Outlawing this sport (cockfighting) will put a lot of people of out jobs and hurt the economy of all Louisiana. They don't think of the people that will be put out of work. The feed stores will lose about one-third of their sales, that is a lot of business. Grain the farmers grow to feed these birds will not be bought by the feed stores, hurting the farmers. Hotels, gas stations and restaurants these people patronize will no longer get this business. Towns these fights are held in have come to depend on the out-of-town people to help them survive. At times, there are a thousand people coming into these towns for four to five days to stay and spend money. Some people raise chickens to sell to others, taking away their livelihood. These chickens have to have medicine and be wormed each month; this will hurt the veterinarian.
When you think outlawing cockfighting will help, think of the people you know it will hurt. Then decide what is more important — people losing their jobs and livelihoods, towns losing business they need to help survive, making outlaws out of honest people, or giving in to these animal rights groups that will leave Louisiana when they get what they want, but your fellow Louisianans will still be here without the way of life we love and without the revenue the sport generates.
In a sportsman magazine, the Humane Society said cormorants should be left on the endangered list and not be punished for what they do naturally, which is eating fish. Why can't a game rooster do what he does naturally, which is fight?
Tony Pickard
Sarepta LA
And opinions like this are what makes our region so unique and special. According to Wikipedia, cockfighting is illegal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia with the singular exception of Louisiana.
As Unitarian Universalists and religious liberals, we will never run out of social justice work in my state. There's always something that needs fixing.
"But today, with increasingly decentralized Internet communication and the name recognition this brings, editorial control for Unitarian Universalism is now much wider than the UUA staff and a few independent (but low circulation) periodicals. The emerging 'how long' question is 'how long will it be before an outsider won't necessarily go to UUA.org first?'"Based on the search results on Google for Unitarian Universalism, this may already be happening.
"And you know what? I'm proud and happy to stand up with the angry, pissy, juvenile ones, too. I see them, and my heart just breaks. I know that when you hear someone say something like "The Holy Spirit rapes children," what you hear is a terrible thing being said about your faith. But what I hear (although to be fair, I haven't seen that particular video and am just going on your description of it) is someone who, I'm betting, had an appalling religious upbringing, one in which they were taught cruel, traumatic, bigoted, and flat-out untrue things, and told that to even question them would send them to be burned and tortured in Hell… and who's only now coming to realize just how fucked up that was, and just how full of rage they are about it. (Or if they didn't go through that themselves, they know and love someone who did.) You see the insult -- I see the anger, the frustration, the trauma, the feeling of helplessness. And while I wish those people would express their rage in a better way than namecalling and insults, and while I hope they can move on from that eventually, my heart goes out to them. I get that this is where they need to be right now, and I want to stand with them and tell them that they're not alone.This is very close to an article on my blog from March 2005 titled "Christian and Non-Christian Unitarian Universalists -- Anti-Oppression Implications."
Now, maybe that's not fair. Maybe it's not fair to be sympathetic with atheists who are angry about religion, and yet expect religious believers to get over their anger about atheists. But I feel the same way about women's anger towards men versus men's anger towards women; queer folks' anger towards straight people versus straight peoples' anger towards queers. The difference is in which group has the power. And in this case, it's not atheists."
"UU [Unitarian Universalist] Christians need to remember that they are walking in the door of a church wearing a garment of 'power and privilege' that was not freely accepted but rather forced on them by our wider North American culture. UU Christians joining a predominantly non-Christian UU congregation are (unknowingly?) engaging in anti-oppression work by giving up unearned power and privilege granted to them by the wider culture. This is the theological equivalent of an adult advisor working with youth where the advisor gives up some of the unearned privilege that comes with being an adult."Using this anti-oppression perspective allows us to understand why some Unitarian Universalists are strongly critical of Jesus, the Bible, and God but seem to be OK with non-Christian religious expression in their UU congregations.
I am writing to ask you to cosponsor the REAL Act (Responsible Education about Life Act -- S. 368).
This legislation, introduced by Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), would provide federal support for comprehensive sex education programs.
The United States has the highest rate of unintended teen pregnancies among all industrialized nations and American teens acquire an estimated 9.1 million sexually transmitted diseases a year. An average of two young people in the U.S. are infected with HIV every hour of every day.
Clearly, young people's health and lives are at risk, yet the federal government has spent over $1.4 billion over the past 10 years on abstinence-only programs that censor information about the health benefits of contraceptives and condoms.
Research indicates that teenagers who receive information about both abstinence and contraception are more likely to delay sexual activity and to have fewer partners and use condoms and contraception when they do become sexually active.
The most trusted medical and scientific institutions in our nation, such as the American Medical Association, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Public Health Association, all recommend comprehensive sex education as well.
For the past 10 years, the federal government has invested money into abstinence-only programs, which do not give teens the resources they need.
It's time for a change.
The REAL Act authorizes much-needed funding for programs that give teens the information and skills they need to make responsible decisions.
As a religious person who is active in my church and a parent of two teens, I'm outraged with our government's immoral and ineffective abstinence-only funding policies that fail to protect the health of young people. The abstinence-only programs are based in flawed ideology -- not reality -- and do harm our young people.
I urge you to become a cosponsor of the REAL Act.
I am outraged that young women across America are being denied safe and legal pharmaceutical products based on the ideological views of a few. Pharmacists have a responsibility to provide medications without judgment or fear.
The Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act (H.R. 1652 / S. 809) is designed to preserve the right to safe, legal, pharmaceuticals prescribed by a medical professional.
Decisions about whether to use safe and legal birth control should be made by a woman and her doctor, without restrictions by pharmacists.
98% of women use birth control at some point in their childbearing years and experts predict that access to emergency contraceptives alone could prevent as many as fifty percent of the 841,000 unplanned teen pregnancies every year.
However, because of barriers, only thirty seven percent of young women seeking contraceptive services ever receive them.
Young women are uniquely affected when a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription because, as they may have limited access to transportation and funds, they can't afford to track down a pharmacist who will.
These young women, who are making the responsible decision to access birth control methods, should not be faced with a hassle or a judgment at the pharmacy. Pharmacists have a right to their personal beliefs about dispensing birth control, but cannot be allowed to impose those beliefs on women.
As a father of a teen daughter who is attending college and as a religious churchgoing person, I'm outraged that my daughter's reproductive freedoms could be harmed through a pharmacist who refuses to perform his or her professional duties.
I urge you to support the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act and protect the right of responsible young women to receive safe, legally prescribed pharmaceuticals.
"We are Unitarian Universalists, and our salvation comes not in the rapture but, historically at least, in 'salvation by character.' We believe there is something wonderful inside us -- you could call it inherent dignity and worth -- that allows us to work toward good character, wholeness, healing, and all that is good. We have within us a little core of natural hope -- Thoreau's bug in the sixty year old table metaphor could work here [refers to reading] -- some little bit of hopeful life that lies waiting to spring into action. And even better, most UUs don't just sit for sixty years waiting, we act to realize that hope, that life, that wholeness. In spite of the difficulties in our own experience and of life in the larger world, we do what we can. Therein lies our Unitarian Universalist salvation."The early 1800s Universalist view was one of "salvation irrespective of character." That is best described using the words of Hosea Ballou in the address he gave to the 1851 Universalist General Convention in Boston (as recorded in his online biography page):
"In homely language, he summed up his belief in a God who, as a Father, loves all his children: 'Your child has fallen into the mire, and its body and its garments are defiled. You cleanse it, and array it in clean robes. The query is, Do you love your child because you have washed it? Or, Did you wash it because you loved it?"A recent summary of the origins of modern-day Unitarian Universalist soteriology (theology of salvation) can be found in "Unitarian Universalist Identity" curriculum for young adults by Katie Tweedie Erslev:
UU Soteriology: Raising the RoofSo ... I guess that many Unitarian Universalists would view Jesus, his teachings, and the example he set during his pre-Easter life on Earth as one example of creative love saving others.
"Once again, in contrast to the predominant foundation of the theology of Calvinism, our roof was raised by the 19th century Universalists. Universalism gave us a roof that saved us all. They said that what saves us is the power of creative love made viable to us in the person of Jesus.
Do we need to be saved from Hell? The Universalists said that we create heaven and hell on earth. We need to be saved from the Hells that we create."
It might seem very odd to look to a long-dead Russian anarchist for business advice. But Peter Kropotkin's big idea -- that there are important human motivations beyond what he called "reckless individualism" -- is very relevant these days. That's because one of the most interesting questions in business has become how much work people will do for free.Many will point out that Unitarian Universalist churches have operated as mostly volunteer-run operations with limited paid staff contributions. And many of our small lay-led fellowships are totally volunteer-run organizations. However, church volunteer may limit their cooperative sharing to internal congregational work and not result in forming cooperative sharing networks with other congregations.
Kropotkin was an aristocrat who, after being imprisoned for his insurrectionist activities, escaped and fled to England in 1876. He also drew the first good topographic maps of Siberia and wrote a memoir of his revolutionary days that has become a minor classic. More to the point, he proposed in his 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, that the survival of animal species and much of human progress depended on the tendency to help others.
That I even know of Kropotkin comes courtesy of the Wikipedia entry for the "gift economy," the current term of art for this altruistic approach. Wikipedia is, of course, a prime example of the gift economy at work. Argue about its inaccuracies all you want, but the volunteer-authored online encyclopedia is on its way to becoming (if it isn't already) the world's dominant reference resource.
Open-source, volunteer-created computer software like the Linux operating system and the Firefox Web browser have also established themselves as significant and lasting economic realities. That's not true yet in the worlds of science, news and entertainment: we're still figuring out what the role of volunteers will be, but that it will be much bigger than in the past seems obvious.
" ... the operational and governance structure of a church or Christian denomination. It also denotes the ministerial structure of the church and the authority relationships between churches. Polity is closely related to Ecclesiology, the study of doctrine and theology relating to church organization."And Wikipedia defines "congregational polity" as:
"Congregationalist polity dispenses with elders or bishops as a requirement of church structure. The local congregation rules itself, though local leaders and councils may be appointed.Two resources on congregational polity can be found on the UUA web site:
Members may be sent from the congregation to associations that are sometimes identified with the church bodies formed by Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and other non-congregational Protestants. The similarity is deceptive, however, because the congregationalist associations do not exercise control over their members (other than ending their membership in the association). Many congregationalist churches are complete independent on principle.
It is a principle of congregationalism that ministers do not govern congregations by themselves. They may preside over the congregation, but it is the congregation which exerts its authority in the end.
Congregational polity is sometimes called "baptist polity", as it is the characteristic polity of baptist churches."
“If Iron Maiden had attended Catholic school, this would be their garage band."
To: SWUUC BoardAnd you can sign the petition using this link. Thanks for your support.
Whereas the SWUUSI Youth camp has for many years been a popular and successful youth-governed program that convenes the same week as the SWUUSI intergenerational camp at a separate site on Lake Murray in Oklahoma,
Whereas Jennifer Nichols-Payne reported to district SWUUC that the SWUUSI Board agreed to change the Youth Camp to a different time and place (July 3-8 at Briarwood Retreat Center in North Texas) without involving the YRUU in that decision,
We, the undersigned, propose that SWUUSI youth camp take place at the same time and place as it has in past years for the summer of 2007. We further propose that a task force involving youth, parents, and advisors be formed to discuss the concerns articulated by Jennifer Nichols-Payne and that the task force make changes to address those concerns while maintaining the youth-centered character of the camp.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
.1) Strangers don't assume they can ask me what my genitals look like and how I have sex.While searching for this list online, I also learned a new bit of jargon. Instead of using the term "non-transgender," one can use the term "cisgender." According to Wikipedia:
2) My validity as a man/woman/human is not based upon how much surgery I've had or how well I "pass" as a non-Trans person.
3) When initiating sex with someone, I do not have to worry that they won't be able to deal with my parts or that having sex with me will cause my partner to question his or her own sexual orientation.
4) I am not excluded from events which are either explicitly or de facto* men-born-men or women-born-women only. (*basically anything involving nudity)
5) My politics are not questioned based on the choices I make with regard to my body.
6) I don't have to hear "so have you had THE surgery?" or "oh, so you're REALLY a [incorrect sex or gender]?" each time I come out to someone.
7) I am not expected to constantly defend my medical decisions.
8) Strangers do not ask me what my "real name" [birth name] is and then assume that they have a right to call me by that name.
9) People do not disrespect me by using incorrect pronouns even after they've been corrected.
10) I do not have to worry that someone wants to be my friend or have sex with me in order to prove his or her "hipness" or good politics.
11) I do not have to worry about whether I will be able to find a bathroom to use or whether I will be safe changing in a locker room.
12) When engaging in political action, I do not have to worry about the *gendered* repercussions of being arrested. (i.e. what will happen to me if the cops find out that my genitals do not match my gendered appearance? Will I end up in a cell with people of my own gender?)
13) I do not have to defend my right to be a part of "Queer" and gays and lesbians will not try to exclude me from OUR movement in order to gain political legitimacy for themselves.
14) My experience of gender (or gendered spaces) is not viewed as "baggage" by others of the gender in which I live.
15) I do not have to choose between either invisibility ("passing") or being consistently "othered" and/or tokenized based on my gender.
16) I am not told that my sexual orientation and gender identity are mutually exclusive.
17) When I go to the gym or a public pool, I can use the showers.
18) If I end up in the emergency room, I do not have to worry that my gender will keep me from receiving appropriate treatment nor will all of my medical issues be seen as a product of my gender. ("Your nose is running and your throat hurts? Must be due to the hormones!")
19) My health insurance provider (or public health system) does not specifically exclude me from receiving benefits or treatments available to others because of my gender.
20) When I express my internal identities in my daily life, I am not considered "mentally ill" by the medical establishment.
21) I am not required to undergo extensive psychological evaluation in order to receive basic medical care.
22) The medical establishment does not serve as a "gatekeeper" which disallows self-determination of what happens to my body.
23) People do not use me as a scapegoat for their own unresolved gender issues.
Dear Youth Advisor,
Thank you for your commitment to Unitarian Universalist youth. The Task Force of the Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth would like to better understand the vital roles and complex experiences of adults who work directly with youth. That's you!
Not only do we wish to learn from your expertise and feedback, but we also hope to better understand the diversity of adult involvement in the spiritual lives of youth across the Association. To do this, we ask you to complete this survey.
In these 20 to 30 minutes of questions, we ask you to reflect on support, training, vision for youth ministry, and the definition of youth empowerment as well as offer demographic information. We realize the limitations of survey data; however, we hope that open-ended questions create the space to communicate your unique and significant knowledge.
As a religious community, we can and must do a better job of supporting and sustaining you in your ministry to and with youth. In the spirit of youth ministry, we hope that this survey serves as a window into the lived experiences of youth advisors.
We will keep the link to this survey "live" from December 1, 2006, until February 28, 2007. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us by email or phone.
In faith,
Megan Dowdell
Co-convener
(508) 314-0783
mdowdell@uua.org
Jesse Jaeger
Youth Program Director
(617) 948-4359
jjaeger@uua.org
There are people who feel "excluded" by Christian symbolism and are offended by the manger and the angels and the Child, but there have always been humorless, legalistic people. Complaint is an American art form, and in our time it has been raised to an operatic level. To which one can only say: Get a life. When you go to France, you don't expect a stack of buckwheat pancakes for breakfast or Le Monde to print box scores. You're in France. Now you're in America. It's a Christian culture. Work with it.According to a 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) survey of religious identification, 76.5% of the US population (159 million Americans) identify themselves as Christian. Given this current majority, it's very easy for the Christian Triumphalist bully to tell us "It's a Christian culture. Work with it."