MYMUDBLOG

Really Massa?

2010-03-14T15:38:00Z

Happy Birthday George!

2010-02-22T18:47:00Z

I'm honoring George Washington's birthday by rejecting the word tolerance.

"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

In a letter from George Washington to Moses Seixas from the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, RI (1790). In and around this time Washington sent similiar letters to all religious leaders in the United States to reinforce the seperation of church and state and embrace diversity.

How dare anyone have the audacity to say they tolerate you!

Peace, G

Elect Nickie J. Antonio!

2010-02-19T17:25:00Z

NICKIE J. ANTONIO, LAKEWOOD COUNCILWOMAN

ANNOUNCES RUN FOR OHIO HOUSE DISTRICT 13

Councilwoman Nickie J. Antonio announced her candidacy for election to the Ohio House District 13 at 4:30pm in front of Roosevelt Elementary School located at 14237 Athens Avenue, Lakewood, Ohio 44107. An experienced policy maker and advocate for working people, seniors, families, small business owners and diverse populations including members of the GLBT community, Antonio has served with distinction as a popular and responsive at-large councilmember in Lakewood for the past 4 years and was recently the top vote-getter in her bid for re-election. Antonio also enjoys strong support from labor, women, progressives, members of social change and arts communities.

“Now more than ever, our District needs experienced leadership to take the voice of the people to Columbus,” said Antonio, “ Access to Excellent Education for all children, Fixing School Funding, Jobs Creation in green and sustainable technologies, and Innovative Economic Development to stimulate our local economies are the needs of our area that drive my decision to seek this office. I am humbled by the many calls I have received from people throughout the district, asking me to run for this position,” Antonio further stated.

Antonio is also uniquely qualified and familiar with the entire district having spent her formative years in Jay Westbrook’s Ward 18 (part of HD 13) and another 18 years of community service, owning a home and raising daughters Ariel and Stacey with partner, Jean Kosmac in Lakewood (entirely represented in HD13).

The first in her family to graduate from college, Antonio holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the Maxine Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Cleveland State University. A former special education teacher, adjunct professor and non-profit administrator she has served in numerous capacities as an organizational consultant for non-profit and governmental organizations for over 20 years. Antonio currently administrates community planning in a five county region for HIV/AIDS programs.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell...Ba Bye!

2010-02-03T18:56:00Z

It's about time! This represents a big shift in opinions since the
Clinton years. With both military and American citizens. Clinton
was forced into DADT as lessor of two evils because of a weak
and shameful Democrat controlled House and Senate (1993).
Recently I saw and interview with David Gergen (former Clinton
advisor) as he reflected on the internal debate on this issue.
He said that Clinton took a vote with his military leaders,
advisors and Vice President Al Gore. The only vote against
DADT and in favor of full GLB ( no T in those days) freedom
in the military was Al Gore.

So Long 2009

2009-12-28T20:48:00Z

Christmas Thought

2009-12-23T17:00:46Z

Christmas Thought

This year has been full of loss and change for many people. Record numbers in unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies have changed the economical landscape of the world. Despite this, the pressure is on to buy gifts and to celebrate the holidays with gusto!

It all makes me wonder. Are we disconnected and clueless or are we looking for something that hasn't changed and we can control? Tradition doesn't usually mean change.

Tradition may be the key to happiness and financial safety through the holidays. As long as your favorite tradition isn't buying your spouse a new car every year. I know what I'm about to say is not that innovative and it may sound anti-capitalist but who cares. Some will say that this may hurt the economy more. I believe we are the economy and if we have more money after the holidays the stores that need survive will. The rest are probably heading for bankruptcy already.

What if all adults did not exchange gifts? We only buy for children to help keep the Santa story alive and for teens so they can make it through the brutal years of peer pressure. The adults save the rest of the money and have low cost gatherings full of their family and friend's traditions. Bring old photographs, share movies and recipes etc. How about, gathering all your loved ones and having a "Volunteer Day" to help people really in need? Do all the things that make us feel good about the season. Just no purchased gifts! Think about all the new traditions that could be made while honoring the old ones.

We have started doing this but I have to admit it is a hard change for some of our loved ones to commit to. I think some of them probably think we are just being cheap or we are really broke. LOL! After all buying gifts for everyone is a tradition.

I feel truly blessed this Christmas with all that I have despite the losses. My Z, family and friends all make life beautiful, joyful and keep the spirit of the season alive! Even if I don't get a Snuggie!

Happy Holidays!

Peace & Love, G

The Poor Man's Christmas

Mistletoe hang from the ceiling
And somehow it gets me to feeling
That the Season of Christmas is here
A time of enjoyment and cheer.

At Christmas most people feel fine
And generally have a good time
On turkey and pudding they dine
And wash it all down with red wine.

The old man spends Christmas alone
A cold, dreary shack for a home
His sole comfort on Christmas Night
A solitary candle-light.

In Christmas there isn't much cheer
If you haven't the price of a beer
With scarce little money to spend
And no one you can call a friend.

Christmas bring this man no joy
It always seem to pass him by
To this man each day is the same
He care not if Christmas never came.

This poor man unhealthy and weak
Has to live on one hundred and eighty dollars a week
Has to struggle for to make ends meet
To buy shoes, clothes and enough food for to eat.

He looks to the coming New Year
In hopeless dejection and fear,
Fear that the harsh Winter cold
Will take toll on one frail and old.

Francis Duggan

In Loving Memory of Roger Dean Grindstaff

2009-12-22T19:37:00Z

Our dear Roger passed away and it's to painful at this time to write about it. I'm posting his obituary and the written form of his eulogy. At some point I will update this posting and fill you all in with the craziness that took place after his unexpected death.

G

GRINDSTAFF, ROGER DEAN, 75, of Providence, passed away last Wednesday.

Born in Yakima, WA, he was the longtime partner of the late Paul Banspach and son of the late Harold and Myrtle (Covert) Grindstaff. He lived in California for 20 years before relocating to Providence 30 years ago, where he lived until his death.

Mr. Grindstaff was an executive in the transportation industry before breeding pugs as show dogs. He had many beloved pugs, but his last was Trudy. She died a day after he did and will be at rest with him.

Mr. Grindstaff served honorably in the US Marine Corps during the Korean War.

He was a dedicated volunteer at several organizations and an activist working for human rights while providing direct services for families in need.

He is survived by a brother, William Grindstaff of Washington, and a sister, Beverly Parkinson of Oregon. He was the brother of the late Audrey Bird. His extended family included Marsha Hummel, Garith Fulham and families.

Visiting Hours will be held THURSDAY 5-7 PM at the A. TARRO & SONS Funeral Home, 425 Broadway, Providence. Burial with military honors will be in the RI Veterans Memorial Cemetery, Exeter, Friday at 9 AM. In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to AIDS Care Ocean State, 18 Parkis Ave., Providence, RI 02907.

Roger D. Grindstaff Eulogy

December 10, 2009

I think the best way for me to eulogize our dear and brilliant Roger is to just say things that you may not know about him.

Roger was born on a large working farm in Washington State where he learned to do everything that it takes to survive without much money. He mostly did things on the farm that I personally think are gross like kill a pig, kill a chicken milk a cow , kill a cow, make his own marmalade and jellies and pickle the hell out of everything …cucumbers, watermelon, peppers, okra and corn. I’m sure you get the idea.. By the way he made some of the best pickled stuff you ever had. He loved to freak me out with his gross stories from the farm. This also were Roger learned to play the piano and guitar in which he mastered. He was very talented.

As a young man he went into the Marines and served during the Korean War. During that time he fell in love with Asian culture. Later in life he worked the culture into his life through cooking, doing Tia chi, learning Buddhism and teaching himself Mandarin Chinese.

When Roger returned to the US he was discharged in San Francisco. This was a time when being gay even there was an issue. He told me many stories of those times. Many are not appropriate for this occasion but make me smile.

Roger had many adventures and relationships through the years and he never forgot them but instead he learned from those times and respected the life he received from them. He viewed life as a student and never thought he was too old to learn. He had several careers ranging from owning a bus company to running a ministry.

Eventually Roger met Paul and their adventures could be a book. In their life together they loved there Pugs and traveling. They bread and showed award winning pugs throughout the country. Paul was from RI and that’s how they came to relocate here.

Roger always reflected on those years and acknowledged that the homophobia they faced throughout scarred him but also made him stronger and I believe even wiser.

After Paul passed away it was Roger and the pugs… Pumpkin & Reno. He picked up the pieces and created a new family. Friends like Marsha and her children helped him move on. He was always learning and moving forward.

This is when Roger made the decision to volunteer and help the community. He approached me and told me that Pumpkin and Reno were driving him nuts and he needed to get out of the house! Yes, Pumpkin and Reno were driving him nuts but it was because they were the most spoiled dogs in the world. He literally cooked them meals! They never knew what dog food was. Anyhow, I said sure and before I knew it he was working forty hours a week and running our food pantry.

I remember feeling bad for him (which I never would tell him.) In my head he needed me! As we grew into friends and we had many adventures…most of them I’m proud of, others I can’t share so not to make all of you into accessory.

Roger got to know all of my family and friends and before I knew it. He was family! Our relationship was complex to say the least. I would bounce everything off of him and for the first time in my adult life I had a father figure. He would debate with me on things he disagreed with, and when I went out and screwed up anyway. He was there to pick me up and pat me on the back and ask me if I had learned a lesson from the situation. I always thought yes, but Roger was wise enough to ask did you learn the right lesson?

Through the years many things changed one of them was that Reno and Pumpkin died. He was really feeling alone then. So nine Christmas’s ago I gave him Trudy (a cute, sweet, little pug). Of course he spoiled the hell out of her. Making her meals and treating her like a human. She was his life in the last couple of years. She died the day after him. She is in here with him so he is not alone.

I took for granted the things he did all the time and I did not realize when he was secretly helping me. It was not Roger that needed me but I who needed him.

Roger, I learned a great lesson! You never know who will be an angel in your life. Thank you my dear friend and teacher. I love you!

Salvation Army Promotes Gay Hate!

2009-12-22T19:09:00Z

When we are feeling generous this holiday season we must watch who we give our money to. The Salvation Army has gone beyond it's mission statement for many years to discriminate and actively hurt GLBT folks. Please remind your loved ones that before they give them anything or volunteer to ring those bells what they will be supporting if they do!

Happy Holidays!

Peace, G

No gay change for the Salvation Army

By Lisa Neff, columnist, 365gay.com
12.21.2009 10:36am EST

“Did you sign up to ring the bell?” a good-hearted friend asked.

She realized even before I voiced my answer that I had not volunteered to ring the bell outside our local supermarket to raise money for the Salvation Army.

And she regretted that she had volunteered to collect money for the Salvation Army, which has gone as far as lobbying the White House to obstruct efforts to treat gays and lesbians equally — as citizens and as employees.

Many, many good people — my friends and neighbors — ring the bell for the Salvation Army during December.

And many, many good people — my friends and neighbors — donate to the Salvation Army’s red kettles during December.

But I do not. I do not ring the bell for the Salvation Army. I do not donate to the Salvation Army, because the Salvation Army discriminates against gays and lesbians in employment, works to defeat civil rights measures that protect gays and lesbians and promotes position that gay relationships “do not conform to God’s will for society.”

Some will say, but the Salvation Army performs good work — the organization feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless, clothes the impoverished, whether gay or straight.

Yes, yet there are many other organizations performing the same work as the Salvation Army that do not discriminate against gays and lesbians, that will not use your donation against you.

From the Salvation Army’s Web site: “The Army regards the origins of a homosexual orientation as a mystery and does not regard a homosexual disposition as blameworthy in and of itself or rectifiable at will. Nevertheless, while we are not responsible for what we are, we are accountable for what we do; and homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, is controllable and may be morally evaluated therefore in light of scriptural teaching.

“For this reason, such practices, if unrenounced, render a person ineligible for Salvation Army soldiership.”

I can find a charity more worthy of the stray dollar in my pocket.

I’ll tell you that I used to contribute to the Salvation Army, though I was never enthusiastic about the organization’s missionary work.

But even before the big feud between the Salvation Army and the city of San Francisco over an ordinance mandating that city contractors provide equal benefits to employees, I was made aware that the organization with a reputation for kindness did not take kindly to gays.

I was living in Missouri in the early 1990s and a women’s volleyball league was playing its games at a Salvation Army gym. One Sunday night, players arrived and found the gym locked up and dark. Salvation Army officials had been made aware that the league was affiliated with an LGBT sports association. They decided to serve the sporty servers a “get out” notice because the Army’s position is that the “sexual union leading to a one-flesh relationship is intended to be between male and female.”

Maybe, at first thought, barring 30 women from playing volleyball seems small when compared to the Salvation Army served 33 million people last year and raised about $2 billion for its programs.

But think about those numbers, think about the power of the Salvation Army. It is a massive Christian evangelical organization — with a quasi-military structure and raising $2 billion a year — and it promotes discrimination against gays and lesbians in its employment policy; at local levels of government, going so far as to threaten to close soup kitchens in New York if the city enacted domestic partnership legislation; and at the national level of government, including negotiating with the Bush administration to guarantee that faith-based groups could discriminate against gays and keep their federal funding.

We can find charities more deserving of our dollars and our volunteer time.

This Is Great! I'm Still Laughing!

2009-11-20T21:33:00Z

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Skeletons in the Closet

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

U.S. Speedskating

Is Carcieri Crazy?

2009-11-18T20:17:00Z

I'm wondering if our RI governor is losing it or do gays make him crazy? A couple months ago he spoke at a fund raising event for the Massachusetts Family Institute (a gay hate group) about "traditional marriage" after the gay community asked him not to attend. This month he vetoed a bill that would give same gender couples burial rights for their loved ones and to add insult to injury he writes the following in the bill message: “This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue...etc.

Both situations caused great controversy but it seems that most Rhode Islanders didn't know that gay folks were not treated fairly on this issue. The fact that our governor would go out of his way to keep discriminating against us made him look like a bigot instead of the dear, old, conservative grandpa. I'm sure his Glenn Beck loving team said you have to fix this and reminded him that gays run RI and his team will need jobs when his term is up. He then takes a meeting with the gay group that is driving him crazy (Queer Action) and shocks everyone by saying he would consider comprehensive reforms giving many, if not all, of the rights of marriage to same-sex couples. What??? This is the opposite of everything he has ever said.

I still want same gender marriage called marriage and it legal in RI but this is a start! Of course it's only a start if Carcieri isn't crazy and he doesn't change his mind because he mistakes Majority Leader Fox's politeness for making a pass at him.

Peace, G

Groups say Carcieri domestic-partnership plan ‘still not equal’

01:00 AM EST on Saturday, November 14, 2009

By Steve Peoples

Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE –– Governor Carcieri surprised political rivals this week when he told gay-rights activists he would consider comprehensive reforms giving many, if not all, of the rights of marriage to same-sex couples.

But the unexpected announcement from the Republican governor has found little support among Rhode Island’s gay community, reinforcing a division among gay-marriage supporters that could kill Carcieri’s idea before it’s even put to paper.

The measure, as practiced in other states, would give tax benefits, burial rights and hospital-visitation privileges to Rhode Island gay couples, but would not recognize their unions as marriage.

“It’s still not equal. Marriage is a straight civil-rights issue,” Kathy J. Kushnir, executive director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island, said Friday, a day after the governor’s surprise comments. “A new perspective would be treating all of the citizens of Rhode Island equally. That’s not what he’s doing.”

Carcieri on Thursday met privately for more than an hour with members of Queer Action of Rhode Island, a group that had recently labeled him “a bigot” for vetoing legislation that would have allowed domestic partners to make each others’ funeral decisions.

“Let’s see if we can find a way to solve that without discrete [pieces] of legislation every time something comes up. I just don’t think that is the right way to deal with it,” Carcieri said Thursday.

Citing as a possible model the “everything but marriage” referendum that won approval in the state of Washington earlier this month, he said: “I don’t know enough, yet. All I am saying is I understand the circumstances.”

The statement was “absolutely” an ideological shift, according to Susan Heroux, a member of Queer Action who attended the meeting.

“I think it’s very instructive that he has spent an hour and 15 minutes with gay people and he’s already understanding that the problem is bad enough that something needs to happen,” she said. “The governor is showing that when he listens, when he hears us, he will be open to thinking about things differently. He has a lot of what we consider outdated views.”

Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe downplayed the notion that the governor had changed his position.

“As far as I know, they’ve never asked the governor where he stands on these issues,” she said. “The focus has always been on marriage. This may be a shift on the focus of the conversation, but it’s not a shift in policy.”

It’s unclear if the governor would propose a legislative package aimed at domestic partners in the coming session, although any proposal would not be specific to same-sex couples, according to Kempe. Other states have broadened the definition of domestic partnership to include elderly residents who share a home but don’t have a romantic relationship.

“There may be some legislation out there we can build upon,” Kempe said.

Legislative leaders were as surprised as Heroux about Carcieri’s position.

“This is the first time the governor’s ever said anything like this, so he’d like to have a conversation with the governor,” said Larry Berman, speaking for House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, an openly gay proponent of gay marriage.

House and Senate leaders noted that they support overturning the governor’s veto blocking same-sex couples from handling each others’ burial decisions, although that final decision won’t be made until the part-time legislature returns in early January.

“There’s no question that the bill that was vetoed must be passed. That’s simple human decency to me,” Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts said, adding that she was surprised to hear of the governor’s position on domestic partnership.

“It sounded to me like he was open to some possibilities I hadn’t expected him to be open to,” she said, declining to say whether she would endorse an “everything but marriage” proposal. “I want to talk to the people I’ve worked hard with on the marriage issue to make sure that something less than what they’ve been aiming for will meet their needs in the short term, because, fundamentally, I want us all to have the same rights.”

The issue is complicated for Heroux, a 42-year-old Coventry woman who married her same-sex partner of seven years in Massachusetts two years ago.

“I think I deserve to be married. I don’t deserve to have some partial separate but equal thing. But at the same time, I don’t want to shut the door and say we’re not going to talk about things,” she said. “The [burial rights] bill solved a very immediate problem. I think there’s other legislation like that.”

But Carcieri has made it clear he opposes a piecemeal approach.

In the veto message on the burial bill, he wrote: “This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue … If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the State of Rhode Island decide.”

Heroux, meanwhile, said she hopes to take this week’s lesson on the road.

“If people listen to our stories, they can begin to understand where we’re coming from,” she said. “When people understand the human problem of it, ultimately, they will want to talk about it. I would love to go to senior centers, church groups, women’s groups, whoever is interested in listening.”

Bad Behavior

2009-10-08T00:09:00Z

I witnessed two disturbing episodes of nasty behavior by people with power in Providence.

I was in the Post Office that shares a building and lobby with the Federal court. US Marshals stand post in the lobby. I was in line with a small group of people for the Post Office. An elderly Asian-American woman was walking by the Marshals when she dropped something. One Marshal picked up the item and gave it to the woman. She said,” Thank you” and went into line. As she did another Marshal said loud and rudely “why did you help her?” some of us looked over and the other Marshal looked as surprised as we did. The nasty Marshal said “Why did you help a Chink?” As I finished at the counter I was pissed! So I went over to the Marshal and proceeded to tell him how racist and unprofessional he was. He did not respond except for looking at me like he was about to throw cuffs on me. I stopped and left before I was sent to some secret prison and accused of terrorism.

Later in the day I was walking down a side street in the financial district when a late model burgundy Mercedes came blazing through the street and blew through a large puddle soaking the man walking in front of me. The Mercedes was forced to stop at the red light in front of us. As the soaked man was expressing his shock to the driver of the car (who pretended the man wasn’t standing next to him) I realized the license plate was HOUSE 44 and sitting in the driver’s seat was RI State Representative Peter J. Petrarca. I know this can happen by accident but he was at the light for a good amount of time with no cars behind him and could simply of said “I’m sorry.” instead he ignored the poor guy and blasted away as soon as the light turned.

What the hell is going on with people? Are people becoming more nasty or am I just more aware? Is this just people who think they are better than others because they have a little power?

TED IS GONE BUT THE CAUSE ENDURES, THE HOPE STILL LIVES AND THE DREAM SHALL NEVER DIE.

2009-08-26T13:04:00Z

August 27, 2009

Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies

By JOHN M. BRODER

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied families in American politics, a man who knew triumph and tragedy in near-equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night. He was 77.

The death of Mr. Kennedy, who had been battling brain cancer, was announced Wednesday morning in a statement by the Kennedy family, which was already mourning the death of the senator’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver two weeks earlier.

“Edward M. Kennedy – the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we loved so deeply – died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port,” the statement said. “We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever.”

President Obama issued a statement acknowledging Mr. Kennedy’s accomplishments. “An important chapter in our history has come to an end,” the statement said. “Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States senator of our time.”

Mr. Kennedy had been in precarious health since he suffered a seizure in May 2008. His doctors determined the cause was a malignant glioma, a brain tumor that often carries a grim prognosis.

As he underwent cancer treatment, Mr. Kennedy was little seen in Washington, appearing most recently at the White House in April as Mr. Obama signed a national service bill that bears the Kennedy name. Last week Mr. Kennedy urged Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law and let Gov. Deval Patrick appoint a temporary replacement upon his death, to assure that the state’s representation in Congress would not be interrupted by a special election.

While Mr. Kennedy was physically absent from the capital in recent months, his presence was deeply felt as Congress weighed the most sweeping revisions to America’s health care system in decades, an effort Mr. Kennedy called “the cause of my life.”

On July 15, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, which Mr. Kennedy headed, passed health care legislation, and the battle over the proposed overhaul is now consuming Capitol Hill.

Mr. Kennedy was the last surviving brother of a generation of Kennedys that dominated American politics in the 1960s and that came to embody glamour, political idealism and untimely death. The Kennedy mystique — some call it the Kennedy myth — has held the imagination of the world for decades, and it came to rest on the sometimes too-narrow shoulders of the brother known as Teddy.

Mr. Kennedy, who served 46 years as the most well-known Democrat in the Senate, longer than all but two other senators, was the only one of those brothers to reach old age. President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy were felled by assassins’ bullets in their 40s. The eldest brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., died in 1944 at the age of 29 while on a risky World War II bombing mission.

Mr. Kennedy spent much of last year in treatment and recuperation, broken by occasional public appearances and a dramatic return to the Capitol last summer to cast a decisive vote on a Medicare bill.

He electrified the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August with an unscheduled appearance and a speech that had delegates on their feet. Many were in tears.

His gait was halting, but his voice was strong. “My fellow Democrats, my fellow Americans, it is so wonderful to be here, and nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore its future, to rise to our best ideals and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.”

Senator Kennedy was at or near the center of much of American history in the latter part of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. For much of his adult life, he veered from victory to catastrophe, winning every Senate election he entered but failing in his only try for the presidency; living through the sudden deaths of his brothers and three of his nephews; being responsible for the drowning death on Chappaquiddick Island of a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, a former aide to his brother Robert. One of the nephews, John F. Kennedy Jr., who the family hoped would one day seek political office and keep the Kennedy tradition alive, died in a plane crash in 1999 at age 38.

Mr. Kennedy himself was almost killed in 1964, in a plane crash that left him with permanent back and neck problems.

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, one of the institution’s most devoted students, said of his longtime colleague, “Ted Kennedy would have been a leader, an outstanding senator, at any period in the nation’s history.”

Mr. Byrd is one of only two senators to have served longer in the chamber than Mr. Kennedy; the other was Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In May 2008, on learning of Mr. Kennedy’s diagnosis of a lethal brain tumor, Mr. Byrd wept openly on the floor of the Senate.

Born to one of the wealthiest American families, Mr. Kennedy spoke for the downtrodden in his public life while living the heedless private life of a playboy and a rake for many of his years. Dismissed early in his career as a lightweight and an unworthy successor to his revered brothers, he grew in stature over time by sheer longevity and by hewing to liberal principles while often crossing the partisan aisle to enact legislation. A man of unbridled appetites at times, he nevertheless brought a discipline to his public work that resulted in an impressive catalog of legislative achievement across a broad landscape of social policy.

Mr. Kennedy left his mark on legislation concerning civil rights, health care, education, voting rights and labor. He was chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions at his death. But he was more than a legislator. He was a living legend whose presence ensured a crowd and whose hovering figure haunted many a president.

Although he was a leading spokesman for liberal issues and a favorite target of conservative fund-raising appeals, the hallmark of his legislative success was his ability to find Republican allies to get bills passed. Perhaps the last notable example was his work with President George W. Bush to pass No Child Left Behind, the education law pushed by Mr. Bush in 2001. He also co-sponsored immigration legislation with Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. One of his greatest friends and collaborators in the Senate was Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican.

Mr. Kennedy had less impact on foreign policy than on domestic concerns, but when he spoke his voice was influential. He led the Congressional effort to impose sanctions on South Africa over apartheid, pushed for peace in Northern Ireland, won a ban on arms sales to the dictatorship in Chile and denounced the Vietnam War. In 2002, he voted against authorizing the Iraq war; later, he called that opposition “the best vote I’ve made in my 44 years in the United States Senate.”

At a pivotal moment in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Mr. Kennedy endorsed Senator Obama for president, saying Mr. Obama offered America a chance for racial reconciliation and an opportunity to turn the page on the polarizing politics of the past several decades.

“He will be a president who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past,” Mr. Kennedy told an Obama rally in Washington on Jan. 28, 2008. “He is a leader who sees the world clearly, without being cynical. He is a fighter who cares passionately about the causes he believes in without demonizing those who hold a different view.”

Mr. Kennedy struggled for much of his life with his weight, with alcohol and with persistent tales of womanizing. In an Easter break episode in 1991 in Palm Beach, Fla., he went out drinking with his son Patrick and a nephew, William Kennedy Smith, on the night that Mr. Smith was accused of raping a woman. Mr. Smith was prosecuted in a lurid trial that fall but was acquitted.

Mr. Kennedy’s personal life stabilized in 1992 with his marriage to Victoria Anne Reggie, a Washington lawyer. His first marriage, to Joan Bennett Kennedy, ended in divorce in 1982 after 24 years.

Senator Kennedy served as a surrogate father to his brothers’ children and worked to keep the Kennedy flame alive through the Kennedy Library in Boston, the Kennedy Center in Washington and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he helped establish the Institute of Politics.

In December, Harvard granted Mr. Kennedy a special honorary degree. He referred to Mr. Obama’s election as “not just a culmination, but a new beginning.”

He then spoke of his own life, and perhaps his legacy.

“We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make,” he said. “I have lived a blessed time.”

Kennedy family courtiers and many other Democrats believed he would eventually win the White House and redeem the promise of his older brothers. In 1980, he took on the president of his own party, Jimmy Carter, but fell short because of Chappaquiddick, a divided party and his own weaknesses as a candidate, including an inability to articulate why he sought the office.

But as that race ended in August at the Democratic National Convention in New York, Mr. Kennedy delivered his most memorable words, wrapping his dedication to party principles in the gauzy cloak of Camelot.

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end,” Mr. Kennedy said in the coda to a speech before a rapt audience at Madison Square Garden and on television. “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

A Family Steeped in Politics

Born Feb. 22, 1932, in Brookline, Mass., just outside Boston, Edward Moore Kennedy grew up in a family of shrewd politicians. Both his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, and his mother, the former Rose Fitzgerald, came from prominent Irish-Catholic families with long involvement in the hurly-burly of Democratic politics in Boston and Massachusetts. His father, who made a fortune in real estate, movies and banking, served in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, as the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and then as ambassador to Britain.

There were nine Kennedy children, four boys and five girls, with Edward the youngest. They grew up talking politics, power and influence because those were the things that preoccupied the mind of Joseph Kennedy. As Rose Kennedy, who took responsibility for the children’s Roman Catholic upbringing, once put it, “My babies were rocked to political lullabies.”

When Edward was born, President Herbert Hoover sent Rose a bouquet of flowers and a note of congratulations. The note came with 5 cents postage due; the framed envelope is a family heirloom.

It was understood among the children that Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the oldest boy, would someday run for Congress and, his father hoped, the White House. When Joseph Jr. was killed in World War II, it fell to the next oldest son, John, to run. As John said at one point in 1959 while serving in the Senate: “Just as I went into politics because Joe died, if anything happened to me tomorrow, Bobby would run for my seat in the Senate. And if Bobby died, our young brother, Ted, would take over for him.”

Although surrounded by the trappings of wealth — stately houses, servants and expensive cars — young Teddy did not enjoy a settled childhood. He bounced among the family homes in Boston, New York, London and Palm Beach, and by the time he was ready to enter college, he had attended 10 preparatory schools in the United States and England, finally finishing at Milton Academy, near Boston. He said that the constant moving had forced him to become more genial with strangers; indeed, he grew to be more of a natural politician than either John or Robert.

After graduating from Milton in 1950, where he showed a penchant for debating and sports but was otherwise an undistinguished student, Mr. Kennedy enrolled in Harvard, as had his father and brothers. It was at Harvard, in his freshman year, that he ran into the first of several personal troubles that were to dog him for the rest of his life: He persuaded another student to take his Spanish examination, got caught and was forced to leave the university.

Suddenly draft-eligible during the Korean War, Mr. Kennedy enlisted in the Army and served two years, securing, with his father’s help, a cushy post at NATO headquarters in Paris. In 1953, he was discharged with the rank of private first class.

Re-enrolling in Harvard, he became a more serious student, majoring in government, excelling in public speaking and playing first-string end on the football team. He graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, then enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law, where Robert had studied. There, he won the moot court competition and took a degree in 1959. Later that year, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar.

Mr. Kennedy’s first foray into politics came in 1958, while still a law student, when he managed John’s Senate re-election campaign. There was never any real doubt that Massachusetts voters would return John Kennedy to Washington, but it was a useful internship for his youngest brother.

That same year, Mr. Kennedy married Virginia Joan Bennett, a debutante from Bronxville, a New York suburb where the Kennedys had once lived. In 1960, when John Kennedy ran for president, Edward was assigned a relatively minor role, rustling up votes in Western states that usually voted Republican. He was so enthusiastic about his task that he rode a bronco at a Montana rodeo and daringly took a ski jump at a winter sports tournament in Wisconsin to impress a crowd. The episodes were evidence of a reckless streak that repeatedly threatened his life and career.

John Kennedy’s election to the White House left vacant a Senate seat that the family considered its property. Robert Kennedy was next in line, but chose the post of attorney general instead (an act of nepotism that has since been outlawed). Edward was only 28, two years shy of the minimum age for Senate service.

So the Kennedys installed Benjamin A. Smith II, a family friend, as a seat-warmer until 1962, when a special election would be held and Edward would have turned 30. Edward used the time to travel the world and work as an assistant district attorney in Boston, waiving the $5,000 salary and serving instead for $1 a year.

As James Sterling Young, the director of a Kennedy Oral History Project at the University of Virginia, put it: “Most people grow up and go into politics. The Kennedys go into politics and then they grow up.”

Less than a month after turning 30 in 1962, Mr. Kennedy declared his candidacy for the remaining two years of his brother’s Senate term. He entered the race with a tailwind of family money and political prominence. Nevertheless, Edward J. McCormack Jr., the state’s attorney general and a nephew of John W. McCormack, then speaker of the United States House of Representatives, also decided to go after the seat.

It was a bitter fight, with a public rehash of the Harvard cheating episode and with Mr. McCormack charging in a televised “Teddy-Eddie” debate that Mr. Kennedy lacked maturity of judgment because he had “never worked for a living” and had never held elective office. “If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy,” Mr. McCormack added, “your candidacy would be a joke.”

But the Kennedys had ushered in an era of celebrity politics, which trumped qualifications in this case. Mr. Kennedy won the primary by a two-to-one ratio, then went on to easy victory in November against the Republican candidate, George Cabot Lodge, a member of an old-line Boston family that had clashed politically with the Kennedys through the years.

When Mr. Kennedy entered the Senate in 1962, he was aware that he might be seen as an upstart, with one brother in the White House and another in the cabinet. He sought guidance on the very first day from one of the Senate’s most respected elders, Richard Russell of Georgia. “You go further if you go slow,” Senator Russell advised.

Mr. Kennedy took things slowly, especially that first year. He did his homework, was seen more than he was heard and was deferential to veteran legislators.

On Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, he was presiding over the Senate when a wire service ticker in the lobby brought the news of John Kennedy’s shooting in Dallas. Violence had claimed the second of Joseph Kennedy’s sons.

Edward was sent to Hyannis Port to break the news to his father, who had been disabled by a stroke. He returned to Washington for the televised funeral and burial, the first many Americans had seen of him. He and Robert had planned to read excerpts from John’s speeches at the Arlington burial service. At the last moment they chose not to.

A friend described him as “shattered — calm but shattered.”

A Deadly Plane Crash

Robert moved into the breach and was immediately discussed as a presidential prospect. Edward became a more prominent family spokesman.

The next year, he was up for re-election. A heavy favorite from the start, he was on his way to the state convention that was to renominate him when his light plane crashed in a storm near Westfield, Mass. The pilot and a Kennedy aide were killed, and Mr. Kennedy’s back and several ribs were broken. Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana pulled Mr. Kennedy from the plane.

The senator was hospitalized for the next six months, suspended immobile in a frame that resembled a waffle iron. His wife, Joan, carried on his campaign, mainly by advising voters that he was steadily recovering. He won easily over a little-known Republican, Howard Whitmore Jr.

During his convalescence, Mr. Kennedy devoted himself to his legislative work. He was briefed by a parade of Harvard professors and began to develop his positions on immigration, health care and civil rights.

“I never thought the time was lost,” he said later. “I had a lot of hours to think about what was important and what was not and about what I wanted to do with my life.”

He returned to the Senate in 1965, joining his brother Robert, who had won a seat from New York. Edward promptly entered a major fight, his first. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Voting Rights Act was up for consideration, and Mr. Kennedy tried to strengthen it with an amendment that would have outlawed poll taxes. He lost by only four votes, serving lasting notice on his colleagues that he was a rapidly maturing legislator who could prepare a good case and argue it effectively.

Mr. Kennedy was slow to oppose the war in Vietnam, but in 1968, shortly after Robert decided to seek the presidency on an antiwar platform, Edward called the war a “monstrous outrage.”

Robert Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968, as he celebrated his victory in the California primary, becoming the third of Joseph Kennedy’s sons to die a violent death. Edward was in San Francisco at a victory celebration. He commandeered an Air Force plane and flew to Los Angeles.

Frank Mankiewicz, Robert’s press secretary, saw Edward “leaning over the sink with the most awful expression on his face.”

“Much more than agony, more than anguish — I don’t know if there’s a word for it,” Mr. Mankiewicz said, recalling the encounter in “Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography,” by Adam Clymer (William Morrow, 1999).

Robert’s death draped Edward in the Kennedy mantle long before he was ready for it and forced him to confront his own mortality. But he summoned himself to deliver an eloquent eulogy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it,” Mr. Kennedy said, his voice faltering. “Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world.”

A New Role as Patriarch

After the funeral, Edward Kennedy withdrew from public life and spent several months brooding, much of it while sailing off the New England coast.

Near the end of the summer of 1968, he emerged from seclusion, the sole survivor of Joseph Kennedy’s boys, ready to take over as family patriarch and substitute father to John’s and Robert’s 13 children, seemingly eager to get on with what he called his “public responsibilities.”

“There is no safety in hiding,” he declared in a speech at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass., in August. “Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, excellence and courage that distinguished their lives.”

There was some talk of his running for president at that point. But he ultimately endorsed Hubert H. Humphrey in his losing campaign to Richard M. Nixon.

Mr. Kennedy focused more on bringing the war in Vietnam to an end and on building his Senate career. Although only 36, he challenged Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, one of the shrewdest, most powerful legislators on Capitol Hill, for the post of deputy majority leader. Fellow liberals sided with him, and he edged Mr. Long by five votes to become the youngest assistant majority leader, or whip, in Senate history.

He plunged into the new job with Kennedy enthusiasm. But fate, and the Kennedy recklessness, intervened on July 18, 1969. Mr. Kennedy was at a party with several women who had been aides to Robert. The party, a liquor-soaked barbecue, was held at a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha’s Vineyard. He left around midnight with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, took a turn away from the ferry landing and drove the car off a narrow bridge on an isolated beach road. The car sank in eight feet of water, but he managed to escape. Miss Kopechne, a former campaign worker for Robert, drowned.

Mr. Kennedy did not report the accident to the authorities for almost 10 hours, explaining later that he had been so banged about by the crash that he had suffered a concussion, and that he had become so exhausted while trying to rescue Miss Kopechne that he had gone immediately to bed. A week later, he pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and was given a two-month suspended sentence.

But that was far from the end of the episode. Questions lingered in the minds of the Massachusetts authorities and of the general public. Why was the car on an isolated road? Had he been drinking? (Mr. Kennedy testified at an inquest that he had had two drinks.) What sort of relationship did Mr. Kennedy and Miss Kopechne have? Could she have been saved if he had sought help immediately? Why did the senator tell his political advisers about the accident before reporting it to the police?

The controversy became so intense that Mr. Kennedy went on television to ask Massachusetts voters whether he should resign from office. He conceded that his actions after the crash had been “indefensible.” But he steadfastly denied any intentional wrongdoing.

His constituents sent word that he should remain in the Senate. And little more than a year later, he easily won re-election to a second full term, again defeating a little-known Republican, Josiah A. Spaulding, by a three-to-two ratio. But his heart did not seem to be in his work any longer. He was sometimes absent from Senate sessions and neglected his whip duties. Senator Byrd, of West Virginia, took the job away from him by putting together a coalition of Southern and border-state Democrats to vote him out.

That loss shook Mr. Kennedy out of his lethargy. He rededicated himself to his role as a legislator. “It hurts like hell to lose,” he said, “but now I can get around the country more. And it frees me to spend more time on issues I’m interested in.” Many years later, he became friends with Mr. Byrd and told him the defeat had been the best thing that could have happened in his Senate career.

Turmoil at Home

In the next decade, Mr. Kennedy expanded on his national reputation, first pushing to end the war in Vietnam, then concentrating on his favorite legislative issues, especially civil rights, health, taxes, criminal laws and deregulation of the airline and trucking industries. He traveled the country, making speeches that kept him in the public eye.

But when he was mentioned as a possible candidate for president in 1972, he demurred; and when the Democratic nominee, George S. McGovern, offered him the vice-presidential nomination, Mr. Kennedy again said no, not wanting to face the inevitable Chappaquiddick questions.

In 1973, his son Edward M. Kennedy Jr., then 12, developed a bone cancer that cost him a leg. The next year, Mr. Kennedy took himself out of the 1976 presidential race. Instead, he easily won a third full term in the Senate, and Jimmy Carter, a former one-term governor of Georgia, moved into the White House.

In early 1978, Mr. Kennedy’s wife, Joan, moved out of their sprawling contemporary house overlooking the Potomac River near McLean, Va., a Washington suburb. She took up residence in an apartment of her own in Boston, saying she wanted to “explore options other than being a housewife and mother.” But she also acknowledged a problem with alcohol, and conceded that she was increasingly uncomfortable with the pressure-cooker life that went with membership in the Kennedy clan. She began studying music and enrolled in a program for alcoholics.

The separation posed not only personal but also political problems for the senator. After Mrs. Kennedy left for Boston, there were rumors that linked the senator with other women. He maintained that he still loved his wife and indicated that the main reason for the separation was Mrs. Kennedy’s desire to work out her alcohol problem. She subsequently campaigned for him in the 1980 race, but there was never any real reconciliation, and they eventually entered divorce proceedings.

Although Mr. Kennedy supported Mr. Carter in 1976, by late 1978 he was disenchanted. Polls indicated that the senator was becoming popular while the president was losing support. In December, at a midterm Democratic convention in Memphis, Mr. Kennedy could hold back no longer. He gave a thundering speech that, in retrospect, was the opening shot in the 1980 campaign.

“Sometimes a party must sail against the wind,” he declared, referring to Mr. Carter’s economic belt-tightening and political caution. “We cannot heed the call of those who say it is time to furl the sail. The party that tore itself apart over Vietnam in the 1960s cannot afford to tear itself apart today over budget cuts in basic social programs.”

Mr. Kennedy did not then declare his candidacy. But draft-Kennedy groups began to form in early 1979, and some Democrats up for re-election in 1980 began to cast about for coattails that were longer than Mr. Carter’s.

After consulting advisers and family members over the summer of 1979, Mr. Kennedy began speaking openly of challenging the president, and on Nov. 7, 1979, he announced officially that he would run. “Our leaders have resigned themselves to defeat,” he said.

The campaign was a disaster, badly organized and appearing to lack a political or policy premise. His speeches were clumsy, and his delivery was frequently stumbling and bombastic. And in the background, Chappaquiddick always loomed. He won the New York and California primaries, but the victories were too little and came too late to unseat Mr. Carter. At the party’s nominating convention in New York, however, he stole the show with his “dream shall never die” speech.

With the approach of the 1984 election, there was the inevitable speculation that Mr. Kennedy, who had easily won re-election to the Senate in 1982, would again seek the presidency. He prepared and planned a campaign. But in the end he chose not to run, saying he wanted to spare his family a repeat of the ordeal they went through in 1980. Skeptics said he also knew he could not fight the undertow of Chappaquiddick.

A Full-On Senate Focus

Freed at last of the expectation that he should and would seek the White House, Mr. Kennedy devoted himself fully to his day job in the Senate. He led the fight for the 18-year-old vote, the abolition of the draft, deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, and the post-Watergate campaign finance legislation. He was deeply involved in renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law of 1968. He helped establish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He built federal support for community health care centers, increased cancer research financing and helped create the Meals on Wheels program. He was a major proponent of a health and nutrition program for pregnant women and infants.

When Republicans took over the Senate in 1981, Mr. Kennedy requested the ranking minority position on the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, asserting that the issues before the labor and welfare panel would be more important during the Reagan years.

In the years after his failed White House bid, Mr. Kennedy also established himself as someone who made “lawmaker” mean more than a word used in headlines to describe any member of Congress. Though his personal life was a mess until his remarriage in the early 1990s, he never failed to show up prepared for a committee hearing or a floor debate.

His most notable focus was civil rights, “still the unfinished business of America,” he often said. In 1982, he led a successful fight to defeat the Reagan administration’s effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act.

In one of those bipartisan alliances that were hallmarks of his legislative successes, Mr. Kennedy worked with Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, to secure passage of the voting rights measure, and Mr. Dole got most of the credit.

Perhaps his greatest success on civil rights came in 1990 with passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which required employers and public facilities to make “reasonable accommodation” for the disabled. When the law was finally passed, Mr. Kennedy and others told how their views on the bill had been shaped by having relatives with disabilities. Mr. Kennedy cited his mentally disabled sister, Rosemary, and his son who had lost a leg to cancer.

Mr. Kennedy was one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s strongest allies in their failed 1994 effort to enact national health insurance, a measure the senator had been pushing, in one form or another, since 1969.

But he kept pushing incremental reforms, and in 1997, teaming with Senator Hatch, Mr. Kennedy helped enact a landmark health care program for children in low-income families, a program now known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-Chip.

He led efforts to increase aid for higher education and win passage of Mr. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. He pushed for increases in the federal minimum wage. He helped win enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, one of the largest expansions of government health aid ever.

He was a forceful and successful opponent of the confirmation of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court. In a speech delivered within minutes of President Reagan’s nomination of Mr. Bork in 1987, Mr. Kennedy made an attack that even friendly commentators called demagogic. Mr. Bork’s “extremist view of the Constitution,” he said, meant that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of Americans.”

Some of Mr. Kennedy’s success as a legislator can be traced to the quality and loyalty of his staff, considered by his colleagues and outsiders alike to be the best on Capitol Hill.

“He has one of the most distinguished alumni associations of any U.S. senator,” said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who has worked in Congress. “To have served in even a minor capacity in the Kennedy office or on one of his committees is a major entry in anyone’s résumé.”

Those who have worked for Mr. Kennedy include Stephen G. Breyer, appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton; Gregory B. Craig, now the White House counsel; and Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration’s top official for compensation.

Mr. Kennedy “deserves recognition not just as the leading senator of his time, but as one of the greats in its history, wise in the workings of this singular institution, especially its demand to be more than partisan to accomplish much,” Mr. Clymer wrote in his biography.

“The deaths and tragedies around him would have led others to withdraw. He never quits, but sails against the wind.”

Mr. Kennedy is survived by his wife, known as Vicki; two sons, Edward M. Kennedy Jr. of Branford, Conn., and United States Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island; a daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen, of Bethesda, Md.; two stepchildren, Curran Raclin and Caroline Raclin; and four grandchildren. His former wife, Joan Kennedy, lives in Boston.

Mr. Kennedy is also survived by a sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, of New York. On Aug. 11, his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver of Potomac, Md., died at age 88. Another sister, Patricia Lawford Kennedy, died in 2006. His sister Rosemary died in 2005, and his sister Kathleen died in a plane crash in 1948.

Their little brother Teddy was the youngest, the little bear whom everyone cuddled, whom no one took seriously and from whom little was expected. He reluctantly and at times awkwardly carried the Kennedy standard, with all it implied and all it required. And yet, some scholars contend, he may have proved himself the most worthy.

“He was a quintessential Kennedy, in the sense that he had all the warts as well as all the charisma and a lot of the strengths,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. “If his father, Joe, had surveyed, from an early age up to the time of his death, all of his children, his sons in particular, and asked to rank them on talents, effectiveness, likelihood to have an impact on the world, Ted would have been a very poor fourth. Joe, John, Bobby ... Ted.

“He was the survivor,” Mr. Ornstein continued. “He was not a shining star that burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact of the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end up by far being the most significant.”

Ted Kennedy among Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
by Peter Cassels
EDGE Contributor
Wednesday Aug 5, 2009

In his twilight years, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy [D-Mass.], the Lion of the Senate, is battling cancer and fighting to see his dream of national health care become a reality. And that may be the reason President Barack Obama will award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Aug. 12. But LGBT activists also see the honor as recognition of his ardent long-time support for equal rights.

Kennedy is one of 16 people who will receive the medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor awarded for contributions to the national interests of the United States, world peace or other endeavors. Others include gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk and Billie Jean King, the tennis legend who was one of the first sports figures to reveal her sexual orientation. Stephen Hawking, Desmond Tutu, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Sidney Poitier are among the other notable honorees.

While activists are generally pleased Obama is recognizing Milk and King, they are equally as proud Kennedy will receive the honor. While not one of their own, he is what many say is their biggest supporter among national political leaders.

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said the Massachusetts Democrat "has taken leadership in fighting discrimination and hate violence, standing up for our families, and keeping our Constitution safe from bigotry." in a statement released after the White House announced the honorees on July 30.

"Our community continues to be grateful for his decades of service," Solmonese said of Kennedy.

Kennedy’s advocacy stretches back to the height of the HIV epidemic. And it encompasses a long list of issues. He voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. Kennedy has been a lead sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect LGBTs in the workplace, since its first introduction in Congress in 1994.

Kennedy also favors providing benefits to domestic partners of federal employees, which Obama partially extended through an executive order in June. He has spoken out against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And one of Kennedy’s long-fought-for measures is the Matthew Shepard Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federally recognized hate crimes. Named for the gay student who was tortured and murdered in Wyoming in 1998, the legislation may soon become law. The House of Representatives passed the bill earlier this year. Kennedy again introduced bill in Senate and the Judiciary Committee held a hearing in June.

Among LGBT activists who laud Kennedy for his sustained efforts and have worked with the senator and his staff for many years are Mary Breslauer, a former HRC board member who also serves as a consultant to the organization, and Stephen Driscoll, a founder and longtime board member of the National Stonewall Democrats. Both are also Kennedy constituents.

Breslauer considers the senator to be one of "the heroes of equality."

"I’m a monumental fan of Senator Kennedy, who has stood with us long before it was politically popular or even advisable to do so," Breslauer told EDGE. "We had no one standing with us during the AIDS epidemic except for Ted Kennedy."

Breslauer points out the Ryan White Care Act, the largest federally funded program for people living with HIV/AIDS, would not exist if Kennedy did not introduce and marshal it through Congress in 1990.

"People forget how mean-spirited and hurtful Jesse Helms was," she recalled. "[The late North Carolina Republican senator] "took every opportunity to stigmatize people with AIDS."

Breslauer added she feels Kennedy was "the only the one who told Helms on the Senate floor to shut up."

"When the lion roared, everyone listened," she said. "So you can’t overemphasize the importance of his voice for us from the very beginning. That voice was heard through every piece of Congressional legislation, up to and including same-sex marriage."

She pointed out Kennedy was one of the first to come out in favor of marriage for same-sex couples. And Breslauer is among the activists who have worked closely with Kennedy and his staff over the decades who maintain they never denied any request for assistance.

Driscoll, who now co-chairs the Stonewall Democrats’ Leadership Council and the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s LGBT Caucus, described Kennedy as the community’s most ardent advocate in the U.S. Senate’s history.

In an email statement to EDGE, Driscoll recalled that he first met Kennedy during his first U.S. Senate campaign in 1962.

"I was just a kid sealing envelopes and playing go-fer at the Wollaston headquarters," he said. "He shook my hand, expressed a genuine interest in me and a few days later I got an autographed photo in the mail--a prized possession to this day."

Why was Kennedy such an early and strong supporter of people with HIV and LGBT rights?

Driscoll believes it’s rooted in the family’s dictum: "Those to whom much is given, much is expected."

He said the Kennedy and Fitzgerald experience as immigrants in a Boston which cast the Irish as second class citizens imbued them with a passion for equality.

"I think Ted Kennedy has always been about standing for people on the margin of society and for understanding in his gut what it’s like to not be welcomed in the door," Breslauer said.

Driscoll was diagnosed with cancer around the same time Kennedy was.

"His positive attitude and his perseverance inspired me in dealing with my own condition," he said.

He recalled Kennedy’s appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which he attended as a delegate.

"His appearance was the highlight of the convention for me," Driscoll said. "I admit to sobbing uncontrollably through his entire speech. That singular show of strength and courage epitomized his dedication."

At the convention, Driscoll wore a button he designed that had Kennedy’s photo and the legend "Ted Kennedy, Our Hero: The cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."

Why I Love Barney Frank

2009-08-19T19:05:35Z

My Z Changing Utah News

2009-07-22T16:47:00Z

My Z is already bringing fair and balanced coverage to Utah news. His recent coverage of a gay couple being assaulted by Mormon security guards on a downtown sidewalk was rated the best coverage by www.afterelton.com to see his story click on the following link: http://www.afterelton.com/blog/lylemasaki/the-top-story-salt-lake-city-main-street-plaza-matt-aune-derek-jones

I'm so proud of My Z!

G

I Didn't Know My Own Strength

2009-07-05T14:43:00Z

G

2009-06-28T20:58:00Z

Create your own

Change

2009-05-24T13:03:00Z

Change

Things change
Houses change
Styles change
People change
You change
I change
It’s all down to time
It’s all down to nature
But as time and nature change everything
I want one thing to remain
You and I together
Changing together
Forever

Meow Shorty

Is it Catholicism or the Closet?

2009-05-10T12:05:17Z

It is easy to jump to the conclusion that
same gender marriage has stalled in RI
because of the Catholic church. I do
believe Catholicism has played a role
but its not as simple as church doctrine.
The truth about RI is that it is run by
many closeted legislators. They live
in fear of any issue that could draw
attention to their own sexuality. Some
have come out for personal convenience
but then shut the closet door if they feel
their political power could be lost. The
fear is more about internalized
homophobia which might come from
being raised Catholic. The Catholic
church does not have the power it
once did and most Rhode Islanders
could care less what the church thinks
about their lives.
Just simply look at how many churches
have closed.

Many RI gay leaders have always been
friends of the closeted politicians and
give them a pass. These same gay
leaders can be found socializing on the
"Hill" or at a fundraiser with
the same folks who will not let the
Marriage bill out of committee.

The closeted or semi closeted politicians
in RI are self serving weak human beings
who rarely ever stand up for anything that
matters.

G

Gay marriage effort stalls in heavily Catholic R.I.

By Ray Henry, Associated Press

PROVIDENCE — Gay marriage could soon become the law of the land across New England— except in the heavily Roman Catholic state of Rhode Island.

A string of sudden successes for gay marriage advocates has left Rhode Island a political outlier. Maine became the fourth state in New England to legalize same-sex unions on Wednesday, while New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch is now deciding whether to sign similar legislation.

Vermont lawmakers established gay marriage last month, following a path already set by courts in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Yet the movement has stalled in Rhode Island, perhaps even lost ground, after a stalemate at the Statehouse, a loss in the state's top court and continued opposition from religious leaders.

"I do not hear voices raised, voices stating absolutely that this just cannot do," said Cassandra Ormiston, 62, a lesbian who could not get divorced in Rhode Island after she and her partner married in Massachusetts. "It is not enough to be patient."

Religion remains among the biggest hurdles. A recent survey by Trinity College in Connecticut showed 46% of Rhode Islanders identify themselves as Roman Catholic, a larger percentage than any other state.

Given its size, the church carries political clout. On the last Inauguration Day, every statewide elected official began the morning with a special Mass at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, celebrated by Bishop Thomas Tobin.

Tobin does not hesitate to tussle with politicians, especially on gay marriage. He calls gay unions a perversion of natural law and a violation of an institution that Catholics believe was created by God.

Two years ago, he harshly criticized Attorney General Patrick Lynch, a Catholic, for advising state agencies to recognize the marriages of gay couples wed outside Rhode Island.

"We don't see it as a civil rights issue," Tobin said in a recent interview, "because there's never a right to do something that's morally wrong."

Bills legalizing gay marriage have been introduced in the Statehouse every year since 1997. None has ever been approved by a legislative committee, required before those bills could be aired on the full floor.

House Speaker William Murphy and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva-Weed, both Democrats and Catholics, oppose gay marriage.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Rhoda Perry, a Democrat from Providence, does not expect to get a vote this year. She believes legislative leaders are trying to shield fellow lawmakers from a fractious debate.

"You know your numbers," Perry said. "So why make anyone even have to vote on something that at least some of their constituents will be upset about if you already know the votes aren't there."

Even if a simple majority of lawmakers backed Perry's bill, Republican Gov. Don Carcieri— another Catholic — would almost certainly veto it. Overriding a veto requires the support of 60% of lawmakers in each chamber.

Courts legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts and Connecticut, but that avenue seems unlikely in Rhode Island.

In 2007, Rhode Island's Supreme Court refused to let Ormiston divorce her wife, Margaret Chambers. The couple lived in Rhode Island but married across the border in Massachusetts.

In its ruling, the court said it could not grant a divorce because Rhode Island lawmakers have never recognized marriage as anything but a union between a man and a woman.

Frustrated with the slow pace in Rhode Island, Ormiston is parting ways with Marriage Equality Rhode Island, which has locally advocated for gay marriage, and starting a new organization, called Equality Rising, to push harder.

"It is not enough to wait until we no longer have opposition," she said.

It might become slightly easier for those looking to legalize gay marriage in Rhode Island when Carcieri finishes his second and final term as governor in January 2011. Potential candidates including former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, an independent, and Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts and Attorney General Patrick Lynch, both Democrats, support gay marriage.

General Treasurer Frank Caprio, also a Democrat, said he would not veto a gay marriage bill if he were elected governor.

Peace & Kindness

2009-04-19T14:20:00Z

We all don't have to be the Dalai Lama
to make the world a better place. We
just need to think how we treat others
in our daily life.
Why were we all so shocked that an
unattractive person could sing so
beautifully?

G

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut68Set-w0o

Buy Surrey Leader Photos Online

By Black Press - Surrey North Delta Leader

Published: April 13, 2009 12:00 PM
Updated: April 13, 2009 12:44 PM

All the meanness in the world, from abuse, to bullying, to gang violence, can be attributed to people who "have lost touch with their heart."

That's the message of Brock Tully, a Vancouver writer and speaker whose has pedalled his message around North America not once, but three times.

"I really believe that the solution to all our challenges, gang violence, crystal meth, abuse and bullying of kids... is creating a culture of kindness."

Tully, 62, is cycled through Surrey and Langley last Monday, on the last leg of his "Kindness, Cycle it Forward" tour, begun in Vancouver in September.

Along an 18,000-kilometre route that included Salt Lake City and Phoenix, Arizona, through the southern U.S. states and back up the west coast, he has arranged presentations to school children about bullying and kindness.

"It is kind of an anti-bullying presentation, that is inspiring, but it focuses on a solution, which is kindness."

He makes his talks interesting and instructive, through multi-media presentations and juggling acts, and he aims at making children understand why bullying happens, and how to stop it, he said.

He also hands out bracelets to the children, with "kindness" written in nine different languages. The children start each day with the bracelet on their left, wrist, and move it to their right, upon an act of kindness.

Bullies, he says, have lost touch with their heart, and pick on people with qualities they have lost touch with in themselves, he says.

Because their victims don't understand this, they take it personally, he said, but the bully is actually jealous.

"If kids see that they are being bullied because of something lacking in the bully, not because something is wrong with them (the victim), it is really empowering."

As a UBC student, Tully says, he was "a jock," by all appearances outgoing and popular, yet with many problems. He was drinking too much and was suicidal when he decided in 1970 to cycle around North America.

He describes that 1970 tour not as a 10,000-mile trip, but a 12-inch journey, "from my head to my heart, which included Washington D.C., the southern states, and Mexico.

"I reconnected with my heart and I am living a life of purpose."

Tully is the first to admit he is not perfect.

"I am not always kind. We all falter, but it is important to get back up and keep trying."

He writes inspirational books, the Reflections series, and appears as a keynote inspirational speaker while living in Vancouver.

He is the co-founder of the Kindness Foundation of Canada, and in 2000 he again set off by bike to take his message to across Canada and the U.S. hitting New Brunswick, New York, Miami, the southern States and the West Coast.

On this trip, Tully is pulling a 70-pound trailer behind his bicycle, and had just travelled up the West Coast, through "freezing snowstorms and unbelievable winds," taking a ferry to Victoria from Washington, before travelling through Vancouver to Langley on his way to Kamloops.

He will return to Vancouver on May 3.

"It has been amazing. I come in and offer (a presentation) and a lot of schools have invited me in."

At cycleitforward.org, people can follow Tully's daily journey.

Marriage Equality

2009-04-05T12:11:00Z

The news from Iowa is great but it makes me realize how ridiculous Rhode Island is on this issue.
The fact that our neighboring states that we share so much with have come so far but we in RI can't even
get it out of committee. Not to mention our state is partially run by gays! What are they so afraid of?

G

Iowa Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage

By AMY LORENTZEN, Associated Press Writer Amy Lorentzen, Associated Press Writer Fri Apr 3, 6:05 pm ET

DES MOINES, Iowa – Iowa's Supreme Court legalized gay marriage Friday in a unanimous and emphatic decision that makes Iowa the third state — and first in the nation's heartland — to allow same-sex couples to wed.

Iowa joins only Massachusetts and Connecticut in permitting same-sex marriage. For six months last year, California's high court allowed gay marriage before voters banned it in November.

The Iowa justices upheld a lower-court ruling that rejected a state law restricting marriage to a union between a man and woman.

The county attorney who defended the law said he would not seek a rehearing. The only recourse for opponents appeared to be a constitutional amendment, which could take years to ratify.

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective," the Supreme Court wrote.

Iowa lawmakers have "excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification."

To issue any other decision, the justices said, "would be an abdication of our constitutional duty."

The Iowa attorney general's office said gay and lesbian couples can seek marriage licenses starting April 24, once the ruling is considered final.

Des Moines attorney Dennis Johnson, who represented gay and lesbian couples, said "this is a great day for civil rights in Iowa."

At a news conference announcing the decision, he thanked the plaintiffs and said, "Go get married, live happily ever after, live the American dream."

Plaintiff Kate Varnum, 34, introduced her partner, Trish Varnum, as "my fiance."

"I never thought I'd be able to say that," she said, fighting back tears.

Jason Morgan, 38, said he and his partner, Chuck Swaggerty, adopted two sons, confronted the death of Swaggerty's mother and endured a four-year legal battle as plaintiffs.

"If being together though all of that isn't love and commitment or isn't family or marriage, then I don't know what is," Morgan said. "We are very happy with the decision today and very proud to live in Iowa."

In its ruling, the Supreme Court upheld an August 2007 decision by a judge who found that a state law limiting marriage to a man and a woman violates the constitutional rights of equal protection.

The Polk County attorney's office claimed that Judge Robert Hanson's ruling violated the separation of powers and said the issue should be left to the Legislature.

The case had been working its way through the courts since 2005, when Lambda Legal, a New York-based gay rights organization, filed a lawsuit on behalf of six gay and lesbian couples in Iowa.

"Today, dreams become reality, families are protected and the Iowa Constitution's promise of equality and fairness has been fulfilled," Lambda Legal attorney Camilla Taylor said.

John Logan, a sociology professor at Brown University, said Iowa's status as a largely rural, Midwest state could enforce an argument that gay marriage is no longer a fringe issue.

"When it was only California and Massachusetts, it could be perceived as extremism on the coasts and not related to core American values.

"But as it extends to states like Iowa, and as attitudes toward gay marriage have evidently changed, then people will look at it as an example of broad acceptance," Logan said.

Polk County Attorney John Sarcone said his office will not ask for the case to be reconsidered.

"Our Supreme Court has decided it, and they make the decision as to what the law is, and we follow Supreme Court decisions," Sarcone said.

Gay marriage opponents have no other legal options to appeal the case to the state or federal level because they were not parties to the lawsuit, and there is no federal issue raised in the case, Sarcone said.

Bryan English, spokesman for the Iowa Family Policy Center, a conservative group that opposes same-sex marriage, said many Iowans are disappointed with the ruling and do not want courts to decide the issue.

"I would say the mood is one of mourning right now in a lot of ways," English said. He said the group immediately began lobbying legislators "to let the people of Iowa vote" on a constitutional amendment.

"This is an issue that will define (lawmakers') leadership. This is not a side issue."

Iowa has a history of being in the forefront on social issues. It was among the first states to legalize interracial marriage and to allow married women to own property. It was also the first state to admit a woman to the bar to practice law and was a leader in school desegregation.

Todd Pettys, a University of Iowa law professor, said the state's equal protection clause on which Friday's ruling was based is worded slightly differently than the U.S. Constitution. But Iowa's language means almost "exactly the same thing."

Still, he said, it's difficult to predict whether the U.S. Supreme Court would view the issue the same way as the Iowa justices.

Linda McClain, professor at Boston University School of Law, said she doubted Iowa's ruling would be "a realistic blueprint" for the U.S. Supreme Court," particularly considering the court's conservative leadership.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, a Democrat, said state lawmakers were unlikely to consider gay marriage legislation in this legislative session, which is expected to end within weeks.

Gronstal also said he's "not inclined" to propose a constitutional amendment during next year's session.

Iowa's Democratic governor, Chet Culver, said he would review the decision before announcing his views.