I know right? I'm glad that passed, as it will be one less thing for politicians to platform off of.

As for the "Cops shooting Black people" Issue, in my opinion, there are a multitude of reasons why:

In several of the videos present, we see the black people RUN from the police. Really? That's like going up to a guard dog and then slapping it. You are GOING to get bit.

That said, I am not blind to the real world. There are racists, but not by location. Most people that I have known to be racist are "Made" that way by family and situation. To make a point: If you live in a community where the population is 70 or more percent black, and has a high crime rate, especially against other races, then you're more than likely going to become prejudice of the people living there. Hell, I'm probably not that much better than the people I described, as I live in a community of over 60 percent black, and specifically, part of the black district of my state.

Lastly, we're only getting the one side of the story! We don't hear about cops being killed, or "Black Cops" killing white people. This is the double guilt standard currently in place today in America. One case that I will point out, recently, was that incident with the black man getting beaten up before forced into the back of a police van. The NAACP were ready to start a riot, until one detail popped up: One of the charged Cops was black. Then, like a dog caught sniffing up the wrong butt, they turned tail and covered their own asses.

Okay, Mild rage vent over, feel free to counter anything I say, but I must implore you, ONLY SMART PEOPLE. For the love of what ever deity is out there, I can handle smart people, it's idiots lost in their own stupidity that truly drive my brain cells to overload.

I must agree with this, we're only getting part of the story. For any significant, permanent change for the better to take hold, we must address ALL sides of the issue.

Agreed, there's a lot of complexity around the entire issue that has to do with not just racism but also gun culture and control, income inequality, and a massive amount of historical baggage from the country's past that we're never as free from as we like to tell ourselves. The point I meant to make by bringing it up at all was that it's something that, due to its complexity and multifaceted nature, is not only incredibly hard to fix but also very difficult to explain and rationalise to non-Americans.

Britain's grown up with its fair share of racial tensions, but it hasn't left the legacy of animosity in the institutions and public consciousness of the country the way it seems to have in the US. Europeans in general also tend to spend a lot less time shooting one another than Americans.

Granted, Greece seems to be the black sheep of that mix. After all, google Greece Riots, and you'll have to specify what date and time it was. Guns are Americas problem, but it's more ou of the people who wield them, and not the guns themselves.

Greece had quite a bit of unrest during the Eurozone crisis that they covered pretty extensively in the news here, but I'm guessing you're referring to the 2008 riots. Those happened before I moved over here, but reading up on it I can see what you mean how a lot of the unrest was sparked by a police shooting. Such things can and do happen outside the US, but not nearly as often it seems.

Let's keep up the fight against outdated, worn out ways of thinking. Battle on!

I'm a fan of progressive thinking. :) Especially when it means moving away from the whole 'burn people at the stake if they're different from us' way of doing things.

*smiles and softly noses the dragon* We fight because we don't know any better. Some march in the streets and risk arrest; some wear uniforms and carry guns and lay down their lives. I'm a coward: I stand in front of people, sometimes ten or twelve, sometimes a hundred, and say, "I'm gay, and this is how I got to where I am." Or sometimes I stand in front of a classroom and tell children who don't know any better what "respect" means and why it's important. Or I go to a friend, who just happens to be the Dean of Students, and another friend, who just happens to be in very senior administration, and persuade them both that the school's internal regulations need these words which boil down to, "Everybody has the right to be treated respectfully, even - or especially - if you disagree with them (which is just fine), because, really, people are people and nothing else matters. And, oh, the school will make sure this happens."

I'm a coward. I'm a single, lonely, reserved, part-playing coward. I know what I am. And I have nothing but respect for those who take to the streets, and nothing but rejoicing for those who have found something I hope for but know I won't find. (And that's really, truly okay.) I just... do what I can. I fight for civilisation by teaching the kids not simply about what it is but about what it should be.

*smiles and hugs, and noses your cheek* I'm such a coward, lovely drake.

*smiles and gently returns the nose* In our own way, we're all cowards. There are things that terrify us, things that we just can't cope with or see rationally. There's nothing wrong with that, I think, if we come to know and understand our limits and manage them appropriately. For the people who can't do that, I imagine that fear is a lot of what turns to the hatred and intolerance that's made this entire issue an issue in the first place.

For what it's worth though, the things you describe having done are very much not the actions of a coward. It's a brave thing to be able to stand up and bare yourself to the world and say, 'this is me, this is who I am, and this is my story.' And the way things are right now around the issue of homosexuality, I think stories like that are exactly what a lot of people need to hear. To realise that these people clamouring for the right to marry each other are just normal people, friends, co-workers, family members, and all they want is the same rights that most other people have. And to realise that granting this right really has no negative impact at all on anyone else.

So yeah, good day. :) *hugs you tightly* And keep up the great work!

*hugs back and smiles* You know, I once read a quote by the late, utterly fantastic Nelson Mandela, along the lines that, "Love is the easiest emotion in the world." I'm not a man of his stature, but I could not disagree more with what he said. Love is not the easiest emotion: it is the hardest. Fear is the easiest; the drive for sex, hunger and thirst in a pitched battle for (joint) second, third and fourth places. But love? No, no: love is the hardest, it's the most difficult, the most tenuous, the most vaporous of all the emotions. Why? Because it's a cognitive thing, not a pure emotional thing.

Don't confuse "falling in love" with "being in love" or "love": love is cognitive, love is associative - to a degree it's dissociative, being able to see someone with all their faults and yet continuing to desire their company anyway --- Doesn't that sound strange, intellectually? When you think of it in those terms, isn't it the most peculiar, the most contradictory concept? That someone whom you've spent so much time with is someone who can drive you crazy, who isn't who you'd necessarily choose ("objectively") to be with, all things being equal --- And yet you did choose to be with them, and you choose to remain with them each passing day. Doesn't that seem strange?

And yet... and yet... And yet we do: we do remain with people. We do choose to remain with those people, not least because when we met and fell in love we were in absolutely no way thinking objectively... and isn't it wonderful?

But love is not the easiest of emotions. Fear is the easiest, because it's the earliest: it's the one that's hard-wired into the part of the brain that existed even before the reptilian part. It's the part that keeps fish larva alive and safe, the part which is hard-wired into the limbic system and the amygdala, the part which screams, "RUN!" - and we run; "FIGHT!" - and we fight. And afterwards we wonder why. But we can't help but listen: we're made that way.

Love... oh, love, it's so difficult. So easy, and yet so difficult. Takes so many compromises, demands so much of us as people, takes up so much of our lives, and is mandated by Man and blessed (so we're told) by Heaven --- but that's not love, that's Love: emotional love, which comes out of being around someone, the persistence of a person in our lives whose presence we miss when they're not there, who feels like they "complete us" (or so I'm told). Love, plain and simple honest love, human-kindness, fellow-feeling, brotherly goodness --- that's taking the time to quiet the voices in the back of our heads that make us want to do or say or think dark things.

Is it wrong that such voices exist? No. Is it wrong to listen to them? Not always. Is it wrong to act on their impulses? Mostly, I think.

But love... love is hard. Love love is easy -- so I'm told... love, that's a lifelong struggle for us. Perhaps not in the future: maybe one day the time will have come when we don't have that struggle, when our children's children's children don't have those voices in their heads because their parents didn't stimulate them, that our race will begin to move forward. Call it "childhood's end", if you like. One day.

Love. One word, which stands for so many.

*smiles, and hugs again* I wish you love, dear friend. I wish you love and joy, in every one of your days.

That's a really neat point, and very eloquently made. :) Love is a really bizarre and amazing mix of easy and incredibly easy. The 'easy' part I think comes from the idea that... when it happens, when you really feel it, it takes hold of your heart and mind and guides you forward with a passion and power that few things can match. It gives you a direction and an overwhelming sense of 'rightness' that makes it so easy to just follow where it leads. Which is, I imagine, why the term 'falling in love' came into being. Because when it happens that way it can be as easy as giving in to gravity.

But as you say, it's also incredibly hard. Because it's so much more complicated and multifaceted than fear or anger. Love asks, demands, so much more of us. It demands that we rise above base instinct, that we let go of hate, that we overcome our fear. It demands that we set aside who we are, just a little, and make somebody else just as important to us as the self and part of our own identity. It demands that we become better people.

I wish you love too, my friend. However you find it, for there are so many different kinds. I'm very proud to call you my friend, so you've definitely got one kind right here. *holds you gently in a wing*

*the dragon gently noses at you and doesn't mind at all being held; he actually seems to welcome it, right now*

I've never felt that which you've described, that "rightness", that "passion". I've felt desire, and I've felt the need for someone else... I've say to myself I've been "in love" a couple of times: I look back on it and wonder if it really was. And for me, you know, giving in to it isn't easy: emotions are difficult for me, and gravity, well, it's not as though we have a choice in that. *chuckle*

I don't know what love demands of us. I don't know that it's becoming "better" people, maybe just "different" people. But you could well be right. It's entirely known for me to be quite wrong, after all! *laugh* Fundamentally, sweet dragon, I just don't know: I can only see love intellectually; I don't know if I can feel it. And the things that I do, it's not about love, it's about respect: after all, in the non-romantic sense, the former emerges from the latter.

Thank you for being my friend, gentle drake. *smiles and noses, and doesn't know what else to say there*

I suppose that's part of what makes love so complicated, too... it means different things to different people. Makes it hard to come up with a single unifying definition! I guess some of what I meant about love demanding we be better people applies to respect, too. If you really care about somebody, either through being in love with them or through having a lot of respect or friendship toward them, those feelings make you want to treat them well, do kind things for them, and override the instincts we have to act out of fear or anger, to avoid snapping at them when we're having a bad day, that sort of thing. At least that's part of where my brain was going with that, I think!

Oh no, dragon, I knew what you meant My comment was more that I find it hard to engage emotionally with people and ideas, for all sorts of reasons. I tend to keep it all very much bottled away. *smiles softly and noses* 's why I'm a lonely dragon, and you're happily mated.

Ah okay, I get what you mean. I've spent a lot of my life keeping most of my feelings bottled up in a similar way, and perhaps paradoxically it was falling in love that helped draw me out of that a bit more. So it's kind of a funny chicken-and-egg thing I suppose!

I guess so. *snugs*

*hugs* ^^