Human Rights/Social Justice - Metropolitan Community Church

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Metropolitan Community Churches are on a bold mission to transform hearts, lives, and history...Just as Jesus did, we are called to: Do justice, show kindness, and live humbly with God. (Micah 6:8)... From MCC's Statement of Vision
Join us in our efforts to seek equality and justice...
Poverty
Learn more about theUnited Nations'goal to end Povertyaround the World byvisiting theirdedicated Millennium Goals webpage.

HIV/AIDS
Longtime activists inthe fight for a cure,MCC is dedicated tooffering support andcare for those livingwith HIV/AIDS. Visit our dedicated HIV/AIDS Social Transformation page.
Visit our dedicated HIV/AIDS ResourcePage.

Human Rights andSocial Justice
MCC is dedicated to continuing the fight for Same-Sex Marriage rights around the world. Visit our Marriage Equality webpage for resources and denominational statements, news, and action items. Learn how you can join the movement!
MCC has organized anonline communitycalled Living Fusion specifically to jointogether in organizing SocialAction in all areasof the World. To join us in thiseffort, pleaseclick here.
MCC partners withother organizationsto continue the fightfor Human Rights,Equality, and Justice.One of our partners isthe Human RightsCampaign, dedicatedto securing equalrights for the GLBTcommunities. Join usin working with themto effect change!

Madonna: Hate me or Love me!

"Madonna" on your cellphone

MP3 tones, ringtones, fun tones and wallpapers - write "Madonna" in the search

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She is probably one of the most controversial human beings which crossed our lives passing from the 20th to the the 21st century.

She is neither a president nor a pope, she doesn't posses neither the CNN nor the New York Times, so she doesn't have the power to drive people's thinking in a certain direction. She doesn't write articles and she doesn't have an entire cast of people writing her sentences.

She didn't create any computer or cellphone revolution like Microsoft, Apple or Nokia. She is on cellphones or on the I-pods but she is much more famous than them.


She didn't create a search engine which links to the entire world like Google, Yahoo or recently Jumptap on the cellphone but you don't need a computer to know where she is and what she does.

She's not a mass market product like Coca Cola or McDonald and you don't need to be thirsty or hungry to have her. Her music comes in your ears and you just don't stop moving and singing.

She is not young but her video clips always showed the last trends (remember the Vogue style which invaded New York in the 8o's as well as the Crankers and the Clawns in L.A. just now)

But when you say the name "Madonna" wherever you are in the world they know you don't mean "the mother of Christ". As a matter of fact there are only two names everybody in the world always remembers: the Pope and Madonna (the Christ and the anti-Christ .... up to you who is who).

Why is she so special and unique?


Because she started a social liberation and a sexual revolution with "Like a Vergin" and "Vogue" in a world which spent more time judging than building, destroying than having fun, killing than being compassianate and diplomatic.
After the 60's with the Vietnam and the 70's with the terror in Europe and the post-Watergate in the U.S., the 90's needed something new and motivational .... n-o-m-a-t-t-e-r-w-h-a-t.

She understood that diplomacy is a powerful machine not to be used with whom who doesn't use it, so she was never diplomatic.

She became a political machine in her late fourties. She is now the only person who can perform accusing the Pope himself in Italy in front of a totally crowded Olympic Stadium.

There are no colors to describe her because she's black or white, the only two colors she used in her first music videos. The outcome of it is that people has no average feelings for her.

Love and veneration on one side versus irritation and rage on the other side. Sometimes both in the same time.
She makes and made big mistakes that people forgave quite quickly, while many other people have very hard time to get an easy forgiveness.



The new Madonna is just the other face of a same coin, a "brand" called Madonna that everybody, even her enemies, sings and dances.

Face-to-face with the ex-Governor Jim McGreevy and his "Confessions"

" If you were gay": MP3 tone from the Broadway hit "Avenue Q'' on your cellphone.



click here








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"Do you mind if I call you James rather than Governor? I feel much better" I said.

"Sure. Actually call me Jim" he replied.

This way we started our short conversation in the auditorium of a major school in New York during a major event organized by the New York Times to introduce govern McGreevy's last book "The Confession".
This book talks about New Jersey's Governor McGreevy's coming out as a "gay American" in August 2004 in a press conference together with his "now ex-wife". During the press conference he resigned as Governor admitting he put an Israeli citizen, Golan Cipel whom he had a sexual relationship with, in his payroll.

Golan Cipel accused Jim McGreevey of sexual harassment blackmailing him as well.



My first reaction at that time was not so positive. I tried to put myself in Jim's wife shoes forced to attend a press conference very humiliating for her, but differently from many people I never thought Jim was a lier and had to resign.

Two years later I heard about Jim McGreevy's book "The Confession" and that he was going to be a guest at "Larry King live": I had to see this.

When Larry King asked him about his wife and why she had to be at the press conference, Jim simply replied that it was her decision because she is a "lady" and she had to be next to her husband.

That was the moment I started changing my opinion about Jim McGreevy and I tried to understand what a terrible life he had to pass through (47 years in the closet) and even when he decided to put Cipel on a payroll I now believe he did it because he was in love with him, totally lonely and that was the way to keep the only "real" part of his fake life with him in a moment in which nobody, except Cipel, knew anything about him being gay and he was extremely vulnerable.

Many straight and gay people said the worse things about him but he had also many sustainers and I'm now one of them. So, when I asked him I didn't want to call him "Governor", I did it because I needed to be closer to the man than to the writer, the politician, the cheater.

"So Jim, I have this question for you, are you ready?"

"Yes, I am" he said.

"When Larry King interviewed you, I was extremely touched when you said that gay people have no heritage when they are kids. It's so true.
Any straight kid is taught who he is, where he comes from and where he's going to and why he is right on everything . So he is spoiled to be right and it's a given. It's the 'imprinting' and no one can reply because that's it.
For gay kids it's different because the 'imprinting' of being who you will never be just doesn't work. We live in a society in which if you are gay they force you to lie when you are a kid, they want you to lie and they are very happy if you lie when you grow up, they want to hide you if you come out and, if you really are an open gay, they fight against you.
Whichever lie you said to protect yourself against all this pressure, you are forgiven straight away.
Said that, I strongly believe the only person you have to alopogize to about your extra-marriage affair is your wife and even in that case, you lied to survive, while the 99.9% of the cheaters and the divorced people they lied knowning they had a choice not to do that and that the society protect them no matter what. Actually some times straight ex-marriage affair are seen like: this is a real man!

So, my quetion is? Why the hell did you resign? You had the right to be there. You are smart, compassionate, honest, prepared and doing a good job."

"I think I did the best thing in my life" he said. "History books will all say that I resigned in disgrace.That misses the point entirely. Resigning was the single most important thing I have ever done. I'd rejected a political solution to my troubles and took the more painful route: penance and atonement, the way to grace."

"Jim, honesty, I still believe you are too apologetic and you still feel guilty, which doesn't surprise me because it's only 2 years you are out of the closet surrounded by your Irish catholic guilty shadows which ... don't help. You really had the opportunity to be a gay Governor until the end, you missed this opportunity and you know it will not so easy to have gay Governors in any State of the United States for a very long time. Bill Clinton didn't resign for his Lewinsky affair (right move) so why you?

Women and African Americans are still in line to be presidents .... so you lost a great opportunity".