mywildefamily:

I don’t know what it is about me, but I have this empathetic quality that requires me to feel everything.  Well, coinciding with the 80/20 rule – 80 percent of everything.  I watch a documentary on Congo gorilla war – I can’t sleep for weeks.  I see a World Vision commercial?  I look into international adoption.  I get into a disagreement with anyone (be it a proprietor or my sister), I’ll get depressed for days.  I’ll be hugging my kid and something she does will make me laugh so hard that I start making that silent laugh where all you hear is the bubbling of saliva as air exits you lungs.  Then I’ll think of the sound my dad kept making as the fluid in his lungs bubbled up before he died, and my laughter will instantly turn into tearful sobbing, which I shamefully hide from my daughter.  I am emotional.  Well, actually I hope it’s emotion and not insanity (it’s a constant fear of mine that I’m actually insane and everyone knows it except me).  Is that wrong? 

I hear a lot about right from wrong when I go to my husband’s church on Sundays.  It’s Christian, so of course gay marriage is “wrong”.  To be honest, I just don’t get it.  I mean, I’ve known all of two gay men personally in my 33 years of life (that I know of) but it seems downright unnatural to me that I deem it as wrong.  I mean, how can I deem someone else’s choice as WRONG?  Am I God?  No.  Then I have no right to dictate the terms and conditions on life of Group X or Y or A through Z.  It isn’t like I don’t judge – I do – because I’m far from perfect.  But I reserve judgment for those that diminish others.  I can’t stand that.

Ultimately, let’s face it – isn’t it “wrong” to discriminate against people that just want to live; People that are just trying to be?  That thing that we’re ALL pursuing, that evasive thing called happiness?  They aren’t killing or raping or devastating – they’re just trying to live.  Isn’t it the worst form of blasphemy to the “Creator” to hate or discriminate-against at all?  Why don’t people get this?  THEY are US.  Last I heard, sexual orientation doesn’t expel you from the human race.

OMG, it just came to me.  Our civilization just won’t get it until we communicate with alien life.  Then, there can be someone else – US and THEM – someone to call “wrong” or “unnatural” or weird.  And maybe then we’ll all stick together like one kind – the human kind. 

Get with the program people.  Or just watch some Star Trek TNG so we can skip the century (or millennium) it’ll take to find someone else in this vast, dark expanse called a universe.  We are not alone.  We have each other.

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family (by divulgate)

A beautiful mind, Dagmara.  I consider Empathy as one of the least appreciated gifts that evolution has given us.  Humans have used it for centuries to guide our morals.  Abandon scripture, and allow your evolved empathy to guide you.  If it feels wrong, it is.

The Sagan Series takes all of the awesomeness of Carl Sagan and adds some pretty pictures to his voice.  I could listen to him all day.  Watch all 7.  There are 8 videos, but the last one is Apollo and we clearly never landed on the moon, so no need to watch that one.