THE ACORN, January 2010 Cover – Gypsies

Ink on paper, halftone wash.

This piece was actually created back in January of 2007, but the editor of THE AESTEL (the SCA’s kingdom of AEthelmearc) found it to be “too racy.” I really never understood why, but just submitted something else and shelved this one. Now, here we are, three years later, with a different kingdom and a different editor (being on my second cover for THE ACORN) and I thought, “Why not?”

The design was created with the intent of being a wrap-around front-and-back cover. By looking at where the masthead ends, it’s easier to imagine where the front half would end.

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

2010-01 ACORN Cover: German Clock-watch, 1590

Ink on paper

This was my first piece for the SCA’s Kingdom of Atlantia. While I had been creating a cover a month since November of of 2007 for one of their sub-groups, the Barony of Hawkwood (Asheville, NC), this was the first one I’d done for Atlantia as a Kingdom. It was a brain twister.

While many of the SCA’s kingdoms have converted to a full 8 ‘/2″ x11″ “Magazine format,” Atlantia is still following the older half-sheet format, gray-scale only. I had to revert to the format I used to use for the covers I was creating before the AEstel went to full-sheet, and before I found Hawkwood’s TALON, with it’s glorious full-color digital format. Yeah, I’d been spoiled, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten how to create a good black-and-white piece. After all, for years, all of the publications I was working for were all black-and-white all the time. I cut my teeth on pen-and-ink line work for not-for-profit ‘zines that couldn’t afford to pay me.

This was for December. My full-color cover for the TALON was “Charity.” I didn’t want to repeat myself, so I went for something more mechanical, that would translate well to ink: a study of a truly remarkable early “clock watch,” made in brass. It’s from Germany, estimated as dating to about 1590. (December, the New Year, a changing of the guard, my first cover for the ACORN, Vlad’s first issue as kingdom chronicler, interpret as you will…) I much as I admire the technology (tiny precise wheels and gears!) what I really loved, artistically, were all of those shadows and fiddly-bits.

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

Love your gay brother

Review by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore,
UTNE Reader, November/ December 2009

Ties That Bind exposes homophobia as a practice rooted in family structures, from abuse of children to exclusion of adults. This pattern extends to the cherished liberal value of “tolerating” queers as if they were wasps at a family picnic. Author Sarah Schulman boldly declares that visibility is a failed strategy for cultural change. Gay people are more visible than ever, but “the hatred and overt campaigns against us, ranging from commodification to constitutional amendments to dehumanizingly false representations in popular culture, have intensified and become more deliberate.” Schulman’s solution is third-party intervention. If your parents direct you not to bring your lover to a family reunion, it’s time for your sister to demand that your lover be included. If commercial publishers refuse to print lesbian work, straight best-selling authors should protest. Ties That Bind argues that this type of allegiance is far more important than gay access to problematic institutions like marriage. Unfortunately, the gay establishment has abandoned challenges to structural homophobia in favor of the fight for gay marriage, a shift Schulman calls “a sign of spiritual exhaustion . . . the white flag of surrender” to the status quo.

Author Sarah Shulman was also named one of Utne Reader’s 2009 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.

Mirrored from The Church of the Ancient Paths.

11/5/2009 4:04:38 PM

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Before the identity of the shooter at Fort Hood was revealed, press reports were already talking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the stresses of an army fighting two wars.

What about the journalists who cover those wars? Over at In These Times, Kari Lyderson reports on a conference organized by the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies:

CNN and former Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Moni Basu described the effects of a career including seven stints in Iraq and covering executions by electric chair in Florida.

“You’re watching a man take 18 minutes to die…and then you’re supposed to just go file your story and move on,” she said.

…CNN cameraman Mark Biello was suffering nightmares and other signs of PTSD, that boiled over in a road rage incident where he accosted a cab driver.

“Every time you see things your cup gets fuller, and there’s only so long before it overflows,” he said.

…Reporters say it is harder than ever to persuade employers to make resources or even time available to address job-related mental health. But the need is greater than ever, as staff-cutting and belt-tightening often means heavier workloads that only add to stress. The issue is even harder to address for freelancers, who often don’t have health insurance or one steady employer.

Source: In These Times

Image by Kyle May, licensed under Creative Commons .

Mirrored from The Church of the Ancient Paths.

Deep brain stimulation, already established as a treatment for stubborn Parkinson’s disease, may also be useful as a therapy for drug-resistant clinical depression.

</p>

Probing into Depression
Research Blogging by Dave Munger, November 11, 2009

What would it take for you to allow a surgeon to probe deep into your brain to implant permanent electrodes that would administer behavior-altering electric shocks? Anyone undergoing brain surgery risks stroke and possibly death, and even if the surgery is successful there is the potential for infection, which would require even more surgery with all its attendant risks.

Tens of thousands already have electrostimulation devices implanted in their brains, and millions more may join them if the technique, called “deep brain stimulation” (DBS), gains wider acceptance. DBS was originally developed as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, and it has been remarkably effective. The primary symptom of Parkinson’s is uncontrollable body tremors that can make it nearly impossible to perform basic daily functions like eating and drinking, writing, and even walking. An acquaintance of mine who has Parkinson’s opted for the DBS procedure and now functions perfectly normally—it’s impossible for the casual observer to notice anything unusual about how he moves. He went from being nearly incapacitated to being renewed as a healthy, fully functional person. Perhaps it’s no wonder that he was willing to submit to such an invasive procedure.

In DBS therapy, one or more electrodes the size of a spaghetti strand are precisely positioned in the patient’s brain, then connected by wire around the skull and through the neck to a pacemaker-like device, a neurostimulator, just below the collarbone. The neurostimulator is activated and deactivated by a magnet that the patient carries, so if a tremor is beginning to become disruptive, DBS can be self-administered in an instant, with near-instantaneous results. A video provided by the manufacturer of a DBS device shows how it works in ideal cases.

Now new uses for the treatment are being tested. One observed side effect of DBS for Parkinson’s is excessive happiness, to the point of uncontrollable elation—the sort of unhealthy, personality-changing reaction that everyone fears when they think of electrodes being implanted in their brain. Tuning the device can minimize this side effect, but its very existence suggests that DBS might be a useful therapy for clinical depression.

The problem has been that, while researchers understand how DBS prevents tremors, they don’t really know why it might work as an antidepressant. That, too, is beginning to change. The pseudonymous UK-based neuroscientist Neuroskeptic points to a study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry in October. “Depression” was induced in rats by forcing them to swim in a cylinder of water from which they couldn’t escape. The amount of time the rats spent immobile, not trying to swim, is seen as a measure of depression. DBS was applied, and, as expected, the rats spent more time swimming and less time contemplating the futility of their situation. What was interesting about the study is that rats swam more even when the brain cells in the area where DBS was applied had been killed. The only way the researchers managed to block the effects of DBS was to deplete the rats’ brains of serotonin. Not coincidentally, many antidepressants work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain.

“Joseph j7uy5” is the pseudonym of a psychiatrist at a US community hospital, who notes that DBS has been tested on a small scale for clinically depressed patients who are resistant to drug treatments. The success rates have been remarkable: Up to 60 percent of patients indicate a positive response, with 35 percent in remission after a full year. Joseph calls these results “astonishingly good”—remember, these are people who are apparently resistant to standard drug-based forms of treatment.

One huge benefit of DBS compared to other types of brain surgery is that it is fully reversible. The electrodes can simply be turned off or even removed if they don’t work or have adverse side effects. But still, the idea of brain surgery is a frightening prospect. Walter van den Broek is a Dutch psychiatrist specializing in treating depression, and two weeks ago he pointed to a new brain stimulation technique that doesn’t require invasive surgery. Instead of implanting electrodes deep in the brain, they are placed just inside the skull—a much safer procedure than full-on brain surgery. Three of five patients responded to the treatment—a similar success rate to the more-invasive DBS.

So if deep brain stimulation isn’t necessary to treat depression, is it possible that even less-invasive procedures might work? Another therapy that is garnering attention is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TCM), which uses an electromagnet to temporarily activate or deactivate regions of the brain without any direct contact. In 2008, the FDA approved the procedure for treatment-resistant depression.

But the pseudonymous blogger at the Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry blog is skeptical, pointing out that the study purporting to show TCM’s effectiveness may have been flawed. A large number of the study participants were excluded from the analysis and results, and there were key differences between the sham TCM and real TCM procedures that may mean the study didn’t have true placebo control.

Nonetheless, the tremendous success DBS has shown as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease and its early promise against treatment-resistant depression suggests that we’ll be hearing much more about electrostimulation of the brain in the future. As scientists learn more about these treatments, look for discussion and analysis of the results on ResearchBlogging.org.

Dave Munger

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

Forwarded to the Church for the benefit of the local community in the Rochester, NY Area:

Date: 2009-11-05, 12:59PM

Hello, I would like to start a support group for individuals that are dealing specifically with Borderline Personality Disorder or Depression. I would be interested in meeting at least once a week or more depending on what is needed or desired by other group members. At the moment, I am interested in this type of group and I am feeling out if there is anyone else out there that would like to give it a try. If interested, please respond and I will tell you more about myself and find out how we can make this work for anyone invovled. Thank you.

• Location: Unknown
• it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Original URL: http://rochester.craigslist.org/grp/1452740337.html

Mirrored from The Church of the Ancient Paths.

Listed among The Utne Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing your World,” and one of the most brilliant voices currently sounding the call for change to copyright law, is Cory Doctrow. If the following lives up to the caliber of his previous work, it’ll be worth a watch.

The latest episode of the Utnecast is live. It’s my interview with science fiction writer, blogger, activist, and Utne visionary Cory Doctorow. Doctorow talks about his penchant for giving digital editions of his books away and his passionate critique of any person or entity that attempts to quash creativity with copyright laws.</p>

Listen to the interview at the Utnecast blog or subscribe to the Utnecast at iTunes. Enjoy!

Image by Paula Mariel Salischiker, licensed under Creative Commons.

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

The quote that begins this chapter sounds very much like the way I explained the feelings of being suicidal. An unknown voice is quoted with the following: “I feel like I am in a grave and someone is continually throwing dirt in to cover me – there is a small bit of light, but I am smothering.”

(For the rest of this week’s chapter in “the Depression Workgroup,” please click here)

Mirrored from The Church of the Ancient Paths.

From “Apophenia: making connections where none previously existed” by Danah Boyd, October 19, 2009

I am deeply grateful for all that was accomplished by second wave feminism. I love living in a world in which my job opportunities are not constrained because of what’s between my legs. That said, I also struggle with the externalities of the accomplishments in the 1970s. This week, I found myself thinking about the role of teaching and nursing in society and the relationship between feminism and those professions.

When my mother was entering the professional world, there were pretty much three options for women: teacher, nurse, secretary. Many women did not work and those who did were highly motivated, passionate, and underpaid. When barriers were eradicated, women left these professions to seek jobs in other fields that were better respected. Nurses were often just as knowledgeable about medicine as doctors and yet doctors were more greatly valued. Not surprisingly, as the years went b, many women who wanted to enter medicine chose to become doctors instead of nurses because the professional rewards were so much greater. When the sex barriers collapsed, women sought out “men’s jobs” because they were higher paying, higher prestige, and more flexible.
Since the 1970s, the number of brilliant, motivated individuals working as teachers and nurses in particular declined rapidly. Many women left these professions because they had many more opportunities and many men refused to do “women’s work.” Don’t get me wrong – there are some amazing teachers and nurses out there, but sexist constraint meant that the most brilliant, most passionate women inevitably went to these professions while that is no longer the case.
The problem is what has happened since then. I certainly don’t want to go back to the dark ages where women had no choice. But while we’ve opened up doors for women, we haven’t addressed how sexism framed nursing and teaching in ways that are causing us tremendous headaches in society today. Teachers are underpaid and undervalued because we took women’s work for granted. When teaching stopped being women’s work, we didn’t rework our thinking about teaching. As a society, we still have little respect for teachers and nurses and we pay them abysmally. This is deeply rooted in the sexism of the past but the ripple effects today are costly.

Let me addressing education specifically for a moment. Rather than addressing the issue head-on and finding market solutions that value teachers, we have created a cultural expectation of altruistic teachers. We run long NYTimes stories on individuals who grew miserable in their first career and came to teaching to make a difference. In fact, good teachers are almost always discussed as saints who gave up everything for the good of the students. While those individuals should be commended, shouldn’t this also be discussed as market failure? For each brilliant, highly motivated teacher out there, how many are there who aren’t particularly qualified or good at their job? And, more importantly, what are the costs of not incentivizing potentially amazing teachers to enter the profession by any means other than guilt?

I get uncomfortable thinking about the societal consequences of second wave feminism, especially since I’ve personally benefited from it so much. I don’t blame the feminists or the women who pushed forward to make change. But I do blame society as a whole for not taking stock of what was implicitly devalued and making strides to rework things. Even when nursing and teaching were “women’s work,” they were challenging professions that contributed greatly to society. I’m glad that women are not limited to just those jobs today, but it’s not because those jobs are worthless. We desperately need them and we need to rework our value systems to actually value such jobs. While women have made tremendous strides in the last 30 years, society has not done nearly as good of a job reworking how it thinks of historically women’s work.

About the Author:

My name is Danah Boyd and I’m a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. I received my PhD from the School of Information at UC-Berkeley. I live in Boston, MA.

Category: gender & sexuality

Tags: feminism work

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

A few weeks ago, during one of my usual “Sundays with Auntie,” Adrian and I shared a Lakota pipe ceremony with a Lakota shaman. Weeks later (recently), he had a vision for me, and called the owner of the site where we had held the previous ceremony in an attempt to get a hold of me. I was given the message. It included my Lakota name, among other things.

I’m told that, normally, it takes a roughly 2 ½ hour long ceremony to get a Lakota name, so being gifted with one without even needing to ask was something I treated with respect.

The Shaman said that he had a vision, and he had to tell me the name he saw for me was was given “Rabbit Chases Fawn.”

This made no sense at the time, but I went with it, I thanked Great Spirit for thinking of me, and for this gift. I am called by many names, and I will count this as my Native American Name.

Afterward, I asked about this, as it seemed a little unusual. I had not previously felt any undue connection to either animal, apart from having rabbits as pets and finding fawns to be one of the most beautiful creatures on earth… but that’s not unusual. Fawns and rabbits are both appealing little animals.  hallmark  sells lots of cards,  stationary, and calendars with pictures of the little guys on them.  They’re cute.

I was told to research the Lakota meanings of each animal, as this might help shed light on the situation. Once I got home, I did just that. I found plenty of references to deer, but CrystaLinks was the first one that covered deer and rabbits.

Deer (closest thing to fawn): gentleness, caring and kindness

Deer blend very well with their environment but are very sensitive to every sound or movement. Often twins, even triplets, are born in the spring. Does and bucks live in separate groups until the mating season. The white-tailed deer are moderately gregarious, and family members forage food together along with other family groups, giving the appearance of a large herd. People with Deer Medicine are often described as being swift and alert. They are intuitive, often appearing to have well developed, even extrasensory perceptions. Sometimes their thoughts seem to race ahead, and they appear not to be listening. Deer’s medicine includes gentleness in word, thought and touch, ability to listen, grace and appreciation for the beauty of balance, understanding of what’s necessary for survival, power of gratitude and giving, ability to sacrifice for the higher good, connection to the woodland spirits, alternative paths to a goal. The gentleness of Deer is the heart-space of the Great Spirit which embodies His love for us all. Deer teaches us to find the gentleness of spirit that heals all wounds, to stop pushing to get others to change and to love and accept them as they are. The only true balance to power is love and compassion

Rabbit: fear, timidity, nervousness, humility

Rabbit’s medicine includes moving through fear, living by one’s own wits, receiving hidden teachings and intuitive messages, quick thinking, strengthening intuition, and paradox. Rabbit also represents humility, because he is quiet and soft and not self-asserting. Rabbit reminds us not to be afraid. Fearful thoughts reproduce (like rabbits) and bring the very thing we fear. Rabbit people are so afraid of tragedy, illness, and disaster, that they call those very fears to them to teach them lessons. If you see Rabbit or in any way feel attracted to him, it may be telling you to wait for the forces of the universe to start moving again, to stop worrying and to get rid of your fears. It always indicates a need to re-evaluate the process you are undergoing, to rid yourself of any negative feelings or barriers, and to be more humble.

If the above link does not work, please visit: http://www.crystalinks.com/totemanimals.html

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

Are Chimpanzees behind our skills of language?

For the first time, scientists have compared a vast network of human genes responsible for speech and language with an analogous network in chimpanzees. The findings help shed light on how we moved beyond hoots and grunts to develop vast vocabularies, syntax, and grammar.

The centerpiece of the study is FOXP2, a so-called transcription factor that turns other genes on and off. The gene rose to fame in 2001 when researchers showed that a mutant form of it caused an inherited speech and language problem in three generations of the “KE family” in England. The following year, researchers showed that normal FOXP2 differed by only two amino acids–the building blocks of proteins–between humans and chimpanzees. Analyzing more ancestral species, they further showed that the gene was highly conserved all the way up to chimps, suggesting that it played a prominent role in our unique ability to communicate complex thoughts.

More here.

Posted by Azra Raza at 05:29 AM, http://www.3quarksdaily.com/

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

by Jeff Severns Guntzel
11/10/2009 10:52:49 AM

Tags: Science and Technology, photography, Sites of Impact,

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Photographer and artist Stan Gaz had a boyhood obsession with meteorite craters. He calls them “footprints of the stars.” His photographs of these impact sites are collected in an enormous and stunning new book, Sites of Impact, which I reviewed in our November-December issue. In the book, Gaz describes a visit to a crater in Arizona:

When I got there, I could not believe that it was real. Formed by an enormous meteorite that was traveling so fast that when it hit the earth it created an explosion equivalent to twenty atom bombs and displaced eleven million tons of dirt, the space was massive. It had an emotional effect on me that was overwhelming. Standing on the edge of this crater was like standing inside a cathedral. I picked up some sand in my hand, and for the first time I could feel the shape of the earth. I knew right away I wanted to photograph it.

When Gaz started talking about photographing impact sites from the air, a friend suggested a remote-controlled camera mounted on a helicopter. But Gaz wanted his camera in his hands.

After taking pictures from the ground, I decided to rent a helicopter and take more pictures from the air. This marked my first time flying at high altitude with the doors off the plane. Hovering above the crater at 3,000 feet, with only a Volkswagen seat belt across my waist, I can honestly say I felt uneasy. As the pilot tipped the machine onto its side, he assured me that gravity and velocity would keep me from falling out … I felt like a tripod with wings.

Images courtesy of Stan Gaz.  Article reproduced for not-for-profit educational purposes only.

Read More From This Blog

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

Baghdad’s Underground Shelters Help Iraqi Women Escape Violence and Abuse

By Anna Badkhen, from Ms., Nov/ Dec

(Click here for the article)

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

For the day AFTER Veteran’s Day:  “Tommy,” written by Rudyard Kipling, and as true now as it was over 100 years ago when Kipling was allegedly inspired to write it by a letter from a British WWI Veteran.  The soldier’s real name might not have been Tommy Atkins, but, per Kipling, the feelings are real.

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

(Courtesy of THE PEN)

Dear Friends and Activists, 

This is the second one of our brand new direct fax actions on health 
care reform, the first of which generated tens of thousands of faxes 
to the White House. 

This one will add your signature (and any personal comments of your 
own) to a fax petition with the heading, “Pass Medicare For All Or 
Pass Nothing”, and send it to each of your individual members of 
Congress. 

Fax Action On Medicare for All: 
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1020.php

The fact is that from the moment early on that Max Baucus manipulated 
the hearings in his Senate committee to keep any spokesperson for 
single payer from even having a voice at the table, the entire 
congressional process has been rigged to keep any meaningful reform 
of our health care system from actually happening. The corporate 
medical interests whose business it is to gouge the American people 
have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to literally bribe members 
of Congress to look the other way, and to try to slam the door on any 
real reform. 

But we the American people still have a choice. We can, as the 
deceivers in Washington hope, remain silent and simply capitulate to 
the unconscionable. Or in the alternative, we can speak out, and 
declare that we will not be fooled, that we will not be deceived, 
that we will not accept outright fraud as the best we get from our 
representatives in Congress. And speak out we must if we expect a 
different result. 

Please go to the action page below now, read the actual text of the 
fax petition. We think you will find it candid and unequivocal. Then 
speak out and make your voice heard at this most critical of moments. 

Fax Action On Medicare for All: 
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1020.php

We are expecting the latest bulk batch of Single Payer Health Care 
caps to arrive within a couple days. So if you had already requested 
one in the last week or so, we’ll be getting that out to you as fast 
was we can, so you too can demonstrate your support for REAL health 
care reform. Or else you can get one from the return page after you 
submit the fax action page above. Or you can get one directly from 
the page below. 

Single Payer Health Care Caps: http://www.peaceteam.net/all_gifts.php

And here is the one click Facebook page for this same fax action. 

Single Payer Amendments Action: 
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1020

And the Twitter reply to send, to send this message to all your 
members of Congress that way, is 

@cxs #p1020 

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed 
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible. 

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at 
http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

"Charity" (The December 2009 cover of The TALON)

Every year, I try to keep the December TALON cover as something based around the medieval and Renaissance interpretations of the winter solstice. 2007 showed the Norse legend of Freya spinning the fates of mankind together on her “Yul” (or “wheel”). 2008 showed the English folktale of “Jack in the Green.” This year, I turned to a more universal theme: the wandering stranger, and the value of charity as taught by most of the world’s major faith paths. The quote, carved into the stone steps ad partially obscured by the snow, is from Hebrews 13:2, as it appears in the King James Version of the Christian Bible: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby have some entertained strangers unawares.”

The original is available for purchase. Please contact me portia@portiastluke.com if you are interested.

If you are interested in purchasing prints of this piece, please visit my page on Deviant Art’s Print shop.

Peace be with you,

~Portia St. Luke

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

My "Maiden Voyage" into ACORN covers, complete with a new masthead!

This one is sort of “two pieces in one.” First, it is the debut of the new masthead for the SCA’s Kingdom of Atlantia’s kingdom-wide publication, THE ACORN. Second, it’s the first cover for THE ACORN I’ll have created that’ll have Vlad’s name on it as Chronicler, and I would rather slit my own throat than embarrss my sword brother… well, embarrass, yes,but in a fun sily way. Not like this. Not for anything this big.

. It felt odd for me, since I came up through a publishing industry where for the first several years, all of my SCAdian Covers had to be black-and-white ink clearly visible when reproduced on a folded half-sheet of paper. While, at some point, Atlantia may move to a larger or a full-color format, I needed to return to my old pen-and-ink style, and the masthead needed to remain simple.

Heraldry is designed to be simple, as it needs to be recognizable across a field. Please understand that I do understand, to be completely correct by SCA Heraldic Standards, the individuals temporarily relinquish their personal heraldry for the appropriate royal heraldry. However, if this was the case, the heraldry would never change, and the populace would not get to enjoy the reflected personalities of the royalty as represented in the elements they chose to create their personal arms.

The drawing is based on a brass “clock-watch” built in Germany around 1590. Renaissance science (what the modern genre-punk movement is calling “clock-punk,”) fascinates me, and translates well to black-and-white.

“Vivat, Atlantia, from Vladimir, chronicler, and Portia, illustrator.” Words of welcome, words of joy, from the heart. May we bring the Atlantean People nothing but pride and satisfaction.

Mirrored from Portia St. Luke.

Did you know that in 29 states, it’s perfectly legal to fire someone for being gay? Or that in 38 states, it’s legal to fire someone for being transgender?

It’s hard enough to keep a job in today’s economy, yet millions of Americans can be denied a job or fired not for poor performance, but for simply being themselves. I hope you’ll join me in taking 2 minutes to write to Congress and help stop this injustice:

To take action on this issue please click here, or copy and paste the link below into your browser:

https://secure3.convio.net/hrc/site/Advocacy?s_oo=sPeKyVA-YpEpYZTRtSFxKA..&id=606

Mirrored from The Church of the Ancient Paths.