In 2005 a 23 year old gay man was murdered in Arizona, and found in the Colorado River near Yuma. I lived in Arizona then, but I did not hear about it. I heard a lot about the Japanese woman who was murdered and found in Havasu Creek. But the boy who played girl was not in the news, not in the river grapevine. I just found out about him today, though an org called Equality Arizona. How they found me and my Oregon address I do not know. I guess I must have made my position known enough about my belief that people have every right to love who they love, and no right to say who someone else may love. It just strikes me as ironic and sad that I hear about this death now, near the end of 2008, from another state. I suppose I'm more tapped into the gay rights movement than I have been in the past. I'm certainly getting more willing to express my views.
( olds and news tidbits )

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/25/sean.bell.trial/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

I like what Al Sharpton had to say. To paraphrase, he said it wasn't a miscarriage of justice. Justice doesn't miscarry. This was an abortion of justice. Justice was aborted.

According to Msgr. Gianfranco Girotti in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Catholics now have some new instructions beyond avoiding the Seven Mortal Sins. A review for those of us not fully indoctrinated:

Seven Mortal Sins
pride
envy
gluttony
greed
lust
wrath
sloth

The new instructions are to avoid the Seven Modern Vices, which are based on violating the "basic rights of human nature". I didn't find an explanation of the rights, but here are the vices:
polluting
genetic engineering
being obscenely wealthy
taking drugs
abortion
pedophilia
causing social injustic

I'm going to begin here to collect ethical arguments pertaining to the issue of abortion in the US. These notes will be the backdrop of a paper that I will write later.
( notes )

I read today that Ron Paul said life begins at conception. If he really believes this then I have a bone to pick with him. Life is continuous. The egg is alive. The sperm is alive. It swims! Life is a flow from one being to another. Otherwise we would not be here. To abort a child at any stage is stopping a life. We stop lives all the time. I don't understand how the abortion issue is removed from the war issue. But I do see that sometimes the end of one life is beneficial to many other lives. I don't know about "right" and "wrong". We need to get past the whole question of abortion. Choosing to end a pregnancy is not "playing God", it is just what people do in order to manage families and civilizations. Certainly it is better to use a condom than to throw a live baby in a dumpster. Nobody would abort if they hadn't gotten pregnant in the first place. Let's focus on ways of managing our fertility rather than forcing people to raise unwanted children that they will then mistreat and turn into axe murderers. Please.

Here in the states our constitution guarantees us the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are considered to be god-given, which is the first of many problems I have with these so-called rights.
( philosophical ramblings on rights, god, abortion, suicide, etc )