According to Joe.My.God the funeral expenses of Jacob Rogers have been met within TWO HOURS.
Jacob Rogers committed suicide on Tuesday in Tennessee at the age of 18. He had been bullied for years. His family is extremely poor Jacob was raised by his grandmother).
While I venture to guess that some donations were from non-gay sources, I'll bet that Joe.My.God had something to do with meeting the majority of the amount. Way to go Joe Jervis!
You should have known him. If you had, your lives would have been much richer. This video was put together by a wonderful movie man, Tyler St. Mark. It shows you what I was blessed with for so many years.
The spirit in bed is lingering. I wonder when it will be completely extinguished. There is nothing for me to do but stare at Michael and type out this bit of time.
"Comfort Care" - what the hell is it? Body comfort? Comfort for those of us watching him? I honestly don't know.
It's late. I should get to sleep in the other hospital bed, but I don't want to equate myself with him.
NOTE: Although I've posted this article under stressful circumstances (see postscript below) the perspective presented is definitely appropriate and shared by many people in this country. I may not be writing for a week or two, so I hope that this article is passionate enough to suffice for a while.
"But a certain Samaritan, as he traveled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, and gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.'" — Luke 10:30–36, World English Bible
On Tax Day, April 15th, Rep. Paul Ryan had this to say about "his" budget:
Our budget offers a compassionate and optimistic contrast to a future of health-care rationing and unbearably high taxes. We lift the crushing burden of debt, repair the safety net, make America’s tax system fair and competitive, and ensure that our health and retirement programs have a strong and lasting future.[1]
There are people who would beg to differ with Ryan's statement, notably the people fighting his expansive social welfare cuts on Capitol Hill and in the White House. The fight has extended to the matter of the national debt and the next several weeks will be grueling ... and revealing. If you look at the fight in a simplified perspective, it becomes a battle for the existence of compassion: should it be sustained now (in a diminished form), or in the future? Republicans are already naming their form of "compassion" by calling it INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE.
But whatever the outcome of the fight, we must not lose sight of the fact that the economic and financial crises we now face are about people: some people will benefit, while others will not. Cost cuts to social welfare agencies are already showing results: the poor are not only getting catastrophically poorer because they have less money, but also because they have less access to housing and necessary subsidies. It is the same with healthcare reform: while decrying imagined atrocities of "Obamacare", not one conservative member of Congress has put forth any real solution for the uninsured. Republican actions in the House have, in fact, ensured us that none will ever be forthcoming.
The conservative image has never taken such a beating as in this Congress.
In the past, the conservative rich have always trotted out the defensive statistic that conservatives actually give more/do more for the disenfranchised than liberals because the liberals want the government to do their giving for them. They chafed when George Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was met with the label of "oxymoron." What liberals have always realized, however, is that most conservatives tend to give only to their own causes and many times those causes not only leave out whole groups of Americans, but actually sustain the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Conservatives must control where their money goes. Liberals do it too, but conservatives do it more often and on a larger scale.
TRUE COMPASSION
Giving to those in need comes down to true compassion. But what is "true compassion"? Who is more compassionate - a church elder making a cake for a church bazaar held for the homeless or the man who off-handedly gives a man on the street a dollar because he asked for it? Both are compassionate, but the church elder KNOWS to whom she is giving her time, money and effort to, while the anonymous man cares not who the needy person is (or even if the person is, indeed, needy at all). Conservatives would not call the latter's gesture compassion, but the mere foolhardiness of a "bleeding heart liberal."
In biblical terms, one could associate the Good Samaritan with true compassion: when the priest and the Levite saw the man they both passed by. Why? Perhaps because when they saw them they judged him immediately as not worth their efforts. Now, notice that Christ's story did not say that the Samaritan knew he was helping a Jew.[2] In other words, the Samaritan did not judge, nor did he know who he was helping. The Samaritan just did what he felt was the right thing- the human thing -to do.
In another belief system (not really a religion), there's the story of bodhisattva Quan Yin (correction: stories - hundreds of legends, but all of their central themes involve her compassion). The most popular is the one that after she was made an Immortal, Quan Yin started her ascent to Enlightenment (heaven), but heard the cries of people still in need, forsook heaven and descended to help them. There are many parallels given to Quan Yin's Christian counterpart, Mary, the mother of Jesus. (Aside: it is interesting to note that much of the non-denominational and Protestant denominational Christian Right consider prayers to St. Mary to constitute "Mariolatry" or idolization of the Virgin Mary. They are loathe to think of any intercessor to Christ for mercy.)
COMPASSIONATE CAPITALISM - ACCORDING TO RYAN & CO.
Just as true compassion does not need judgment, it does not need a reason except for helping someone to survive in the best way possible. Compassion need not come in the form of the Christian thing to do, nor even the right thing to do, but simply as the human thing to do. People in need do not have the luxury of determining from whence compassion comes.
The above statement of Paul Ryan is, to say the least, dripping with the disingenuous patronizing to the poor that many conservatives today deal out: the belief that capitalism in all its glory will ultimately benefit everyone. The conservative mindset also believes that individual investment, individual charity, individual compassion will also prove supreme.
They will not. Individual charity is subjective and can be manipulated. It can be focused on a number too few to benefit as many as possible. Philanthropy and charity have given the public many blessings, to be sure, but no matter how generous, they have always benefited only a portion of the truly needy. In most cases, the giving has been focused. In addition, many faith-based organizations are unfortunately too focused and their charitable agendas can be skewed: catastrophes, for example, have been used by what might be called "God's Ambulance Chasers" more intent on conversion to religious beliefs than relief.[3]
Of course, individual charity can be the most valuable adjunct to a society's governmental social services: it lets us know that - coupled with government - our society is doing everything it can to aid in our people's survival. Budget-slashing by the likes of Rep. Paul Ryan, however, puts a burden on individual charity that it cannot possibly sustain ... without neglecting hordes of our country's citizenry. Perhaps the truly sad part about the likes of Mr. Ryan is that he knows it, and doesn't seem to care - hence the disingenuous statement above. Of course, he may not be entirely to blame, since his party is, after all, controlled by a very powerful group: the coalition of religious entities known as the Christian Right.
AT A CROSSROADS
From what we've seen these last twenty years, can anyone truly say without a doubt that social conservatives (the Christian Right)possess true compassion? Their own "agenda" of condemnation exposes how they pre-judge people and groups, vehemently prejudicing against segments of society: for example, we have seen the great Southern Baptist Convention try to harm businesses that have supported the LGBT community and treated it with respect. And while some within the Christian Right community describe their compassion as "tough love" (Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association comes to mind) others beg to differ on that point: can "love" of any kind be borne of bigotry? [4]
So now our country's compassion is at a crossroads because of a budget crisis: should it be government (liberal) or individual (conservative) compassion? According to people like Ryan, America cannot have both. We could, but that might mean raising taxes while giving more to charity. A blogger at Hubpages.com put it well::
There are two kinds of compassion in this country. The compassion of the left and the compassion of the right. The compassion of the Democrat and the compassion of the Republican. The compassion of the government and the compassion of the individual.
Whichever one you choose, put your money where your mouth is.
With "slash and burn" Republicans goaded by Dominionists and corporations, the compassion of the Democrat may be gone entirely. And the other kind of compassion will be meted out to a select few.
God help us.
1.The new terminology for Ryan's futuristic "compassion" is INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE. (!?)
2. Remember, the Jew was stripped and therefore not recognizable by any particular clothing. Also, Samaritanism and Judaism were very similar Abrahamic religions and shared the tenet of circumcision.
- The story of the Good Samaritan poses a conundrum for many in the Christian Right because it is sited as the epitome of compassion by many evangelicals and therefore is something they strive for; however, the Samaritan does not evangelize or proselytize in any way, leaving the audience of the story to wonder why evangelizing is necessary in order to do good. 3. In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, a faith-based organization spent $100,000 erecting electronic Bibles (60 loudspeaker systems from which Biblical verses were broadcast) among people who were still not receiving adequate medical treatment. Another example: after the horrendous Asian Tsunami, Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church sent food and clothing, along with 600,000 Christian scripture tracts (the cost of which totaled more than the emergency goods sent). Since the victims were mostly Buddhist and Hindu, the tracts were considered insultingly superfluous and respectfully sent back.
4. The concept of "love the sinner, hate the sin" is especially egregious: no other moral precept has ever been so misused as some ridiculous band aid for guilt. The phrase is always used while knowing that it goes against human nature: just as Jesus Christ new that the concept of "love thine enemy" was a hard sell, so to does the Christian Right know that LSHS falls on deaf ears, but it needs the phrase to sound more benign.
POSTSCRIPT
Parts of this article have been written while my former partner and best friend of fourteen years lies dying of liver cancer. I have been his caregiver for six of those years, aided by his current partner and soul mate. We live in San Francisco, (that bastion of liberalism and perversion!) certainly the most compassionate city in America. It was here that he was nurtured as an artist (award-winning theater director) and came to nurture other artists as well. It is in San Francisco that he is now comforted and cared for by an incredible extended family of friends, hospice workers, physicians, and therapists - many made possible by San Francisco and the caring state of California. I firmly believe that he could not have gotten greater "comfort care" anywhere else. He is passing in dignity as well.
While there are conservatives who can be regarded as compassionate, I sincerely doubt that those in Congress (guided by today's Christian Right) would be as wonderfully human as the people I see around us. Ironic, isn't it - that such love and humanity should exist in the city they castigate most.
We are put on earth to thrive from the knowledge that we have helped everyone else survive as best as possible. It is unfortunate that others do not see this purpose, because by being confined within boundaries of their own kind of compassion, they are depriving many people of the thing they need most:
"If God doesn't destroy San Francisco, he should apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah" "OK, so it won't burn down in the traditional sense, but where is that earthquake when you need it???"
"It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world"
The first two quotes were from religion-based blogs. The third was from that classic reprobate, Oscar Wilde.
"Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty. It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other, incites one to dream. " - Georges Pompidou
Understatement has its purpose I suppose, but when it comes to certain topics, understatement always eludes me. So when I saw the musical Tales Of The City at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, I knew that understatement would be impossible: after all, I actually LIVED through all of it. I even topped Michael Mouse in some respects.[1]
It's not a great musical by Broadway standards, but what makes it superlative to San Franciscans is that it is as true as it is heartfelt: it tears down barriers and replaces them with freedom, love and understanding. It's San Francisco at its best.
Of course, it will be reviled, boycotted, demonized, and deemed absolutely criminal by all the Bryan Fischers, James Dobsons, Beverly LaHayes, Lou Engles, Herman Cains and Tony Perkinses of the country. And since the musical's premier is in San Francisco during Gay Pride month and before San Francisco's million-in-attendance Gay Pride celebration, those people will be working feverishly to revile, boycott, demonize and deem absolutely criminal the city of San Francisco itself.
Thankfully, every year the City has managed to rise above all the vitriol and deliver an astoundingly loud "FU!" to those who don't admire it for what it is: the country's most accepting and compassionate city. It rises above the vilification, above the overt attempts to "save" it. It rises above the hysterical preachers (Lou Engle has called gays in the Castro "Those people who embrace the darkness"). This year, however, might prove more difficult to be celebratory than in the past: the Christian Right is ramping up the vitriol with impunity. It realizes that an attack on San Francisco is a powerful punch against the current Obama administration, the MSM, Hollywood, and every single liberal on the planet. It will try desperately to counteract the reactions to the Gallup poll that discovered over 50% of Americans are in favor of same-sex marriage. It will revel in photos of the Pride parade showing "perverts" and it will ferventlyhope that last year's violence at the Pink Party will be repeated - in fact, escalate into chaos and even more bloodshed. [2]
Yes, that last statement was meant to alarm: the Christian Right is becoming more violent in its hate speech, comparing gays and lesbians to N*zis, linking them to pedophilia, incest and bestiality. Granted, they use archaic stereotypes and dismissed "research," but they are mobilizing the fringe as never before with videos, ads in newspapers, politicians and a string of radio hosts who use those same politicians brazenly to promote a neo-Reconstructionist agenda. And the fringe is reacting: hate crimesagainst the LGBT community are up. Violence is just around the corner: it just needs a verbal spark to set off one individual, one group.
"San Francisco has been wicked from the very beginning"
I stumbled upon an ironic video while googling "San Francisco Sodom and Gomorrah". It supposedly focuses on the firebombing of a church when anti-gay preacher Lou Sheldon was supposed to speak. Edited by an evangelical Christian, it sets out to tell people how absolutely horrible and sinful San Francisco and its gay community are. In the process, however, if you count the lies and distortions you come up with, you realize that the primary purpose was to make people totally fearful of homosexuals.[3] It reeks of "This could happen to you!" In addition, it features Scott "Pink Swastika" Lively, one of the architects of the "kill the gays bill" in Uganda. In their momentum focusing on gay political power, they forget the oppression gays had seen well into the 80s.
Perhaps this White Night Riots incident can put things into perspective:
The second stage of the violence was a police raid/riot hours later in the predominantly gay Castro neighborhood, which vandalized the Elephant Walk bar and injured many of its occupants.[34] After order was restored at City Hall, SFPD cars carrying dozens of officers headed into the Castro District.[35] Officers entered a gay bar called the Elephant Walk, despite their orders not to do so. They shouted "dirty cocksuckers" and "sick faggots", shattered the large plate glass windows of the bar, and attacked patrons. After fifteen minutes police withdrew from the bar and joined other officers who were indiscriminately attacking gays on the street. The incident lasted nearly two hours.[4]
I was there, at both City Hall, then later in the Castro. You haven't lived until you've seen 50 riot-helmeted cops marching toward you, shields touching each other to form a wall of plexi-glass armor ready to throw tear gas. It was sooo much fun!
"But the Christian Right didn't cause the riot!" Perhaps because, at the time, the big CR was not as powerful as it is today. Its rhetoric not only kills indiscriminately, it owns politicians: just look at some of the proposed draconian laws in Texas.
Besides linking the LGBT community to pedophilia, incest, Nazism, witchcraft and bestiality, it has now focused on the idea of "recruitment," especially in schools. It's really a non-issue, but Tony Perkins of the disingenuous Family Research Council has sounded the alarm of "recruitment" in schools if anti-bullying education is enacted.
Mr. Perkins will doubtless take umbrage with this passage from Tales of The City:
[In a letter written to his mother, Michael (Mouse) Tolliver telling her that he is homosexual].
No, Mama, I wasn't "recruited." No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor. But you know what? I wish someone had. I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, "You're all right, kid. You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else. You're not crazy or sick or evil. You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends - all kinds of friends - who don't give a damn who you go to bed with. Most of all, though, you can love and be loved, without hating yourself for it."[5]
So will the beautiful, wicked City-by-the-Bay be able to prevent possible extreme attacks? No. Nothing can prevent hate crimes perpetrated by zealots spurred on by the Religious Right. Zealots have, in fact, become the new home-grown terrorists, oblivious to the parallels their preachers have to radical Islam's imams. And will it survive the amped-up volume of rotten rhetoric? Yes. The performance of a show like Tales of the City is certainly a testament to that: San Francisco will survive because basic humanity, love and compassion will always survive, despite the efforts of some to make the very soul of The City extinct.
Alright, this piece may go down as just another rant, so as to end it with a more PC tone I will force myself to understatement: the attackers (he says with teeth gritted) against the glorious City of San Francisco are ... not … very…nice … people.
1Before the "Jockey Shorts Dance Contest" started, I was a go-go dancer in the infamous End Up's cage. I lasted more than three months. I was popular … as well as hungry. 2 I always seem to be close to crimes in The City: I was very near the Pink Saturday homicide (and I was in a Castro bar during the White Night Riots), so I was able to ask police about it: it was gang-related and had nothing to do with the gay community or the Pink Saturday Party. The Christian Right, however, omits this fact, hoping that their profile of gays as violent will be proved correct. 3FYI: Harry Hay did not intend to replace Judeo-Christian principles with his own ideologies. Furthermore, gay politics has never been as powerful as the video might leave you to believe. Gays have always been creative in their vociferousness, leading most to believe that they have enormous amounts of power. 4 Police also shouted "sieg heil!" and "bonzai!" When they herded us all onto the intersection of 18th and Castro they were astounded at the number of patrons in the bars - approx. 1500. When we started to shout "Go Home! Go Home!" the 50 policemen reasoned that the crowd was unsustainable and ... went home. One bartender at the Elephant Walk couldn't go home: after having scalding hot water poured over him, he was clubbed viciously enough to lay in a coma for over six months. 5 Interestingly enough, this is the same letter Maupin published in the San Francisco Chronicle, telling his own mother that he was homosexual.
Because "Rapture Kitty" became sooo popular, here are some "edited" images that I used for different article. Most of them were simply fun to put together, while some of them are a little bit edgier. Just click on the image and it will take you to the corresponding article. Have fun!!
Can a woman who belonged to no particular denomination, converted to Judaism, married 8 times, played Cleopatra on screen and off, and scandalized the world with her affairs be made a saint? Benedict XVI certainly wouldn't approve, but there are many people who would nominate her and pray to her image every day.
Elizabeth Taylor was beautiful to almost everyone: in her marriages she took a stance: you had to be a strong personality, and if you thought you had to compete, then you didn't stand a chance. She attracted both sexes. She learned early on that celebrity status could be used for fun and for compassion. She proved to be what she was most proud of: a survivor. She was vulnerable to physical illness but not to critics of her choice of lifestyle. She was passionate about the people who were her friends* - and she made friends everywhere. She became devoted to helping people with AIDS at a time when many people (e.g. Mike Huckabee) wanted to quarantine the entire gay community. Her compassion seemed eternal. She seemed eternal ... and the patron saint of survivors.
But, like Benedict XVI, people noticeably shunned her... or at least her persona.
My mother, only knowing of Elizabeth Taylor's affairs and husbands, (never seeing any of her movies and not knowing of her philanthropy) called her a "high-priced whore." Pulpits screamed about her affair with Richard Burton and synagogues whispered of her seemingly cavalier conversion to Judaism (she was raised in Christian Science). Yes, there were a lot of people through the years who hated the very image of Elizabeth Taylor. They failed to realize that their hatred was against a persona which they themselves had helped to create: every move, every role, every outfit, every love affair was magnified ten times by the excoriations of sacred cows. To them she was a dreaded feminist, screen goddess, home wrecker, libertine, and glamorous evil that pervaded Hollywood. The more they reviled her, the more alluring she became to the American public. She was simply her own person - a person she would not have been if she had followed the dictates of a crumbling Hollywood system and a group of self-righteous malcontents.
Some people would go to extravagant lengths to prove that St. Liz had an evil side: on JesusIsSaviour.com Elizabeth is aligned with the Satan because she once gave the "I love you" sign for the deaf and everyone knows that the inventor of the sign, Helen Keller, "was an occultist and Theosophist."
So Elizabeth Taylor will never be canonized a saint. Her image will not grace churches. Miracles will not be attributed to her. Schools will not be named after her. No one will celebrate her birthday or her feast day. People will not hawk her relics.
Elizabeth Taylor, however, is enshrined everywhere: in art (Andy Warhol's painting of her recently sold for $62 million), in film, in the annuls of charity, in history. She is also shrined in our hearts.
It will be difficult surviving without Elizabeth Taylor in our lives to tell us how to survive and help others to survive. It will be live without her presence emanating glamor and compassion. To whom can we turn to for advice on living? To whom can we turn to when we need a friend? Our friend, our mistress, our confidante is gone. Hopefully, she is still with us, observing and helping us in her own inimitable way.
Thank you, St. Liz, for everything you've done for us. Please look after us. Amen.
*She saved the life of actor Montgomery Clift: after a car crash, she saw that he was choking on something, reached into his mouth and pulled out the back teeth that were lodged in his throat. She then covered his head and yelled to the attendant paparazzi that if they didn't leave, she would personally see that they would never work in Hollywood again.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark Twain
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