WHAT DO WE WANT? EQUALITY! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!

Oh maze, thank you for showing your support.  I love you!!!  : )
Thank you Meenakshi!  We are all a part of this one big family of humanity.  Namaste.
Thank you Ladybear!  I know that love will win and that ALL people will win!  I try my best to stand up for my brothers and sisters on this planet earth. 
Thank you all.  Please show your support.
Love,
Samme

still uploading pics at Flickr

Yes unity and oneness is in the air today and may it be so everyday for everyone. 
Thank you for the website link I just joined it but waiting for my confirmation email so that I can upload there also.  I am still uploading at Flickr. 
Thank you for your update on Oregon's status, wonderful that a lot of people are marching peacefully today.  More change is gonna come. 
Love you too Peri,
Samme

Thank you for saying thank you Lars.  Not only did I marched and rallied for the freedom of our brothers and sisters but I also made sure that I took lots of photos for everyone to view if they wish.  We are all one, in spirit.
Sweet freedom,
Samme

Jeff, I know what you mean and I feel you.  As I approached the crowd yesterday morning I felt a deep sense of love and some sadness that some are being told that no you do not have the right to love and to marry who you want, it has to be this way or that way.  As I reviewed my photos after the rally, I noticed my long lost friend in one of my pictures.  I did not noticed him when I took the pictures because I just kept on taking pictures not realizing that I took a photo of my long lost friend.  He must have not recognized me either or have seen me taking pictures.  The rally is now over and I lost contact with him again.  Hope we meet again someday and recognize each other and be able to bond again. 

Thank you Sprite, I appreciate your presence here and for your love and support.

Thank you Lisa, it is a beautiful march where thousands marched as one for the freedom denied to same sex couples to be able to have the rights of straight couples to marry.  I just hope that Stonewall will not happen again.  Equality for all.

Thank you Lori, we are here and we will see equality for all showering us down like rain and it will be a happy moment for all.  I am you and you are me.  We are one.

In L'akech,
Samme

Thank you Nishtha, I have featured that in my other blog and that is a great addition again for this blog.  Thank you for giving us the link. 
Thank you for your love and support.
Samme

Dear Samme,

Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice - or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?
                                             - Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Our anger is just.
Our goal is vital.
Our cause is love.

The passage of hateful initiatives has ignited the passion of thousands.

Sign the pledge to keep fighting, loving, and listening – and overturn these laws.

On November 4, voters in California, Arizona, and Florida declared that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are not equal under the law.

Our rights were stripped. Our love was branded unworthy of the name marriage, though our commitments and responsibilities to each other are worthy of nothing less.

We are angry – and that anger has moved to the streets.

This Saturday, thousands of people across the country, spontaneously organizing themselves in a truly grassroots movement, will convene to raise the call for equality. To find an event near you click here.

But as the LGBT community and its allies exercise our uniquely American right to protest, I hope we will remember that our actions in the streets will set the tone for the ongoing debate about marriage equality.

Will we reduce a human rights movement to tactics of recrimination? How we respond to these hateful amendments will say much about who we are.

Let the joyful faces of the couples receiving Connecticut marriage licenses for the first time yesterday remind us: our cause is love; and only through love can we win the freedom to marry.

Join with me and thousands of others – pledge to become an 'extremist for love' and fight to overturn these amendments.

The Mormon and Roman Catholic Churches played a huge role in the travesty called Proposition 8, forcing me to question whether members of those communities have forgotten the lessons of their own struggles against persecution. It is chilling to realize that the Catholic and Mormon Churches knew they were telling lies – that marriage equality would require children to learn about homosexuality in school, that priests would be required to solemnize marriages of same-sex couples – and they lied anyway.

In the wake of commanding support for Prop. 8 among African Americans, we are also asking ourselves why the community that has endured the most violent and persistent discrimination in our country’s history failed to understand our struggle for human rights. In this campaign we reached out to diverse communities, but we obviously failed to communicate to African Americans the interdependence of our struggles.

Have we heard the concerns of the people we asked to listen to us? We assert that marriage rights are basic human rights; we must also show that our concern for human rights does not end with marriage.

As we ask communities of color and religious communities to engage and partner with us, we must, in turn, demonstrate our commitment to the people and issues they care about. We must show that we will not turn away from the forty-seven million uninsured once we have domestic partner benefits, and that non-discrimination laws are not complete justice when legions of children are denied equal opportunity due to failing schools, violence, and racism.

Today, I recommit myself to being an extremist for love. I will engage my friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers – no matter what their religious beliefs or cultural backgrounds – and will ask them to engage me in their lives. I am ready to listen and act on their behalf, even as I make my case for their support.

At the same time, I will speed HRC's public efforts to overturn these laws:

I ask you to join me today in promising to keep your anger and passion alive, and to turn them to the tasks that will broaden support for our cause.

Take the pledge to work for justice – and understanding – until equality is the law of the land.

November 4 was neither the beginning nor the end of our struggle. It showed us how much work is left to do, but it also brought out the passion we will need to do that work.

That passion will win in the end. We must hold on to it, and use it wisely.

Thank you Zephyr Gael, I do hope we meet again, yes we will and yes we can!  Thank you for your wishes for this campaign and viewing the pictures.  hugs.
there's still work to be done,
Samme

welcome aki, thank you for your hopes and wishes for the world, for love.
love is the most abundant force and at the same time the scarcest force in the world just because of “those” people who still thinks that love is only for some but not for everyone.  Love is indeed unconditional.  Let love flow.
we are one in love,
samme

Thanks Janie.  Can the VP be change in the second term?  Well we'll see his track record.  : )
Ooh I am curious as to your project.  Would love to know.  Off to give you my email.
love,
Samme

thank you aki.  : )
I am with you aki.  and lots of people are mobilized for equality among many other positive things due to the wonderful and welcome change in the establishment.  i for one, would love to do my part in making his policies a success.  what am i doing for now??  i am reading and following his news and the world news and educating myself and empowering myself.  and that is a part of what i mean when i added the last line in the blog, that is my take and my part on how i can be a light and how i can spread the love thruout the lands. 
even kids are shouting and rallying, i am in tears photographing, i have not seen anything like it.  Children rallying for same sex marriage??  And it's not because they are with their parents, you can tell they UNDERSTAND.  Children nowadays pick up on adult issues of mores and values.  They mean it and support it and we have a new generation of courageous citizens.
much love,
samme

what else could there be dear nikki?  but,
love, love and more love
hugs,
samme

thank you for showing/expressing your support

Om Shanti Thank you Anna
Yes, loving kindness and compassion
bless the world and its inhabitants
in oneness,
samme

WELLcome rich, thank YOU very much for the kind words.  We can all be different in other areas but that is the kind of thinking we ALL need to be the same for in that area.  Yes “kudos to those who are willing to take a stand for that which takes and does not give” and I have and we all have a lot of people who are still living and souls who passed on who paved the way for the freedom we are experiencing today.  But then again there's more work and there are still works left to be done.  Hate does not take a day off so why will LOVE take one??  Love can make this world a much better place rather than trying to take away some people's rights.  Everybody will benefit.  May we all put our fears aside and let love rule.
your brother in life and love as well,
samme

Thank you phenomenal women and mothers, Michele and Mila, for your love and support and understanding. 
the love you take is equal to the love you make,
samme

and that is one of the great tools in how we can affect change, thru storytelling.  great example aki, thank you for sharing that and thank you for standing up for what is just. 
thank you for being you,
samme

building bridges of love

Sweet love Sherri, thank you soul sister.  Also I observed that lawmakers used 'religion' as a basis for not passing laws like same sex marriage and yet use the same bases when they say that “marriage is between a man and a woman”.  For now, war is being funded more than love funding.  Let love rules. 
Thank you Peace Seeker.  I chose a picture in the scrolling pictures with a peace sign in your honor.  It is there if you watch it. 
Thank you thank you
I would love to dedicate this song to all of you
Love Changes Everything,
Samme

Jeff, we are all in this together and we bring different contributions to the table.  There are some that I may not have that you have and vice versa and that is okay just as long as we are all united and interdependent in oneness and love. 
oneness and love,
samme
courage and friendship

please check out this essay on gay marriage: the arguments and motives

Wow, Lars thank you for the link.  It looks like a movie that I will love, definitely.  I look up the book at Amazon Kindle and it is not available thru Kindle, will have to get the paperback form.  I will have to create a discussion about that later on for sure.  All of this no matter who we are, what we are, where we are, why we are here and how we are doing – all of this is all about love. 
only love,
samme

Welcome geognosy and thank you for speaking up.  We need a perspective from someone who lives in a place where this particular issue of same sex marriage is recognized and legalized.  We only have to search in our hearts that everybody else needs to have the same rights and that there should be equality among everybody. 
Your comment is highly appreciated and thank you for your kind words.
love is in the air,
samme

Thank you mum's the word Rita, I am just one among many others who are rallying for this.  I want equality for all also. 
Thank you NIshtha. 

Please, friends, check your city if you are having a rally this Saturday Nov. 22, 2008 and rally if you can.  If you are here in Sacramento it is going to be from 2pm to 5pm at the west steps of the Capitol.  See you all there in spirit and oneness.
Thank you,
Samme

Thank you Kris for your presence here and expressing your support.  I have a question too, why is there a talk of boycotting the Sundance Film Festival??
Yes I feel it too that this will be overturned and hopefully there is equality all across the country at the same time and around the world. 
Well it means that some of their legal aspects of their relationship or marriage will not be acknowledged depends on who is the establishment (example, job benefits, right to hospital visitations, etc), so it is an inconvenience to a lot of couples.  This feels like history repeating itself, like segregation. 
I am joining a lobbying group and also doing research on this issue.  Like I said above there is a big rally this Saturday again. 
much love,
Samme

Huh, I did not hear about that, that is quite interesting and you know what here in Sacramento, the main director of Sacramento Theater Company resigned from his position because he donated money to the pro Prop 8 campaign.  He resigned because of pressure from the masses that they will boycott the theater company and that the best way to preserve the theater company is for him to resign. 
peace,
samme

Exactly!  And the only thing the LGBTQ community wants is marriage equality or just plain equality.  The other majority does not see those far-reaching “economic” consequences, if you will.  I am currently reading now marriage equality and the constitution.  Once again the constitution should protect all individuals and not just some. 
Prop. 8 is unfair and wrong.
thank you,
samme