20231218 Pope offers 2nd class status. Gay art. HIV vaccine news. Wrote book "Disable, Defeate and Demolish homophobic Christianity."
Artist does interesting speed videos showing how he draws his pictures.
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Reporting and defending the Gay community in Dallas is taking up a lot of time.
Dallas is a cesspool of homophobic Christianity and the attacks are endless and so is the collusion of our newspaper and leading institutions. I am struggling to keep this newsletter going, but I will.
Very interesting reporting on Gay life in Mexico.
Pope Francis offers Gays 2nd class status.
The status of homosexuality being a sin isn’t changed. Pope Francis and the Catholic Church is realizing that they are facing massive decline in membership due to homophobia and want to put some façade over their intrinsic homophobia.
To get the blessing you have to acknowledge being sinners. See the CNN article quotes below.
https://apnews.com/article/vatican-lgbtq-pope-bfa5b71fa79055626e362936e739d1d8
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/18/europe/pope-francis-same-sex-couples-blessing-intl/index.html
From the CNN article. Still against same-sex marriage.
The blessings may be carried out providing they are not part of regular Church rituals or liturgies, nor at the same time as a civil union, according to a Vatican document approved by the pope.
A later section.
“When people ask for a blessing, an exhaustive moral analysis should not be placed as a precondition for conferring it,” the declaration, authored by Cardinal Fernandez and another official, states. “The grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else.” [Boldface added.]
A later section of the article.
The Vatican’s latest ruling says that offering blessings to same-sex and unmarried couples can be done “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.” The Catholic Church’s teaching is that sex should only take place within marriage, and the ruling says that the church cannot offer a “liturgical blessing” to same-sex or unmarried couples because it could “offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.”
Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic Church are playing games.
There is one good thing about it. It will sow dissension in the Roman Catholic church so they will be less able to go after us. There are Catholics who pump up their feeling of holiness by being homophobic and against the modern world. There are church leaders don’t care or don’t realize that the church is headed for a demographic crash.
OMG is an amazing Gay artist.
Multiple styles, very creative.
https://edwardhsebesta.substack.com/p/arte-gay-omg-creating-art-for-gays
OMG had a campaign to try to keep Meta from deleting his previous Instagram page. The campaign failed, Meta wiped out his account He had to start over.
This is his tweet about the censorious campaign.
https://twitter.com/Oh_my_guy/status/1462553618884829187
OMG had to go to a new Instagram page because of Meta censorship. The new Instagram page is really censored.
X is the only non-censorious place in social media. Also, have multiple social media accounts so that your fans and supporters are always connected to you.
Failed HIV vaccine not an mRNA vaccine.
The recently announce failure for an potential HIV vaccine was NOT an mRNA vaccine.
Also, it is NOT “the last roll of the dice.” The mRNA HIV vaccines are in Phase 1 at Moderna and at this point are doing well.
I think “last roll of the dice” might be referring to this is the last attempt to see if one of these combination vaccines will work. They aren’t going to try another combination vaccine of this type.
These are DNA and protein vaccination. The combinations are described at this webpage.
It was worth testing them, since HIV is a real ongoing health disaster in Africa, but the reason they are called combinations is that they are trying combinations of possible vaccines hoping that though the individual vaccines don’t’ work, the combination will.
These vaccines are not using any new technology.
“Combination” isn’t a very specific term in reference to vaccines. It can be a combination of technologies, or a vaccine that is effective against more than one disease.
The Moderna mRNA HIV vaccine is still in Phase 1. There initial studies have looked good, but it is just Phase 1.
https://www.modernatx.com/research/product-pipeline
There is progress in HIV vaccine development.
With the recent vaccine trial in Africa with its combination vaccine failing, readers might give up hope, but there is progress towards developing a vaccine.
The medical and biological world technologies and science continues to develop and they have methods to learn things that weren’t possible in the past. There is ongoing research which is improving the understanding of HIV and the immune system which will continue to help make progress in developing an HIV vaccine.
The following article is very technical. They found one reason why current vaccines are failing. It isn’t in itself going to directly lead to a vaccine, but it is building up our knowledge of HIV, the immune system and what is needed to have an effective vaccine.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg0514
Post on the Homophobia of the Southern Baptist Convention.
They are a national denomination, though mostly concentrated in the South. I finally did a write on a denomination, rather than just an individual church which was also a member of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) since so many of the churches in the Dallas Fort Worth area are members. I didn’t want to have to type it in over and over again. It is lengthy. So I have a post for which I provide a post when doing a review.
Wrote up detailed reports on two homophobic megachurches for Dallas Gay Liberation
The local major daily still reports on people and omits that they are serious homophobes. It takes a lot of time to do these reports since they often have extensive anti-Gay programs and history.
The local right-wing newspaper is still campaigning against Drag.
Wrote a book, “Disable, Defeat and Demolish Homophobic Christianity.”
I am not wanting to push Gay Christians out of the movement, but I want to get them moving and being more aggressive. So, I am pushing them forward. They may not see it that way.
I also see a role for mobilizing Gays who are religious in various alternative things, and so I have to worry about dogmatic atheists also. The thing is this, the defense of the Gay community comes first.
The thing is, I think the Gay community has been getting abused for too long and we really need to bring this to an end. Also, don’t bring up the Muslims. The problems with homophobic Christianity is in the United States, and much of the world is immediate and something can be done. Because I can’t solve all problems at once, doesn’t mean I can’t work on one problem.
I am going to publish it on Amazon as a hard copy and kindle, and I am going to be reading it for a podcast.
Obesity Breakthrough article from Science Magazine.
This is an editorial discussing the breakthrough regarding GPL-1 for the general reader.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn3693
This is a good summary article on the progress in 2023, and the expected progress in 2024.
https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-of-the-year-2023#section_breakthrough
Against this backdrop, the next chapter is already unfolding: therapies that mimic multiple hormones and appear to be even more slimming. One, Eli Lilly & Co.’s tirzepatide, was approved in the U.S. in November for weight loss after being greenlit last year for diabetes; a large clinical trial reported that those taking it lost up to 21% of their body weight.
Artist has speed drawing videos to show you how he does his pictures.
Very interesting in that you can see how he builds up the final image over a background that he applies to the paper.
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thanks a lot!