fulltimestudent

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Posts by fulltimestudent

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  19

  And China's version of the Nobel prize goes to ... Robert Mugabe! WTF?!

  by LoveUniHateExams in

  1. social
  2. current

  according to the guardian, the confucius peace prize has been awarded this year to one robert gabriel mugabe.

  yes, you read that right.

  i suppose i could've put this thread in either the entertainment section or joke section instead.

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  fulltimestudent

  This is a half truth. Yes, that award was made to Mugabe, but not by the Chinese government.

  This is what the Diplomat magazine ( a western publication) had to say about it:

  The Confucius Peace Prize was set up in 2010, after Liu received his Nobel Peace Prize. It was established by a private association of Chinese citizens based in Hong Kong, known as the Association of Chinese Indigenous Arts in the People’s Republic of China. Liu Zhiqin, a prominent businessman who originated the proposal to set up a uniquely Chinese prize, said at the time: “We should not compete, we should not confront the Nobel Prize, but we should try to set up another standard.”
  Part of the misunderstanding that the Confucius Peace Prize was endowed and supported by the Chinese government had to do with the Hong Kong group’s assertions that it was working with the Chinese Ministry of Culture (which the ministry has since vehemently denied). Additionally, China’s soft-power spreading Confucius Institutes had been founded in the mid-2000s and were still spreading globally, suggesting to some that the Confucius Peace Prize was a similar push for Chinese values and soft-power.
  Since its inception, the Confucius Peace Prize has been awarded roughly around the same time as the Nobel Peace Prize. Before Mugabe, Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Fidel Castro of Cuba have been recipients. Additionally, former KMT secretary-general Lien Chan of Taiwan won the inaugural edition of the prize, a development the Taiwanese government found “amusing.”
  Differences in values certainly exist between China and the West, but it’s important to understand that the government of the People’s Republic of China hasn’t quite responded to perceived Western affronts with the sort of pettiness that the Confucian Peace Prize represents. So remember, while it is outrageous that Robert Mugabe would win anything called a “Peace Prize,” it’s been given to him by a private group of Chinese citizens based in Hong Kong with no affiliation with the Chinese government.

  So if the Diplomat report is correct, the award is made by a private group of Chinese citizens in Hongkong,.and NOT by the Chinese government in Beijing.

  Its certainly true that the Chinese government maintains a relationship with Zimbabwe. The Chinese government refuses to be judgmental and play the sort of games that the US government plays, applying sanctions and excluding nations that they perceive as "enemy." For example, Iraq was demonised, but Saudi Arabia, which some may judge as worse than Iraq ever was, is allowed to be paart of the USA's club.

  Reference: http://thediplomat.com/2015/10/no-china-did-not-just-give-a-peace-prize-to-mugabe/
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  5

  Asians are not necessarily governed by western concepts

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  by coincidence (considering my posts on gay partner vows in a japanese buddhist temple) this shiseido tv advertisement showed up today.

  see if you can guess the point before the ad reveals it?.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3db6pmq-8.

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  fulltimestudent

  Neither did I, though I should've guessed.

  I was invited once to a party hosted by my gayxjw friend, and during the night, some femme Filipino guys showed how they make up and dress for a drag act that were doing at the time in a pub.

  With really skilled guys its hard to tell.
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  5

  Asians are not necessarily governed by western concepts

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  by coincidence (considering my posts on gay partner vows in a japanese buddhist temple) this shiseido tv advertisement showed up today.

  see if you can guess the point before the ad reveals it?.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3db6pmq-8.

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  fulltimestudent

  By coincidence (considering my posts on gay partner vows in a Japanese Buddhist temple) this Shiseido TV advertisement showed up today. See if you can guess the point before the ad reveals it?

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3Db6pMQ-8
  
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  4

  Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  buddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.

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  huffpost japan.

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  fulltimestudent

  In August 1549, the first three Catholic missionaries arrived in Japan. In the next 10 months, it is claimed, 150 Japanese accepted Catholic Christianity and were baptised. Missionary Francis Xavier wrote back to the church in Goa (India) that the Japanese were the most likely people in Asia to accept Christianity.

  But, writes Tsuneo Watanabe, in an essay entitled, "Jesuit Missionaries Against the Sin of Sodom:"

  "One thing, however, made the missionaries angry, (and Tsuneo quotes from various Jesuit correspondence), " The first evil we see among them is indulgence in the sins of the flesh ... The gravest of their sins is the most depraved of carnal desires, so that we many not name it.
  The young men and their partners, not thinking it serious, do not hide it. They even honour each other for it and speak openly of it."

  That "sin" that cant be named, is of course, the sin of sodom. Which is a sad commentary on the Bible scholarship of the Catholic missionaries, for the sin of Sodom defined at Ezekiel 16:49 is:

  Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. (NIV)
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  4

  Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  buddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.

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  huffpost japan.

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  fulltimestudent

  It's interesting that Catholic missionaries enjoyed a lot of success at first, but in the end they were all massacred.

  Two reasons can be isolated for the country turning against the Christian church so that even today, (even after the American occupation of Japan), there are only 1%-2% of the population that are Christian.

  What are the two reasons? Arrogance informs both reasons. The first is the missionaries arrogant attitude to Buddhism and the second is their arrogant attitude about same sex relationships.
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  4

  Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  buddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.

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  huffpost japan.

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  fulltimestudent

  The final section of the report (not cited above) gives some background to same sex relationships in Japan.

  Quote:

  ""The (Catholic) missionary Luís Fróis recorded that in the Warring States period, daimyo [lords] had sexual relationships with their pages. Same-sex love is depicted in the shunga [erotic] art of the Edo period, and was accepted," Kawakami said.
  "This changed during [the Meiji period]. During the ‘Leave Asia, Join Europe’ phase, the definition of a 'civilized country' as a Protestant-based Western nation was blindly imported, and it came to be thought that gay love was a sin. If we look carefully at history, we can see that pre-Meiji Japan was 'gay friendly,'" he added."
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  4

  Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  buddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.

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  huffpost japan.

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  fulltimestudent

  So what's his story:

  
  

  Same-sex couples from around the world come to Kyoto to marry at Shunkoin temple

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  The Huffington Post (Japan) continues his story:

  (Note: I've highlighted the first sentence because that's the crux of the problem. So many Christians really have no concept of human rights.)

  "We mustn't act as if it's all right to cast the LGBT community aside because they're a minority group," says priest at Japan's Shunkoin temple.

  Same-sex marriages are not legal in Japan. However, there is a Japanese Buddhist templewhere lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and members of other sexual minority groups can wed: the Shunkoin temple in Hanazono, Kyoto. Same-sex couples from around the world visit the temple.

  How did the Shunkoin temple start holding LGBT wedding ceremonies? HuffPost Japan posed the question to the Rev. Taka Zenryu Kawakami, deputy head priest at Shunkoin.

  The priest admits he was prejudiced against the LGBT community when he was younger. "I am not gay myself, and there were no LGBT people around me when I was growing up. The old me was prejudiced against sexual minorities," he said.

  Kawakami was born into a family that has produced Shunkoin chief priests for generations. After graduating from the Hanazono School (which is affiliated with Rinzai Buddhism's Myoshinji temple), he studied English at Rice University in Texas, and then enrolled at Arizona State University.

  "One day I was having tea with a friend, and a person walked past who you could tell at a glance was gay. I made a discriminatory comment. My friend replied, 'I'm gay, too. Is that the way you feel about me, Taka?’” Kawakami recounted.

  “When he said that, I remembered being discriminated against as an Asian person when I traveled in the South," he said. "Especially because I had been the victim of prejudice myself, I felt terrible shame, and I completely changed my position. As I changed, my friends began to open up to me about the fact that they were gay or lesbian."

  Kawakami majored in religious studies and psychology at Arizona State, and lived in the U.S. for approximately eight years. In 2004, he returned to Japan to start his ascetic training at the Zuiganji temple in Miyagi prefecture, since having experience as a priest would help prepare him for graduate school.

  In 2006, Kawakami finished his training and returned to Shunkoin, where he had the opportunity to give an American acquaintance zazen meditation classes in English. Word got out about the classes, and tourists started calling. In 2007, Kawakami officially became deputy head priest at Shunkoin, and started offering meditation classes to more and more English speakers.

  The first person to ask about same-sex wedding ceremonies was a woman from Spain who had visited Shunkoin many times to learn about zazen meditation.

  "'Can you hold wedding ceremonies here?' she asked me," Kawakami recalled. "I told her, ‘Yes, we can.' Then she said, 'I have one more question. My partner is a woman.' And I responded, 'That's fine.'"

  Kawakami looked over the sacred texts of Mahayana Buddhism, and confirmed that such a wedding would not contradict scripture. He expected to be criticized for holding the ceremony, but was also sure that his willingness to hold same-sex wedding ceremonies at the temple would support the LGBT cause by paving the way for more acceptance in Japanese society.

  "The reasons why LGBT people are not accepted are different in the West than in Japan," Kawakami said. "In Japan, there is no religious pressure from groups like Christian conservatives. So you don’t see the same sort of strong opposition as in the West. On the other hand, in Japan, there is an underlying pressure to conform, a sense of ‘We are all the same; we are all heterosexual’ -- and that makes it hard to live as an LGBT person."

  "I thought that if places such as my temple could show that we actively accept same-sex marriage, it would draw more attention to the problem," he added.

  In 2010, the Spanish couple held a public wedding ceremony.

  In the spring of 2014, Shunkoin partnered with Hotel Granvia Kyoto to offer Buddhist wedding package tours for LGBT couples. Five couples signed up that year. So far in 2015, eight couples have come to pledge their love, Kawakami said. Six of the couples were from abroad, and two of the couples were Japanese -- two men, and two women.

  "A lot of the couples are women. This was the first year we had a couple where both individuals were Japanese, which made me happy. I hope we get even more couples like them in the future," Kawakami said.

  Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shunkoin-temple-gay-marriage_56290990e4b0aac0b8fbeb01
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  4

  Gay Marriage - A Japanese Buddhist shows some Christians the right way

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  buddhist priest invites same-sex couples to marry at his temple.

  .

  huffpost japan.

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  fulltimestudent

  Buddhist Priest Invites Same-Sex Couples To Marry At His Temple

  
  

  HuffPost Japan

  
  
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  51

  Another anti-gay Republican Senator (in the USA) caught advertising his body

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  link.

  why do the republicans seem to have a monopoly on this behaviour?.

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  fulltimestudent

  neverendingjourney : The news story in the OP is several years old.

  Yeah, you're right!

  I saw the recent date on the link, and thought it a new story.

  My apologies, for not doing a full check on the story.

  And, interestingly, some of the other mentions on the internet say that the gentlemen in question has since 'come out' as gay.

  Anyway, its been interesting to see how homophobic reactions are shaped and preserved.
• 
  51

  Another anti-gay Republican Senator (in the USA) caught advertising his body

  by fulltimestudent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  link.

  why do the republicans seem to have a monopoly on this behaviour?.

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  fulltimestudent

  Smile!

  I can understand your feelings krejames when you posted:

  OMG you're one of THOSE. And what exactly is the "gay lifestyle"? Does that mean that when my TV channel broadcasts shows like Holiday Reps (shows with lots of young drunk, vomitting, naked, straight people who have sex in the street and in nightclubs while throwing up over each other in various European holiday resorts) that they are forcing the heterosexual lifestyle in my face? Please stop with the hypocrisy or take your homophobia somewhere where it's appreciated. Rant over.

  But try to understand what Actigall UR means when he says:

  I don't hate gays for who they are but I hate having their lifestyle forced in my face. I believe this sentiment reflects most who oppose gay marriage and the like.

  There's been a lot of research on these attitudes, some of which I've posted before.

  We may assume that he means that he gets upset, when he sees two men walking hand in hand, or hugging or kissing. Why? The research indicates that heterosexual men do not generally get upset over such things, but men who are attracted to the same sex, but have deeply buried their feelings for men and persuaded themselves that those feelings are a sin or so do get upset. In other words they suffer from an internalised homophobia. My gayxjw friend (whom I guess I defend here) was once confronted with a ranting street preacher, going on and on about the sin of Sodom (which he did not understand at all). My friend turned to him and said, "Oh! I see the gay fairy kissed you too."

  The guy went into meltdown.

  So when you see someone like Actigall UR, you can feel sympathetic. He's having a difficult time dealing with his innermost, deeply buried feelings. If he sees two blokes kissing, he's ripped apart inside. He needs sympathy, not confrontation, as difficult as that may be in the circumstance of centuries of Christian hatred expressed toward gay people.

  I think you'll understand