple hundred. Was it my sperm that killed them, that did the trick? It is no longer possible for me to avoid this question of myself. Have you ever wondered how many men you killed? I know I murdered some of them. I just know. You know how you sometimes know things? I know. Several hundred over a bunch of years, I have to have murdered some of them, planting in him the original seed. I have put this to several doctors. Mostly they refuse to discuss it, even if they are gay. Most doctors do not like to discuss sex or what we do or did. (I still have not heard a consensus on the true dangers of oral sex, for instance.) They play blind. God knows what they must be thinking when they examine us. Particularly if they aren’t gay. One doctor answered me, it takes two to tango so you cannot take the responsibility alone. But in some cases it isn’t so easy to answer so flippantly. The sweet young boy who didn’t know anything and was in awe of me. I was the first man who fucked him. I think I murdered him. The old boyfriend who did not want to go to bed with me and I made him. The man I let fuck me because I was trying to make my then boyfriend, now lover, jealous. I know, by the way, that that other one is the one who infected me. You know how you sometime know things? I know he infected me. I tried to murder myself on that one.

Has it never, ever occurred to you that not using a condom is tantamount to murder? I cannot believe you have never considered this. It is such a simple and intelligent thought to have. And we all should have had it from day one. Why didn’t we? That has been haunting me for a while, that question. Why didn’t we? It is incredibly selfish not to have at least thought that question at that moment, all those moments when we were playing Russian roulette.

>From here on I am going to get even more complicated. I want you to pay attention. This is the most important part of this speech.

Bill Moyers recently said this in a speech on October 20, 2004 at the Palace Hotel:

“For years now, the corporate, political, and religious right—this is documented from 1971 on—the religious and political right has been joined in an axis of influence whose purpose is to take back the gains of the democratic renewal in the 20th century and restore America to a rule of the elites that maintain their privilege and their power at the expense of everyone else. For years now, a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life.”

“Take note,” Moyers continues. “The corporate, political, and religious conservatives are achieving a vast transformation of America that only they understand because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries. In creating the greatest inequality in America since 1929, they have saddled our nation, our States, and our cities and counties with structural defects that will last until our children’s children are ready for retirement, and they are systematically stripping government of all its functions, except rewarding the rich and waging war.”

In other words, our country has been taken away from us by a cabal that includes all the people who hate us.

These people make the rules. They are rarely elected officials. They may or may not know each other. They have several things in common. They are very rich or have strong connections to money or power. They are in agreement on what they do not want. They believe fervently in their God. And that they are doing all this for Him. And they stay in constant touch.

I hope you realize that all these people Bill Moyers is talking about hate us. Thriller writers write better histories of our times than actual historians.

Anyway, it is done. What Moyers is talking about. It’s already happened. On a scale of such magnitude that it is difficult to see how we can ever take it back. It’s all in place now, this cabal of power. It almost doesn’t make any difference who is president.

You want to know why AIDS was allowed to happen. This is your answer. You want to know why gay people have no power and are unlikely to get any. This is your answer.

The top 1% of wealth holders control 39% of total household wealth.

The richest 5% of households own 2/3 of the value of all stock owned in the our country.

The the top 1% have as many after-tax dollars to spend as the bottom 100 million.

The richest 20% of households received almost 50% of the national income, while the bottom 20% received only 3%.

At a time when 265 people in the United States were billionaires, 32 million people were living beneath the official poverty line.

This inequality gap in the United States is the highest in the industrialized world.

“That drive,” Moyers continues, “is succeeding with drastic consequences for an equitable access to public resources, the lifeblood of any democracy. From land, water, and natural resources, to media and the broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical breakthroughs, and even to politics itself, a broad range of American democracy is undergoing a powerful shift in the direction of private control.

“We are experiencing a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private power.”

In 1971, Lewis Powell, a Richmond lawyer who called himself a centrist, was secretly commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Congress to write a confidential plan on how to take back America for the survival of the free enterprise system. Not democracy. Free enterprise. Barry Goldwater had lost, Nixon was about to implode, Vietnam had sucked the nation’s soul dry, the cabal saw their world unraveling. They saw the women’s movement, black civil rights. student war protests, the cold war. They saw the world as they knew it coming to an end. (We are not the first to feel our world crumbling and becoming powerless.)

This is what Lewis Powell wrote: “Survival lies in organization, in careful long range planning, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing only available through joint effort and in the political power available only through united action.”

This was the birth of what is now called the vast right wing conspiracy. It is known as the Powell Manifesto. You can google Lewis Powell (not the one who helped to assassinate Lincoln) and read it in its entirety.

Under the supervision of some of the richest families in America, that plan has been followed faithfully since 1971 and it has resulted in these past years of horror and the reelection of George Bush. Nine families and their foundations, all under the insistent goading of Joseph Coors, have financed much of this. The Bradley Foundation. The Smith Richardson Foundation. Four Scaife Family Foundations, The John M. Olin Foundation. The Castle Rock (or Coors) Foundation. Three Koch Family Foundations. The Earhart Foundation. The JM Foundation. The McKenna Foundation. From 1985 to 2001 alone they contributed $650 million to this conservative message campaign. They have helped to launch and gain financing for networks of newspapers and magazines. They have seen to it that hundreds of the most powerful think tanks have appeared, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise, Cato, Manhattan, Hudson Institutes, and many more. There are now in place an ever growing number of well-funded student organizations at many colleges. There are legal advocacy foundations, such as the Center For Individual Rights and Judicial Watch. There are Leadership Institutes and Action Institutes and Institutes on Religion and Public Policy and Religion and Democracy. There is a heavily visible media participation: Fox Television and Pat Robertson and Oliver North and Radio America and the Washington Times and Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, to name but a very few, including the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

For the preparation of this manifesto, Lewis Powell was rewarded by Richard Nixon with a seat on the Supreme Court, where among other things he voted against gays in Bowers v. Hardwick, and against Black people in Bakke v. University of California.

It is vital for us to realize that this plan was written in 1971. The people it was written for did not go off then to a disco, or to the Pines or into therapy, or into drugs. They took this plan and they have executed it religiously every day and night for the next thirty-five years initially with some 400 million dollars and always from then until now with unending hours of backbreaking, grinding, unglamorous work, of civic engagements county by county across the entire expanse of America. They took the richest and most liberal nation in the history of civilization and turned it hard right into a classist, racist, homophobic imperial army of pirates. 30% of America now self-identify as conservative or extremely conservative. When Lewis Powell wrote his Manifesto that figure was less than 10%.

And on the morning of November 3d we wrung our hands and wondered why.

And we have a community that still cannot decide on what we want or what to do. We are completely inept at organizing ourselves and have a monstrously bad record of attempting unity.

The continuing existence of HIV is essential for the functioning of the totalitarianism under which gay people now live. It works out like this: HIV allows “them” to sell us as sick. And that kills off our usefulness, both in our own minds, their thinking we are sick, and in the eyes of the world, everyone thinking we are sick. All of this obliterates the consciousness of those who should help us and don’t. This liquidates and incinerates our individuality and our spontaneity, our abilities to fight back, to hold our oppressors to task. They want to keep HIV going as long as they can! Why haven’t we seen that? The signs have always been there! But like everything else we couldn’t believe them. No one could be as cruel as that. They want to make us superfluous. Their media, their newspapers, their networks will see to it that our good qualities are invisible.

It should therefore come as no surprise that when HIV came along they, this cabal, facilitated its rapid deployment and continue to do so. Before even making the feeblest attempt to commence any miniscule response or inquiry into what their press was not reporting, which they most certainly knew about themselves, they waited until masses of us had all been exposed to the whatever it was. We on the other hand chose to not believe that the whatver it was was a virus until this was incontestably proved. But they knew what it was, or were willing to take the chance and hope that it was, and they just sat back and waited. Their wildest dreams then started to come true. The faggots were disappearing and they were doing it to themselves! I can locate no work of any urgency, or indeed much work at all on aids for most of the period between 1981-1984. Oh many claim it, as many claim seeing cases many years earlier, which I also doubt, but I cannot locate whatever these are claiming. In those four years almost every gay man who had fucked in America had been exposed to the virus.

And when they did start doing anything it was with such feebleness that it amounted to nothing for ten years. You can give me all kinds of reasons why it took so long but my research has convinced me that the actual scenario was completely intentional neglect. Oh perhaps not the doctors or the scientists. But they had no money. And they were not going to get any money. Or enough money. People upstairs were going to see to it that there would be no money. Let even more people get infected first. Blacks, junkies, prostitutes. Every color of skin but straight white. Every religion but Christian. Excuse me, white Christian. Then we’ll throw them a few pennies to make it look like we’re concerned.

The cabals Bill Moyers talked about have called all the shots in facilitating and accelerating the plague of aids. If scientists discovered something useful, it has rarely been available. I spoke earlier about the refusal of this president to allow already approved generic drugs out to a desperate Africa and elsewhere. Of that huge Congressional approval of many billions for HIV around the world that Bush brags about, something less that 2% has left Washington almost four years after its approval. Does this sound like a President and a government and a country that wants to help?

I guess I have suspected behavior like this all along. But I never knew it in quite the way that I have now come to see it thanks to Bill Moyers: intentionality is the only word to describe the genocidal treatment the world is drowning in. Much of the world, most assuredly including us, has been intentionally hung out to die. So far some 70 million of us. That is some manifesto Lewis Powell birthed. And all we have to do is keep fucking each other without condoms and the rest of their “moral issues” will be dead.

Do you seriously think they care about the continuing rise again of HIV infections? They are grateful for them. Do you think they care about a sudden plague of crystal? They thank us for our cooperation. And we thought for one brief second of time that we might even be allowed to marry the ones we love.

And while all this happened, even if we had enough suspicions to act, what did we do? We completely shrank from our duty of opposition. Those are Christopher Isherwood’s words: “the duty of opposition.” But he was flagellating himself with these words. He fears that should he have to live face to face with a war in his backyard that he “would shrink from the duty of opposition.”

Marriage? Forget it. Non-discrimination laws? Forget them. Those that have been enacted will be rescinded or amended into toothlessness. Adoption? Equal rights? Forget everything. We are going to be erased into nothingness. They hate us so much and now they are in complete and utter power, the most dangerous situation in the world for the unwanteds to live under. And I no longer think it matters who is President. Clinton turned out to be as rotten for us as George Bush, either one.

Ok, keep putting your life in jeopardy. 110 of their drug companies certainly want you to do so. Keep dancing your asses off at circuit parties all over the world as you go down to the sea in ships that are made to intentionally capsize and take you down with them. Ok, keep being bored and crying for your poor selves. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. With our complete cooperation they have already murdered several generations of us so far. They won’t have to murder so many more of us to get their wish. Like Russia, we will disappear. That is what they want to do. Disappear us. And now they are able to officially do it. George Bush has his mandate. Can’t you see all this! People high up there in their secret powwows don’t want us here. Word has come down from on high: get rid of the faggots once and for all. You think the law will protect us? Think again. Wait until you see the new Supreme Court.

You are here as a gay person because of certain events and certain people who lived and suffered and died before you. You must learn about them and not continually deny their existence and importance in our history, the history of gay people in America. You must learn about them! They have made your life possible! What kind of person doesn’t want to learn about themselves? I don’t know why but you don’t want to. Most of our fellow gays don’t read books about us. Or come to plays about us. What do you want to do? I don’t know. And for all I can tell in talking to many of you, you don’t know either. And this is very frightening. A large uncongealed mass of potentially superior beings doesn’t know what to do with themselves or bother to learn their history. So they dance. So they drug. So they go on to the internet to find more sex. These are useful lives being wasted. Why is that? Why is there no useful creativity going on? Why is there no mental agility visible, no audible questioning discussions of… almost anything of importance? Don’t you long for some involvement in the humanity that you belong to, for your place in the scheme of things? You don’t know how to make entrance on these playing fields, is that it? I don’t know what is wrong with us. I wish you could tell me. What do you do with yourselves all week long, seven days and nights a week, that amounts to anything really important? I can’t see many of you as doing anything important, to give your lives meaning. Oh I can see lots of frocks on the runway but I can’t see bodies inside of them, bodies with brains and concerned with anything but pretty and orgasms. What do you do to make your world, our world, a better place? A world that needs every bit of help it can get, our world, not their world. You don’t seem able to connect with anyone beyond the basest ways.

“Why can’t we look at our bodies and see not just a sexual definition? Why can’t we see in the body all that the body represents? Sexuality, yes. But also mortality, humanness, humaneness, innocence, purity, health, sickness, strength, consideration, responsibility, divinity. When did we rob our bodies of all the complexity they possess? Why do we refuse to see all that we are capable of? All the other things that make us full beings.” That very beautiful paragraph was written by my friend, Jordan Roth, who is one day going to be a very fine writer if he just keeps at it.

Do you know you are taking the same crystal meth as Hitler? The stuff that was being used well into 1997, the government outlawed one of the ingredients and so the orignal process was resurrected, the one as used by the Nazis. It was first synthesized by the Germans in the early part of the 20th century. Hitler was a crystal addict. The new version is much more potent than the stuff you were taking before 1997, which is the main reason why it is so hard to break an addiction. Dr. Howard Grossman told me this bit of history. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you about the Hitler part. To the more twisted among you it may be a turn-on.

I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and more aware and I do, I do, I totally do. I really do think all of these things. And I try very hard to remember all this.

But I am finding that I am not so proud of being gay anymore. It’s come over me slowly. As much as I love being gay and I love gay people I’m not proud of us right now. It’s disappeared. I almost could say we’ve disappeared. But since you are here I can’t quite say that. But that’s how I feel.

I do not see us, don’t you see? I do not see us! They are killing us. They are eradicating us from this earth. Little by little by little we are disappearing. I do not see us and I am beginning to see us less and less.

I have recently come to believe that gay men and women are tragic people. We are so wonderful but we are also so fucked up. So blind. So ignorant in ways to look after ourselves. So uninterested in the Outside World that is subsuming us when we thought we were making them pretty and giving them songs to sing. So without agendas to utilize our wonderful-ness. We know who the enemy is and we just stand here letting them shoot us over and over again. WE STAND HERE AND LET THEM DO IT! All of the brains and abilities we have among us are useless. The smartest among us, our famous ones, our rich ones, seem to allow this most of all. The ones who should help us and speak up for us refuse that responsibility. We have enough rich gay men and lesbians to finance a takeover of the world but their brains and their money and their skills are not available to to help us. To lead us. To inspire us. To finance us. To be like Lewis Powell’s Nine Families. That, too is tragic. To have so much money and to not to use it for brothers and sisters, for family, for our continuation here on earth. Why is that? Rockefeller tithed himself from his very first dollar, to go to his church for his salvation. Please, can we get word to every rich gay person to show up to help save us. We need our Nine Families desperately.

Public service: how many religions demand this of their members? How much public service in behalf of your brothers and sisters, your family, have you performed recently? Don’t tell me you don’t know what to do. If you can find another ass to fuck, and you seem endlessly inventive at accomplishing this, then you should be able to locate a more useful and responsible outlet.

For a few brief years we had some noble moments, of togetherness and anger and progress. Not many of us, mind you. If you are still alive, you know who you were and where you were during those worst years of our mass murder. You know what you did and what you didn’t. And I know too. I know that most of you, should you still be alive, didn’t do a goddamned thing. In fact, you were ashamed of us, many of you were. I remember that as well as I remember those who died. “Friends” crossing the street to avoid me because I was advising cooling it. I was actually told to not come back to Fire Island Pines. Lots of people come up to me now on the street and say, thank you for what you did for us. I do not consider that a compliment. My response quite often’s been a curt Fuck You, why aren’t you doing it too! I don’t do anything that anyone else couldn’t do. I just do it, and some 10 or 15,000 other people did it too then. And the rest of you sat on your asses. And, those of you who are still alive, know who you were and how little you did.

Yes for one brief moment in time we got angry. Correction, a few of us got angry. Of all our many many millions of gay people in this country, about 10,000 of us or so got angry enough to accomplish something. We got drugs. We got aids care. We got enough so we could continue fucking again. That in the end is what it amounted to. As soon as we got the drugs, you went right back to what got us into such trouble in the first place. WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? The cabal can’t believe their good fortune.

How many gay people in America in those years of Aids? Ten million? Twenty million? Thirty million? How many of us are there now? We don’t even know how many of us there are! Or how many we lost! And every time some statistical number is released by some faceless organization or government office, I always wonder: how the fuck do they know how many of us there are when we don’t even know how many of us there are? And none of our so-called gay organizations ever bothers to find out. It would be nice to know, helpful to know. Don’t you think?

You know, it isn’t meant to be easy, life. I don’t know why it isn’t meant to be easy, but it just isn’t, so we might as well get used to it and try to find things that give us a certain sense of pride. We must create ourselves as something we can live with. It takes energy, yes. Why are we so crippled intellectually? Oh, we study sexuality and gender stuff until it comes out of every university’s asshole but we don’t study history, who we were and where we came from and our roots, the wellsprings of our historical existence. We do not honor our dead as we do not honor ourselves. We continue without surcease to be and remain, endlessly, day after day, helpless victims. “In my country when they raise the bus fares, we burn the buses,” a Brazilian journalist said to me as she watched a sparsely attended Act Up demonstration.

There is never one single hour that a disenfranchised minority does not have to fight to breathe and stay alive. The hate out there will never lessen. It only grows and grows, this hate. Most of you refuse to face this. I hate you for your doing that. I really do. I have no more patience for this kind of weakness. I know this is uncharitable of me. I don’t care. I am too tired of fighting with so few troops. You are now dancing your own dance of death, you know. And I hate you for this, too. Grow up, I beg you. Oh, grow up.

Time goes by so fast. We are allotted so precious little of it on this earth. How sad that you use it so stupidly. Every minute that goes by is gone forever. You who have been given a new lease on life, the very gift of life itself, piss it away. It is so incomprehensible to me who has come so close to death a couple times. I find your inactivity and ingratitude and lack of imagination on how to act in emergencies incongruous, incomprehensible, insulting. And unacceptable. I could never understand during all those years of Aids why every single person facing death would not fight to save his own life. And I cannot understand now how, life having been given back to us again, again you treat your life with such contempt.

Yes, all that I have spoken of tonight is the stuff of tragedy.

I wish we could truly look upon each other as brothers and sisters. It sounds corny I am told when I keep using terms like this. How can we be related I am asked dismissively. You do not know or want to know that we have been on this earth as long as anyone else and that we have as many available heroes and heroines as anyone else. Your family has been here a very long time and has an ancient and distinguished lineage. You must learn that Abraham Lincoln was gay and George Washington and Meriwether Lewis and so many others we are only just beginning to uncover. But they will not let gay history be taught in schools and universities. And we seem unable to teach ourselves. My own college, Yale, with $1 million of my own brother’s money to do just this, will not teach what I call gay history, unencumbered with the prissy incomprehensible gobbledygook of gender studies and queer theory. Abraham Lincoln did not talk that language.

We richly deserve the government we have received. We do not even know who we are. And our enemies participate in their convictions every day of their lives. We only show up when we want to, which is not very often. But then perhaps you do not love being gay. Or think we are better than other people, and smarter and more talented and more tuned into what is happening, and are better friends.

I leave the hardest topic we must face till last.

How do we fight as a united front when they don’t approve of our “behavior” and when our behavior is inseparable from our beings? How do we fight as a united front when some of us won’t or are unable to change certain behaviors that many of us have difficulty in supporting and defending ourselves? We’ve been so concerned about showing the world a united front. We feel the need to say that everything gay people do is good and it simply isn’t so. We must have an honest discussion amongst ourselves about what’s good and what isn’t. This is of course the problem that has finally brought us down because we have refused to deal with it, and perhaps is one reason today’s youngsters have difficulty in acknowledging our past. It is the unfaced devil in our closet, if you will, that we have refused to deal with and which, now, now that they have achieved their position of imperial power, will be used to hang us once and for all. To be crude about it, how do we market and sell our wishes and our needs as they have been able to package and sell their wants and needs so successfully for thirty-five years? How do we frame this issue? How do we claim the God that they have subsumed into their own ownership? It is inhuman to think that the only way we can get through to some safe other side is by policing each other and in so doing destroy whatever hope we have of getting along? If they have been able to convince this country that the Republicans are the party of the people, surely so many sons and daughters can be smart enough to find a way to sell our parents permission to co-exist.

I do not know how to answer any of this. And I don’t think anyone among us does either. To talk out loud about what our bodies have done and continue to do is asking for trouble from others of us. How do we admit our past, own it, and evolve from it and move on? For we must do this.

I know some of you will immediately jump up to act. I caution rushing off to form anything quite so fast until we decide how we want to deal with what I have raised tonight. I know many of you are prepared to tough it out and say to them, “fuck you, I am what I am.” And point out quite rightly that they have simply pushed us too far and, no matter what we have done and continue to do we simply cannot allow them to treat us this way any longer. We are human beings as much as they are, and their God is the same as our God and He simply cannot be allowed to be as punishing as they are requiring Him to be.”

But this is perhaps too honest and reasonable to say to those who are not either. Reasoning like this has not worked for us in the past. But I sense that ignoring this question of responsibility for much that has murdered us will only please them more.

These are the problems we must confront as we go forward. If you are going to fight in a united way, which I am convinced is now the only way that can save us, we must find a platform that all of us can support without divisiveness and shame and guilt and all the other hateful weapons they will club us with.

And if we do want to go out and fight again in a united way we must ask ourselves: are we able to replicate the kind of devotion and commitment and backbreaking thankless work and tactics that continues to bring them year after year into such positions of unlimited power. Thirty-five years of that? For thirty-five years the cabal I have spoken of has worked every single day and night to bring them their success. Quite frankly they deserve their victory and we deserve our loss.

I would like to quote this from a Baptist minister, Tom Ehrich, in Durham. By chance, I found it on a Christian website at 3:00 this afternoon. “It would be helpful if we started in silence and just listened to each other’s voices. Whether we can muster such maturity amid toxic political attitudes remains to be seen. If we are to have a meaningful national discussion of moral issues, we will need to start with the sexual issues, not because they are the most important but because they are the fire engulfing the tower. Let’s get it all on the table…

“And let’s do so openly and boldly, without the code language that we often use in moral debates, without our usual cherry-picking of Scriptures, without our usual blistering indignation, without the bullying that elevates one’s viewpoint into divine certainty.”

So we are being invited to this table whether we want to or not. We must be prepared.

I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and better friends. I do, I do, I totally do. I really do think all of these things.

And I passionately and desperately want all my brothers and sisters to stay alive and well and on this earth as long as they want theirs to.

Can we all help each other to reach this goal?

#gay #politics #hate #larrykramer

[zemkzone]

Perspective - A ColdFlash Regency Story: FINAL CHAPTER

More of a bonus after-the-happily-ever-after, but... still!

FULL FIC LINK HERE

Married life agreed with Bartholomew FitzAllen-Snart, Viscount-Consort Wynters and Baron FitzAllen. He and his husband—the word still brought a giddy smile to his lips—had returned to British shores mid-December in 1816 after a six-month honeymoon travelling through the continent. It had been the Grand Tour Barry had not been able to take years ago, all the more special because of his travelling companion. Len had had no preference whether they settled at Carmichael or Caldridge until spring, but Barry had been ready for a change.

“I spent so much time trying to protect, then save, my family’s estate these last few years,” he explained when they arrived in London, “I now feel hesitant to reside within its walls once more.”

“Then we shall spend Christmas at Caldridge,” Len replied agreeably, “and keep Carmichael closed until summer. Perhaps after the Season, you might want to spend at least a few weeks at your childhood home again.”

Barry twined their fingers together, smiling gratefully. “My home is with you now. And, in any case, the two estates are an easy ride or brisk walk away from each other.”

At Caldridge, he and Len fell into a routine. They would attend to the more important estate and business before breakfast, only to retreat to their respective studies to finish their remaining paperwork shortly before dinner. The hours in between and the hours after were theirs to do as they wished. Since Barry’s new laboratory would not be finished until summer and neither he nor his husband were interested in attending the Season of 1817, he dedicated his spare time to acquainting himself with the veritable maze of hallways and hidden passages in the house. He quickly noticed that the high-ceilinged rooms meant that even his softest moans sounded much louder whenever he and Len engaged in marital congress outside their bedroom. And they did take such congress seriously. In every room and surface they could manage it.

Barry made his greatest discovery, however, two months into his explorations. [...]

READ THE REST OF THE CHAPTER HERE

As always, peep for FABULOUS art by the amazing @hardwiredweird ~

#completed fanfiction #regency romance #regency coldflash #ColdFlash #Barry Allen #leonard snart #The Flash #Captain Cold #happily ever after #after the happily ever after #it is DONE #the idiocy is over #inspired by bridgerton #inspired by jane austen #historical fanfiction #disgustingly in love #so sappy #after all the pining #after all the angst #the author regrets nothing #the art is so beautiful #best collab ever

[lothiriel84]

Winter Kept Us Warm

It was a good thing, he mused somewhat grimly, that he was so very much in love with Miss Hale; otherwise, he might have been put off marrying her altogether – though he knew he could never own to such a thing, on pains of being laughed out of Milton proper.

A North and South ficlet. Sex-repulsed asexual!John Thornton.

It was the night before his wedding, and John Thornton was lying wide awake, wishing like never before he could rely on his father’s guidance on this most delicate venture. He was thirty-two years of age, and while not entirely ignorant of the mechanics of marital congress, his knowledge up to this point had been purely theoretical – save perhaps for a handful of instances in which he had been unfortunate enough to stumble upon a couple of illicit lovers in a darkened alleyway in Princeton, and he had been most desperate to purge the unpleasant memories of it at the time.  

Even as a young lad, he could never understand what all the fuss was about; while all other boys at school spoke of nothing but lusting after this or that girl, and the most daring ones boasted of their conquests, real or otherwise, his eye had never been caught by the female form in so unbecoming a manner. Even as a grown man, he still retained the impulse to excuse himself from any room in which the particulars of bedding a woman were being discussed, as frequently happened in the company of his fellow mill masters; some of them appeared to take a sort of perverse pleasure in discussing the intimate details of their latest encounter with some female of lower standing – and quite possibly in desperate need of coin, he reflected bitterly, not quite bothering to hide his contempt for those so-called gentlemen who saw fit to conduct themselves in so unbecoming a manner.  

Tomorrow, he would wed the only woman he had ever – and would ever – love. To his utter mortification, his mother had thought it her responsibility to warn him against the roughness of his supposed desires; his new bride, she had told him, would be shy of him, and it was his duty to be gentle with her and do his utmost to ensure her comfort. The act, she had then proceeded to inform him, came with a certain amount of discomfort for a woman, even more so the first few times; he ought not impose upon his wife too often, and there would be several days each month in which she would be indisposed and therefore unable to allow him into her bed.  

It was a good thing, he mused somewhat grimly, that he was so very much in love with Miss Hale; otherwise, he might have been put off marrying her altogether – though he knew he could never own to such a thing, on pains of being laughed out of Milton proper as not at all a man, as a disappointed widow of dubious morals had once accused him of being, after he had rebuffed her offers of a very specific kind of comfort without so much as a second thought.  

He would take Margaret as his wedded wife, and he would do his duty by her, as was expected; no one needed ever know about his own deficiencies on this account, and besides, he was most eager for any children that might come out of this marriage. It had been painful enough to give up any hope of a family of his own, in the aftermath of Miss Hale’s first refusal; he would not allow any unnatural inclination – or disinclination, as it happened – on his part to prevent this most cherished wish from coming true.  

.

Suffice to say, it did not go well. Oh, his intentions had been everything that was good and proper as he knocked on the door that led into his wife’s chamber; Margaret had welcomed him with such bashful tenderness as to make his heart soar, and for a fleeting moment, he had nearly convinced himself all his previous reservations were nothing but unfounded.  

Then they began in earnest, and it became too much for him almost immediately. When she winced in pain, as he had been told to expect, he found he could not go on, and hastily withdrew from her despite her earnest protestations that she was well, and they should proceed like before.  

He was a beast, he was all too painfully aware, for abandoning his new bride in so unconscionable a manner; even now, as he approached the washbasin on shaking legs and attempted to clean himself with pitifully trembling fingers, he could hear her sobs through the connecting door, which he had locked and bolted in his blind rush to put as much distance as could be contrived between himself and the proceedings.  

If he were any sort of gentleman at all, he would go to her this instant, humbly throw himself at her mercy for the terrible slight he had inflicted upon her, regardless of how unwittingly done on his part. Instead, he merely stood there, struggling with his every breath to gain some shred of composure, and loathing his own cowardice with every fibre of his being.  

.

“Is it because of me, John? You need not lie for my sake – indeed, I would rather have the full truth, no matter how hard to take in.” 

He laughed – a hollow, somewhat pained sound. “It’s not that, Margaret, not even close. God knows I have never met another woman worth putting myself through all that. With you, I thought it might be different; that I’d be able to overcome my inadequacies, and be with you as a man with his wife.” 

She regarded him pensively, yet there was such unbidden kindness in her countenance he knew himself most undeserving of. “My Aunt Shaw told me that all men desire it above all things – that they take great comfort in the marriage bed, and they wish for it, constantly.” 

“There you have it, then. Not only I’m no gentleman, as you correctly assumed at the beginning of our acquaintance – I'm no proper man, either. Heaven knows what I am – except a liar and a cad of the worst kind, for proposing marriage to you under false pretences.” 

He turned to look out of the window then, facing away from the only woman he had ever envisioned his future with, and whom he was now honour bound to set free as soon as an annulment could be petitioned for. There had been no consummation to speak of, and it was no great stretch of the truth to attest to his inability to perform his husbandly duties; at that moment, he did not even care that such a thing would inevitably make him the laughing stock of the town, as he could think of no worse fate than being made to renounce all prospects of happiness he had dared to believe himself secure of.  

“Of course you are a man, John,” his wife promptly dismissed his doubts, and with a few decisive steps joined him near the window. “And you know very well I was quite mistaken in dismissing you as anything less than a gentleman.” 

“Any gentleman worth the name would do his duty by his bride,” he pointed out, feeling every bit as bitter as he sounded. “And as a magistrate, I am perfectly aware no marriage is valid in the eye of the law that remains unconsummated.” 

Margaret smiled, unaccountably, and went to place her hand upon his arm. “It is a good thing, then, that it was Jane who came in to change my linens this morning – I daresay the entire household has been informed by now, and is under no doubt that I have become your wife in every respect.” 

“And how would you like it, Mrs Thornton, to be a wife in name only?” he pressed then, his sense of duty urging him on against every dictation of his heart. “To find yourself tied to a husband unwilling to share your bed, precluding any possibility of children from your future?” 

He saw her determination waver, but it was only for a moment. “I was resolved never to marry, when I thought your regard irrevocably lost to me, so you see, it would be no great inconvenience to carry on as before. If you do not wish for children, then we shall have none – think only of the Boucher children, and there are so many more – we could do so much good, you and I.” 

“I do wish for us to have children, Margaret,” he interrupted in his desperation. “Can you not see how impossible it is? The one thing that is clear to me is that I should never have placed you in this position, and I am sorry.” 

“Have faith, John,” his wife murmured in so affectionate tones he was powerless to do anything but to gather her to himself. “God will see us through, one way or another.” 

Her body was warm and pliant in his arms, but it did not cause him any revulsion now, with their shared love a living, pulsing thing surrounding them like an embrace. He tucked her head under his chin and closed his eyes in a silent prayer.  

.

It took John many a week – and several failed attempts at completing the act in a manner conductive to the creation of children – to swallow his pride and consult Doctor Donaldson on so personal and delicate an issue. Unfortunately, the physician was at a loss to identify the root of his problem, and therefore unable to prescribe a remedy for it; everything appeared to be in working order, so to speak, and surely there could be no other obstacle preventing him from bedding his wife as he wished? Of course, as a medical man, he knew that some men’s proclivities went in a rather different direction, but surely Mr Thornton’s did not – ? 

Mr Thornton assured him, most vehemently, that they did not, and took his leave with a great deal of mutual embarrassment on either side. He was by this time resolved to fix whatever it was that was wrong with him, and was debating the merits of taking himself to London to see one of those Harley Street doctors – the only thing preventing him from jumping on the next train southward being the sheer horror at the possibility, however remote, that word of his difficulties might somehow reach Margaret’s London relations, revealing the whole extent of his unsuitability as a husband way in excess of their previous objections. 

It was close on two whole months after the wedding when John quite accidentally discovered that things went along considerably more smoothly if he could take his mind off the immediate proceedings and focus on something else entirely for the duration. This unexpected disclosure, coupled with Margaret’s growing confidence in all matters pertaining her wifely duties – which he strongly suspected to be the result of a timely intervention on his mother’s part, though he most definitely did not wish to know about it – ultimately produced the desired outcome, much to the relief of Mr and Mrs Thornton alike.  

It would still take several months for Margaret to conceive, but the worst of it was behind them, and John’s strong distaste for the activity began to fade to a more manageable level of discomfort with familiarity and time. By early April, Doctor Donaldson was called in to confirm that Mrs Thornton was indeed with child, and Mr Thornton was at last granted a much-needed reprieve from his marital duties for the time being.  

.

“Come back to bed, John. He will need feeding soon enough – we ought to get some rest while we can.” 

He shook his head somewhat ruefully, his gaze still trained on the arresting sight that was his tiny son fast asleep in his crib. George was much smaller than his cousin had been at the time of her birth, but he was growing fast, and it had not taken long for his proud grandmother to declare that the boy would undoubtedly grow as tall and handsome as his father.  

In the months leading up to Margaret’s confinement he had discovered that, once freed from any expectations of bedding her, he gained much comfort from sleeping with Margaret at his side; he was still in the habit of doing so, and although that meant he was often awakened by his son, he was still reluctant to quit this peculiar intimacy with his new family. He knew he would have to, once Margaret was recovered from her confinement and the time came for them to resume their efforts towards providing Master George with a younger brother or sister; for the time being, he was content to enjoy every opportunity of admiring the wonderful miracle that was the child he had worked so hard to bring into existence. 

With that, he did in no way intend to make light of all the hardships his Margaret had had to face to bring their son into the world; she had carried the child within herself for several months, nurturing and protecting him, until the time had come to be delivered of him with considerable pain and suffering on her part, let alone the very real risks that came with childbirth for women and babes alike.  

He owed the joys of fatherhood in great part to her courage and strength, and he was deeply grateful for that. With one final glance to his beautiful, beloved son, he finally retired to the bed, resuming his rightful place in his wife’s waiting arms.  

#North and South #John Thornton #Margaret Hale #Margaret/John #asexual character #sex-repulsed character #self-worth issues #I don't even know #I wrote a thing

[pipelinelaserraygun]

Think of Christ's Bridal Party as its OWN DEMOGRAPHIC, APART FROM the rest of 🏰 Heaven's general citizenry.

The Bride is "tying the knot".

WEDLOCK ceremonies include a wedding rehearsal dinner. It's a practice run.

SHE is marrying into the Heavenly Royal Family business, which puts (M/F) Mrs. Jesus in a SET-APART classification, *distinguished through marital obligations.

I believe that the REMNANT (⬆️ THIS group) will carry out a RECKONING that 👺 awaits the lost, alongside, as Spouse to the Son of God.

In God's inner circle there are NO kid soldiers or kid brides.

🕎✝️🛐 Father God, there's NO NEED for MORE 🐑🐏 sacrificial lambs/sheeple. Upticks in attacks against conservatives and Christians require YOUR intervention.

NO 🪖 Soldiers left BEHIND.

"Their ✝️ bloodline had to be terminated."

"Senator, we're BOTH part of the SAME hypocrisy."

--With ONE distinction: our ✝️ marriage license provides diplomatic immunity across ALL dimensions & galaxies.

The ONLY war story that will last for Eternity is the one that Christians are currently co-scripting: Victory, in ✝️.