Yum & Yuk

Thank god for love like this, for people like this: A Natural History of My Marriage by Jill McDonough

Just watched the wonderful documentary, We Were Here: "We Were Here documents the coming of what was called the “Gay Plague” in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic as well as the broad political and social upheavals it unleashed. It offers a cathartic validation for the generation that suffered through, and responded to, the onset of AIDS. It opens a window of understanding to those who have only the vaguest notions of what transpired in those years. It provides insight into what society could, and should, offer its citizens in the way of medical care, social services, and community support."

Image: source. The power of prayer...

On point: Why I Support Same Sex Marriage as a Civil Right, But Not as a Strategy to Achieve Structural Change

Terrible. A woman incarcerated for a crime she committed at 17, dies in prison, 44 years later: "Sharon Wiggins didn't want much: A walk down a city street, to sit in a car and listen to the rain, to have coffee with her sister, to wake up without someone observing her. These and other experiences that most people take for granted were out of Sharon's reach for the last 44 years. She had been a prisoner at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy since age 17. She always thought she would die in prison. And she did, Sunday, of a heart attack at age 62."

"Progressivism is a spectrum; it’s not an ideology following one leader saying one thing. It’s many people who have very wildly diverging opinions about many things. But, as progressives, if we could commit to a general frame of reference that we are about improving the quality of life for a lot more people, we’re about helping working and middle-class people, and we’re about taking care of poor people, we could really make some inroads in political power in this country. But, if we choose to be purists, if we choose to be arguing for a consensus we will never reach, for agreement on every point, it’s never going to happen." - Urvashi Vaid