The Fairness Project

Sex in 2012

Santorum man and dog cartoon      "There’s probably no better time than Valentines Day to assess the state of sex in the US. You know, the sexual activity that raises fear among leaders of the religious right-wing that it might actually be popular even among their own.
     Republican right-wing presidential candidate Rick Santorum is the latest political exploiter of this terror of sexuality, pontificating in a January interview that states should regain the right to outlaw birth control. Contraceptives are, he preaches, “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”
     This is out of touch with the reported ideas and practices of the vast majority of Americans. Even among members of the historically most rabid anti-contraception institution, the Roman Catholic Church, women favoring the expansion of birth control poll around 90 percent.
     Yet the rhetoric of erotophobia seems effective. It even upsets enough people who don’t agree with Santorum’s crowd, scaring most into not speaking up to defend their actual private practices. We appear to have made little public progress in spite of what really goes on in our bedrooms...."

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LJWorld.com Dr. Minor on October 8, 2011, again responds to a
Lawrence Journal World "Faith Forum" question:
"How Different Do You Think America's Religious Life Would Have Been If Columbus Hadn't 'Sailed the Ocean Blue' in 1492?"

Read Past "Faith Forum" Answers Here.

Reflections on Religion of a Re(Tired) Religion Professor

How might a retired Professor of Religious Studies ("Professor Emeritus") think of religion and the world's religions after 35 years of full-time teaching? Dr Minor presented a two-part series on that to Broadway Church in Kansas City, Missouri where he spoke of giving up dealing with religion and the religions in order to understand and interact with religious people.
You can hear it here.

If I Had Time to Read Only One Article This Week,
The Most Helpful One for My Work Would Be —

George Lakoff: "Conservative Frank Luntz Has Set a Trap for
Progressives -- Here's How to Outsmart Him and Boost
the Occupy Movement" (December 6, 2011)
"Unfortunately, Luntz is still ahead of most progressives responding to him. Progressives need to learn how framing works. Bashing Luntz, bashing Fox News, bashing the right-wing pundits and leaders using their frames and arguing against their positions just keeps their frames in play.."

Read George Lakoff, "Conservative Frank Luntz Has Set a Trap for Progressives"

The Fairness Project On-Line Activist Tool Kit

The Fairness Project is in the process of making available the handout materials from Dr. Minor's popular workshop: "Being an Activist Without Being a Victim." These materials are chosen because they encourage activist leadership to proceed from a progressive, healing model which contradicts the models of leadership found in most popular forms, models that are meant to keep the system in place rather than to make changes that support humanity, and result in burnout among leaders.

To access the current materials in The Fairness Project Tool Kit for activist leaders, click here.

Download Available: Dr. Minor's Address to the 32nd Annual Conference of the Association for Death Education and Counseling — "Heaven and Hell in the Afterlife
Prospects of LGBT People" (pdf)

Dr. Minor on Love, Dating, and Relationships
A Column at 50PlusPrime.com

    "A basic building block to long-lasting relationships is one of the hardest to keep in mind. And it requires both partners to regularly recommit to it in spite of all the messages we get from the relationship industry all around us that wants us to buy what it has to sell to make it all better.
    The word often used is growth. People and relationships are not static entities. They grow.
    But that word is deceiving because we think of growth as a movement in a linear direction through what we are even, at times, told are stages of relationships. Growth sounds as if we should be able to see where we are going, just as babies turn into toddlers, then children, then teenagers, and finally “full-grown” adults.
    Even that is an artificial fiction, for it often assumes that there is an endpoint to the growing process. Turning people into “adults” seems to be a goal, as if we have said something everyone knows when we say, “let’s all act like adults.”..."