Gay Marriage & Brain Drugs

By Stuart Wilde, Spirituality & Personal Development Author

American Fundamentalist Christians are virulently against gay marriages. They seek to impose their values on the rest of America through the courts, asking for the practice to be banned. If the gay thing is all a bit confusing, don't worry; I think I have worked it out. 

Marriage when broken down into simple terms is a contract between drug dealers. Pleasing experiences like sex, companionship, conviviality, etc., fire morphine-like chemicals in the brain. Morphine is a class "A" feel-good drug, heroin is a derivative of morphine (See below).* In marriage, you agree to become the main supplier of brain drugs to your spouse. If the distribution contract breaks down it is usually called adultery. But in the end it still a drug deal, much like Bayer might sign a contract to supply aspirin to Wal-Mart.

Closing the Digital Divide:

Latinos and Technology Adoption

Fuerte Men News from Pew Research Center 

Latinos own smartphones, go online from a mobile device and use social networking sites at similar, and sometimes higher, rates than do other groups of Americans, according to a new analysis of three Pew Research Center surveys.

The analysis also finds that when it comes to using the internet, the digital divide between Latinos and whites is smaller than what it had been just a few years ago. Between 2009 and 2012, the share of Latino adults who say they go online at least occasionally increased from 64% to 78%. Among whites, internet use rates also increased, but only by half as much (80% in 2009 to 87% in 2012).

Over the same period, the gap in cellphone ownership between Latinos and other groups either diminished or disappeared. In 2012, 86% of Latinos said they owned a cellphone, up from 76% in 2009. 

Among the biggest drivers of these increases are spikes in technology adoption among foreign-born Latinos and Spanish-dominant Latinos. Both groups' rates of going online and of owning cellphones increased sharply since 2009, helping to reduce the digital divide between Latinos and whites and also reducing gaps within the Latino community itself.

A PORTRAIT OF THE

NATION’S 52 MILLION HISPANICS 

The Pew Research Center today published a statistical profile of the U.S. Hispanic population. This profile, based on Pew Research tabulations from the Census Bureau's 2011 American Community Survey, features detailed characteristics of the U.S. Hispanic population at the national level. Topics covered include age, geographic dispersion, nativity, citizenship, origin, language proficiency, racial self-identification, living arrangements, marital status, fertility, schooling, health insurance coverage, earnings, poverty and other labor market outcomes. The data featured in the profile may be downloaded from the center's website.

THE EXPERIENCE OF

RURAL LGBT YOUTH

By Eliza Byard, GLSEN Executive Director

Fuerte Men Note:  We recieved this email and and felt compelled to share their message.  We support the work of GLSEN and hope you do too.

This past spring, Lenoir City High School, a school in rural Tennessee, featured a section of short articles on student life in its yearbook. One article, entitled "It's OK to be Gay," profiled openly gay student Zac Mitchell. Apparently, as far as Lenoir City School Board is concerned, it is not OK to be gay -- or at least not OK to talk about it.