gay 2012

The lastest on what is a hot topic being discussed by the President this week! Gay versusStraight!!

Preface / Introduction

This is a collection of articles about unique individuals.

Table of Contents

1. An open letter to President Obama, Vice President Biden and every U.S. state and federallegislator. Make gay marriage legal now. 2. Obama administration moves to the right side of history. Belatedly declares Defense of MarriageAct unconstitutional. 3. Liberation rolls on as New York -- the great Empire State -- legalizes same- sex marriage. 4. The most beautiful place in the world to die. Tyler Clementi... Dharun Ravi... the GeorgeWashington Bridge... and the necessity for remembrance 5. 'There's pansies, that's for thoughts.' The gentility, sweetness and enduring resentment and angerof the most popular flower of all.

An open letter to President Obama, Vice President Biden andevery U.S. state and federal legislator. Make gay marriagelegal now. Ladies and gentlemen,

Now that "Don't ask, don't tell" has been consigned to the scrap heap of bad ideas and ludicrouspolicies, it's time to give the whole apparatus of sexual oppression one final push and remove thisissue from the national agenda.

It's time to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act of September, 21, 1996 and all the invidious vestigesof legalized oppression, in which one group of people tells another group of people what they can dowith their bodies and with whom they can do it. And, most daft of all, that sexually oppressivemajority tells the despised minority whom it may marry and under what circumstances. Here is(misused) power indeed.

Last time I checked America was the land of the brave and the home of the free. Somewhere alongthe line, however, we let our core values be turned on their heads. What was brave, after all, aboutsubjecting the sexual minority to needlessly repressive legislation and allowing generations ofabuse? What was free about parsing liberty so that it was available to some, but not to all? It wasunnecessary! It was cruel! It was unAmerican... and it is the policy the overwhelming majority ofyou "leaders" have pursued... depriving thousands of our best citizens of their rights whiletriumphing the rights of other people. In the process you created a culture sanctifying by law thesuperiority of some, at the expense of others. And you dared call this the American way? It is theway of tyrants throughout the ages for whom divide and conquer was the best way to govern.

Think for a moment about "Don't ask, don't tell." Now that it's gone and we can review it throughthe rear view mirror of history, we can see it for what it was: a downright silly attempt to oppress,control, demean. Of course, it didn't work, although it was the law far too long. Who, after all, wantsto devote their life to the business of sexual snoopery? Have we not better things to do with our timeand resources than turning people into legalized Peeping Toms?

Who thinks up this stuff, anyway? It's no wonder your vocation -- politics -- is the subject of nearuniversal contempt. Your business is to empower people, improve their lives rather than pander tothe basest instincts of humanity.

Do you need more reasons that this for legalizing gay marriage? Take these for openers:

* Legalizing gay marriage nationwide delivers long-delayed rights to many without costing the restanything except their arrogance and condescension. In short, it delivers equity and the full protectionof the law without detriment of any kind to anyone.

* Legitimizing gay marriage strengthens the institution of marriage while providing those marryingthe security and comfort of the law.

* Legalizing gay marriage, making it a civil right, removes often muddled clerics from the debateand puts them firmly in their place. Has anyone read the Constitution lately about the separation ofchurch and state/ This is not a theocracy like Iran where mullahs set policy, disastrously so.

The debate on gay marriage has brought out the worst (and also occasionally the best) in today'stheological discussions and sermonizing. Let's be very clear on this point: gay marriage is tooimportant to be left to clergymen. Making gay marriage legal marginalizes these thought-challengedtheologians without diminishing their rights.

http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com Copyright Howard Martell - 2012 4 of 17

The lastest on what is a hot topic being discussed by the President this week! Gay versus Straight!!

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Such people, once gay marriage is legal, will still have the right to thoughtless fulmination... butwhat they say will be viewed correctly as insignificant, quaint, outmoded, trivial thought from theill-educated and mean spirited, not the Word of God.

* Legalizing gay marriage promotes marriage. It enables people who have yearned for lawfulprotection of their relationships the security they have asked for. Really, what sensible person couldregard this as anything other than good? Legal marriage between two consenting adults is good,whoever those two people are. And that's a fact.

Want more?

Legalizing gay marriage removes an issue from the national agenda that should never havedistracted us in the first place. It has never created a new job, never uplifted anyone's standard ofliving, never increased the rights and welfare of anyone at any time. In short it's been a foolish wasteof time all round, perpetrated by those who claim to have a direct line, always accessible to thedivinity, who gives them their hate lines direct. This sounds like Torquemada and the SpanishInquisition... the stuff of fear and loathing, not enlightenment. And, remember, this country wascreated by men of the Enlightenment who understood what repression was and crafted a society thatabove all let freedom ring.

Be ye unafraid our leaders. Little enough is required of you, including you, Mr. President Obama.

The glory days of the gay rights revolution are history. The heroes of the Stonewall riots of June 28,1969 and the brave lads of the Mattachine Society (founded 1965) cry for a Vietnam-style Memorialall their own. Now you need only copy what legislators in a handful of progressive states (mostly inthe Northeast and in Iowa) have already done. Pettifogging legal expertise is needed, no realcourage at all. You legislators are surely up to this. It's what you do: "talk leadership whilefollowing... way far behind."

This goes for you, too, Mr. President. You went to the gay community cap in hand and madepromises that gained you its adherence, its money, its votes. And here, as elsewhere, you have failedto deliver. If you have a liberal bone in you (which many now doubt) use it to solve this problem...or at the very least hoist your colors to the masthead, showing gumption for a change, not just theability to read poll numbers.

It's clear which way history is moving.

Christmas Eve, 2010, on ABC's "Good Morning,America" Vice President Biden opined that gaymarriage was on its way in as points of view "evolved" on this non-issue.

More telling 29-year-old Barbara Bush, the daughter of President George W. Bush, has releasedthrough the Human Rights Campaign, a video that takes her own father and his intolerance to task.Speaking as a New Yorker she says, "New York is about fairness and equality and everyone shouldhave the right to marry the person that they love." In this, Ms. Bush joins her mother and grandmother, First Ladies both, who have always seen this issue clearly and in human terms. Why can'tthe ex-President? We forgave him many things including his alcoholism. Where is a drop ofhumanity in return?

It doesn't much matter, for the solution to the problem is at hand. People Barbara Bush's age regardthe matter as settled; the grim reaper daily removes more obstructionists and haters. Demographics,not courage, will settle the issue.

Still, Mr. President and honored legislators all, it would have been nice if, even as this issue issettled, you would demonstrate some little leadership. It is little enough to ask, given how little youhave all done to help the afflicted people, rather than add to their burdens.for so very, very long.




Take the step, the right step, the necessary step. Claim all the glory and the kudos. You have notearned them, but it's the way you do business, leaders in name, seldom in fact. So, then, do yourbusiness without further ado. We have waited enough.




Obama administration moves to the right side of history.Belatedly declares Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

This is a story about a basic human right long deferred and now advanced.

This is the story of a president who tried to have his cake and eat it, too; who finally decidedleadership was necessary and not merely finesse.

This is the story of a great nation's contortions to affirm the right of marriage for some... whiledenying it to others.

This is the story of the ironically named Defense of Marriage Act, now called by its right name:unconstitutional, discriminatory... and now, with the stroke of the president's pen, dead.

Here are the facts

The Defense of Marriage Act started its ill-starred career when President Bill Clinton (who shouldhave known better) signed it into law September 21, 1996. (Public law 104-199.)

It was silly, stupid, and abrasively un-American from the first minute this profoundly bad idea wasconceived. It said, in effect, these United States will create a club called Marriage. Certain peoplewill be able to join this club and derive significant advantages and benefits (one man and onewoman together) while others (one man and one man or one woman and one woman together) willbe told that the way they love each other, deemed unsuitable by others, thereby precludes them fromthe receipt of any benefits, sentencing them instead to a lifetime of second-rate status and thebitterness, despair, and alienation accompanying that status.

In other words, in the land where the words "it's a free country" are constantly mouthed by even theyoungest children... the Congress of these United States and its president threw freedom out thewindow, the better to allow the majority to ride roughshod (and sanctimonious, too) over the rightsof the harassed minority... which only wanted to be able to join the club and share its benefits.

This minority never wanted to do to the majority what this majority had already done to them:harass, demean, deprive, though that majority was adamant there could never be equality.

This minority never wanted or ever proclaimed its practices superior to the majority's although thatmajority regularly did that to them.

This minority never asked that the marriage rights of the majority be suppressed, withheld, deniedthough that majority insisted that that minority be so victimized...

And this minority never said, never hinted, that the majority's concept of love and relationships bedeclared illegal and bring about the immediate cancellation of the majority's substantial economicadvantages, although that majority insisted upon this depriving, this spoliation, this theft from theminority they victimized.

A great nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal, withmalice aforethought rejected and re-wrote the very high and mighty documents of its revolutionarybirth, opting instead for bigotry, legal segregation; selecting and endorsing instead the definingprinciples of the gulag, the ghetto, the concentration camp: that while all animals are equal, some aremore equal than others and that these others must be punished accordingly... and for the crime oflove at that.




Enter Barrack Obama, beneficiary of the civil rights movement, slow to protect the civil rights ofothers.

Obama went cap in hand to the gay community and pledged his assistance towards their struggle.But as became more and more clear, he preferred their money and block support. President in partbecause of their overwhelming support, community members were livid at his glacial pace wheretheir constitutional rights were violated and withheld. There was outrage from these goodAmericans, and their outrage was both understandable and right. Obama had taken from them.... butdone nothing to secure their civil rights. He was, in these days, part of the problem; not part of thesolution.

Instead of endorsing and supporting what he had to know in both head and heart was right, hesuccumbed to the prevailing vice of the capital, walking a fine line between retaining the wrong thatwas... and the hornet's nest he would unleash if he moved to secure the undoubtedly rights of theminority. This wasn't leadership... it was politics... and it was despicable. As any civil rights leadercould attest.

In December, 2010 the entire dynamic of the debate changed dramatically when the Congressrepealed the ban on gay people serving openly in the military, a result which only a few days beforehad seemed to be dead. It is my belief that the two ladies from Maine, Senators Olympia Snow andSusan Collins were crucial in this reversal. If so, they will have resurrected the old slogan "AsMaine goes, so goes the nation." If later historical research should vindicate my supposition, it willbe no surprise to me that two women brought sense, humanity, and equity to the debate; women,after all, were second-class citizens in their own marriages for long... and they knew the destructionand damage of that servile position too well to impose it on others.

February 23, 2011 Barrack Obama began to make amends, advancing freedom, instead of supportinguntenable means to restrict it. The Department of Justice will no longer defend the Defense ofMarriage Act in court, saying that that law prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriages isunconstitutional and discriminatory.

At last!

This does not conclude the matter, there are still many significant aspects to be resolved and there is,even now, a backlash in certain states where gay marriage rights had become law. It is always thusin this protracted, interminable debate. But this is progress, make no mistake.

Each time a significant bastion of bigotry and oppression falls, the jeremiads of opponents seemmore and more clearly what they have always been: the bitter fruit of counselors of hatred and fear,wearing America on their sleeves while never understanding that America is nothing where personalfreedom remains the province of some who deny it to others. Our motto, remember all, is yet "Letfreedom ring!"

This step towards final resolution of this issue has cheered multitudes... and has, I think, helpedrestore to the president a recollection of who he is and what he represents. These, it seems, he hadsomewhat forgot in his first years in office. Now he has remembered that he himself, his presidencyand all its officers and affairs, would never have existed without the pioneers of civil rights. And hehas found that civil rights are not for blacks alone... or any other single group... they are for all of us,no matter who we love, or how.




Liberation rolls on as New York -- the great Empire State --legalizes same- sex marriage. By Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. For this story, so long in the making, many tunes would have been good...Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" (recorded in 1977) is not merely good; it's note and word perfect. It'sa tune that means the human machine is moving again. That we're marching ahead! Moving, despiteall inhibitions and blocks, towards the Promised Land. You'll find this number in any search engine.Listen to it a time or two before digging into this article. And be sure to save the link; you'll want tobe reminded that humanity doesn't move inexorably ahead; it does so by fits and starts... even so, wemove!

Saratoga all over again.

Back in late 1777, the fortunes of George Washington, his troops, and the entire Revolution were atrock bottom. All that was needed was one more British victory and the British would have the honorof catching Traitor George and his nefarious crew... then indeed would the revolutionaries who hadnot succeeded in hanging together would hang separately. Victory was close... temptingly close. Itall hinged on a man called General "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne (1722-1792) an officer wholoved the pomp and circumstance of war... and knew his comfort and fortune, his place in history,were secure if he won that victory. Unfortunately Burgoyne was better at striking martial poses (SirJoshua Reynolds painted him grandiloquently in one) than winning victories...

At Saratoga, in New York, Burgoyne, so very arrogant, so very confident of crushing victory, lostthe battle. And while there were difficult days ahead for the revolutionaries when Gentleman Johnnysurrendered, thereby bringing the French and Spanish support to their cause, the momentum shiftedonce and for all; the fate of British North America was glaringly apparent. All because of one eventin New York, October, 1777.

And now New York has determined the fate of another revolution... same-sex marriage. There's nostopping it now.

The man who did it... and turned himself into a likely future president.

I have long thought that the problem with the same-sex marriage matter (which is not the mostimportant problem on the nation's agenda), was that its advocates were flat-footed amateurs at thegreat American game of using our history, culture and values to get something you want, somethingothers may not want to yield. Such situations scream for a fresh look... and a fresh, keen, credibleleader... a person who knows the game and plays it joyously con brio, with the verve and styledisplayed in Reynolds' great masterpiece.

Andrew Cuomo is that person and every one of the approximately 45,000 same-sex couples in NewYork should be required by love (if not by law) to toast this consummate political animal at theirweddings, which can begin to take place July 24, 2011.

The 56th governor of New York, a sure-fire Democratic heavyweight.

The way Andrew Cuomo, who only assumed his high office January 1, 2011, handled the bug-a-booof same-sex marriage displays political wisdom and skill of the first magnitude, because gaymarriage is and always has been a political problem; a political matter masquerading as morality...when it was always about who gets what, just the way most American moral matters are.

Let's set the stage...




Two years ago, the New York legislature defeated same-sex marriage. One major reason for thishumiliating set-back was the lack of leadership. Gay advocates were mostly gay people whosespecial pleading often sounded whiney with non-existent organizational skills and no "go -to" leaderin sight. It all made for an inevitable result: defeat. Gay leaders got a pie in the face and learned aharsh lesson about politics the New York way... a brand-new approach was called for.

Andrew Cuomo's election at governor in November, 2010, to the office once held by his father,started the ball rolling. He told gay leaders he was the go-to guy... and that he'd call the shots andgive them victory. (He glossed over all the goodies he'd accrue... including the lifetime right to dipinto the huge financial resources of gay Americans in pursuit of La Casa Blanca.)

I don't know precisely what was in Cuomo's mind at that point but I can guess. He knew -- or had toknow -- that same-sex marriage opponents had no case; or, rather that their case was based ondenying their fellow citizens the very right they themselves had: the right to select the person youwant to marry and spend your life with. The entire opposition stood for everything we abhor: gettingtold by others what we can and cannot do, what is right and what is wrong, and being grateful for aninherently unequal second-class citizenship.

Oh yes, don't forget to bow your head , tug your forelock and say "merci, m. le marquis", whileeating his dust while he throws you a couple of doubloons for which you are supposed to beeternally grateful. Can anyone say "Bastille"?

Cuomo, smart, smart, smart, cast the debate in terms of personal freedom, the "Don't treat on me"message of the revolutionary flag. Having forged the message, Cuomo -- audace, audace, toujoursl'audace -- shopped it, to broaden support for the measure. The people he approached were not thepeople you'd think; they were the people he needed to secure his argument and get the votes... andthey were called... Republicans. Yeah, the supposed enemy.

He convened a meeting with Republicans who were squeamish about the discriminatory position theRoman Catholic hierarchy and other unenlightened folk were forcing on them, the policy of "I've gotmy main squeeze, I'll make sure you can't have yours". This wasn't a case; it was adolescentone-upsmanship pure and simple... and it made some influential GOP types squirm with dismay andembarrassment. Cuomo made them a offer...

Admit it, he said. You feel uncomfortable supporting people who want to deny some of their fellowcountrymen the very rights they have themselves. The guests admitted that was so; they felt likeheels. Cuomo says, exactly. So, here's what we can do: you support same-sex marriage in thelegislature, cough up some bucks to finance the effort, and I'll cover you back in your districts. Astraight political deal of the kind practiced by their excellencies the governors of New York sinceJohnny Burgoyne handed them, on his silver platter, the state house... that famous launching pad forso many to the White House.

Just who was at that pivotal meeting and later discussions is not entirely known (the name ofbillionaire Paul Singer is mentioned and he has an openly gay son)... nor does it matter much. Thepoint is Cuomo had a goal; Cuomo had a message; Cumo had a strategy...and in due course, atriumphant Governor Andrew Cuomo had a victory. The New York state senate, 33-29 joined itsHouse of Representatives to pass the bill that will get, in a suitably grand and significant ceremony,the governor's John Hancock. Signed, sealed and delivered, as promised.

New York's action is critical; it gives the cause major momentum, unstoppable now. And so isCuomo. The most significant aspect of this victory may not be the thousands of couples it willbenefit. It may be an oath that begins, " I, Andrew Cuomo, do solemnly swear...." He's humming"Don't Stop" under his breath right now; it's his favorite tune.




The most beautiful place in the world to die. Tyler Clementi...Dharun Ravi... the George Washington Bridge... and thenecessity for remembranceby Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. Tyler Clementi was a young violinist who with his obliging instrumentproduced sounds that touched the heart. Given world enough and time who knows where thisundeniable talent, showcased in the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Youth Orchestra,would have taken him? But because he was attracted to men rather than to women, he was never toknow. And so today, I sit here in Cambridge starring at a photograph of a dead boy we cannot affordto forget, for to forget would be the real crime...

... but memory is sharp, hard, remorseless, exquisitely painful...

And so we must have Mozart. Mozart who so well understood life... and who with such grandeurenables us to cope with death...

Thus, as the occasional music to this tale I give you the Master's Requiem Mass in D Minor (K.626), composed in Vienna (1791) available in any search engine... Focusing on his life, whilst neverforgetting his death and uneasy spirit...

The thousands of pages dedicated to the matter of Tyler Clementi focus on when he died, how hedied, why he died, and, above all, who is responsible that he died... and I shall also deal with thesecrucial questions. But, first and foremost, we must never lose sight of the boy at the center of thismatter... for this is above all his story...

Tyler was born in 1991 in Buffalo, New York and raised in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He was a goodstudent and like so many other aspiring musicians found life, beauty, meaning and sustenance in thecelestial purity of sound, often so intense as to produce exaltation, apotheosis, catharsis, ecstasy.Tyler was one of the gifted who took mere notes on a page and produced beauty... and whenever hepicked up his violin that beauty was his to command.... and to give...

... and he gave freely, liberally, with the exuberance and trust of youth and a heart that sought loveand meant no harm to anyone...

And so Tyler Clementi went to Rutgers, to test himself against the best of his peers... He was just 18years old... with a mere handful of days to live. What happened next is now a matter of detailedrecord... why it happened will always require the judgement of Solomon and perhaps more... for theperson we long to ask -- Tyler himself -- cannot tell us.

Dramatis personnae.

Now come the principal actors...

Tyler, his roommate Dharun Ravi, fellow hallmate Molly Wei... and the gaping worldwidecommunity found on the Internet and without which there would have been no story, no tragedy, anda happier life for all.

Here is what happened....

On the nights of September 19 and 22, 2010 Clementi texted Ravi about using their room for theevening, a thing college students have been asking their roommates forever. On the first occasionRavi met Clementi's friend, an older man whom Ravi did not like. Nothing so far meant very much;




surely no one thought that Tyler would be soon dead. But the mad chemistry of tragedy hadstarted... and it fermented in the brain of Dharun Ravi.

Ravi now says, as well he might, that he wasn't the agent provocateur for what happened, but as hestands convicted before the world, this is not surprising.

Fact: He thought it fitting and proper to use a webcam to view a portion of Clementi's dorm-roomliaison with another man... and immediately tweeted it to his list of 150 people, thus beginning itsviral dissemination.

Fact: Ravi posted text messages saying "Yeah, keep the gays away" and "People are having aviewing party with a bottle of Bacardi and beer in this kid's room for my roommate", along withdirections on how to view it remotely.

Fact: Ravi set up his webcam and pointed it toward's Clementi's bed, where it was found by police,still so pointed.

All this Tyler learned... and acted responsibly, complaining to his resident assistant and two othercollege officials. He also wrote in detail about these events on the "Just Us Boys" message board andthe Yahoo message board. He asked for a new room, a new roommate, and for help. He was doingwhat he had to do and he was doing it responsibly.

But here is where things went so very wrong...

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." (Hamlet)

But something gnawed at Clementi and so 38 times following his first webcam viewing hereturned... returned... and returned again and again to that bit of video that he became convinced haddestroyed his life, his future, his peace of mind. He was wrong, so very wrong, but he was young,inexperienced, and, he thought alone. And that is the real tragedy...

Thus did his dark purpose commence.

8:42 PM September 22.

The cast of characters was growing now. College administrators were now involved.. Ravi was backpeddling as quick as he could, minimizing what he did, why he did it, stating over and over againthat he meant nothing by it, didn't mean it, apologized for it.

But already Tyler had his foot upon a very different path... He was Hamlet now, without evenknowing it:

"To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings andarrows of outrageous fortune, Or take arms against a sea of troubles."

He had solved this conundrum.... tragically, finally, unnecessarily... an act of passion from a mind inturmoil. "The George Washington Bridge over the Hudson is the most beautiful bridge in theworld." Le Corbusier

And it was here Tyler Clementi came to die, that is to say to do the extremest thing in his power... toembrace oblivion. What made him do this deed of rashness, to end everything and remove the futureand every joy to come? We can never know, for his final words, sent on his cell phone from the greatmarvel towering above him, picked out in the brightest of lights, was brief, inadequate, far too littlefor such an epochal event:

"Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."




And so he jumped, alive for seconds still... already gone from the living, en route to eternity, the lastthings he saw, the dark waters of the Hudson, the explosion of light that was Manhattan. Thennothing... a dead boy of enigmas and secrets which I so long to know but never shall.

Envoi.

On March 16, 2012 now 20 year old Dharun Ravi was convicted of invasion of privacy and biasintimidation, a hate crime. Wherever he goes in life, however long he lives, every day he will thinkon young Tyler Clementi, whose vivid memory and restive spirit will be ever present... "To die, tosleep/No more... Be all my sins remember'd."




'There's pansies, that's for thoughts.' The gentility,sweetness and enduring resentment and anger of the mostpopular flower of all. by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. This is the story of a popular flower, perhaps the most popular flower forSunday gardeners whose name became a pernicious and hurtful epithet hurled by men at other menwhose sexual orientation they did not approve and worked to excoriate. Know then, right from thestart, that this cannot be merely a botanical tale. It is far more than that... just as the multi-huedpansies are far more than just a pretty face in your window box. And so, let's begin with a tune byRichard Rodgers with lyrics by Lorenz Hart. It's called "Ten Cents a Dance" and was published in1930. You'll find it in any search engine.

Ruth Etting got her big break with this song. Lee Morse was supposed to sing it in the musical"Simple Simon" but when she turned up drunk at the Boston opening, Florenz Ziegfeld fired her onthe spot, hiring Etting. The song is a sultry lamentation by a bored girl who retails for just 10 cents adance and the kinds of men who briefly enjoy her presence, including "pansies and rough guys." Ofall the many kinds of men she mentions only "pansies" is demeaning, insulting, so common anaffront that the singer doesn't even know the distress she's caused... far more than her own (not sovery woeful) situation.

My own father.

I saw the fury pent up in this single word whilst walking in West Los Angeles when I was in highschool in the early 60s. He drew my attention to a man who was sitting in the driver's position of hisparked car plucking his eyebrows. My father spat out the single word "pansy!" It was an uglymoment as he was usually mild- mannered and accepting. But clearly not on this subject. How hadsuch a cheering flower, with so many gay colors, become a word of hate, disdain, bigotry, disgust; aword meant to shame, harass and belittle? It was a long way from Lord Tankerville's garden....

Lady Mary Elizabeth Bennett (1785-1861).

Every now and again a researcher like me finds a story so perfect about a given thing, it must befate. So it is with the pansy. The popularization of the pansy began as the work of a single lady, LadyMary Elizabeth Bennett. Daughter of the 4th Earl of Tankerville she had the most enchanting workplace imaginable, the gardens of her father's charming estate Ashley House at Walton-upon-Thames.Here in 1812, in this genteel world right out of Jane Austen the flower we love so well waspresented to a world which had only to see it to love it.

Lady Mary was one of the 19th century's gifted amateurs whose work we admire and whosecomfortable lifestyle we envy. She had the means to collect and cultivate every known sort of Violatricolor (commonly known as heartsease), the precursor of the pansy. Under the supervision of hergardener, William Richardson, a large variety of plants was produced by cross-breeding. In 1813,Mr. Lee, a well-known florist and nurseryman, further cultivated the flower. As a result Lady Mary,Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Lee found their place in history secured by the endearing pansy whichknew from its inception how to insinuate and charm.

Another aristocrat helps the pansy.

By now you may not be surprised to learn yet another nobleman, James, first Baron Gambier entersthe picture, ready to give his patronage to this by now fashionable flower: "Quite the thing, my dear,so eager, so cheering, such a taking littlle thing, what?" And so it was. Lord Gambier worked at his




country estate (Iver), with his gardener (Mr. Thomson). His particular interest was a yellow viola"Viola lutea", a wide-petalled pale yellow species of Russian origin...

.. . with time and resources his at the wave of a hand, many crosses were tried. "Viola altaica" wasthe most productive; it laid the foundation for the new hybrids classed as "Viola x Wittrockiana."What his lordship wanted was a round flower of overlapping petals. In the late 1830s a sportoccurred; the unpredictable event that produced narrow nector guides of dark color on the petals, buta broad blotch on the petals (which came to be called the "face') was found. Rule, Brittannia! Goodshow! Hip,hip, hurrah! In 1839 this new variety was released to an expectant public under the name"Medora." And so it went.... by the end of the 1830s, there were over 400 named pansies readilyavailable to gardeners who once considered its progenitor, heartsease (beloved of Lady Mary), aweed. Things were very different now! It all culminated when the pansies took their rightful place inthe chorus serenading Alice on her golden afternoon in Wonderland in the 1951 film by WaltDisney. (You can find it is any search engine.)

Sadly, the pansies themselves saw this not as a triumph but as a consolation prize, for they hadwanted Tara, not Wonderland.

Katie Pansy O'Hara -- not.

Margaret Mitchell was a one-book author. But what a book -- "Gone with the Wind" (released1936). It was a publishing event of the first magnitude and then a film that many (including myself)regard as the finest ever done. And the pansies were all positioned for maximum impact and joysince Mitchell loved the name "Pansy" and had so called her unforgettable heroine. But she wasgently persuaded that her protagonist needed a stronger name; besides, the word "pansy" wasalready being used pejoratively and that would never do for a woman America was about to focus onwith obsessive, unslakable interest. Thus, Pansy morphed into Scarlett, to the pansies' eternal regret.It is a subject that rankles them to this day... and which can only be raised with the utmost delicacyand care.

The anger, irritation, pique and outrage of the pansies.

You have only to mention the high jacking of their name by hate mongers to produce universaloutrage amongst the pansies. Their job, so well accomplished for so long, is to brighten lives, raisespirits, enhance affection and beautify even the most oppressive of situations. There is no room intheir mission for causing pain, just for lessoning and eradicating it.

Thus, they asked me as a special favor to urge you, each of you, to do what you can to restore theirgood name, a name famous for goodness, kindness and love. Their mission is for all, wherever theyare, whatever their station or position, and it has no room at all for denigrating anyone at any time.That is not the pansies' way -- and it must not be yours.

Pansies are a thoughtful flower. Their very name derives from the French word "pensee" for thought;even Ophelia in her madness remembers that -- "There is pansies, that's for thoughts." ("Hamlet," act4, scene 5.)

And their thoughts are simple... that the misuse of their long-held name is an outrage, unjust,unwarranted, unkind, unnecessary and must stop at once, not just for their benefit... but for thebenefit of the haters who may then be liberated from their vituperation, leaving the most friendlyand thoughtful of flowers to get on with their work... lightening the misery of our species... themisery we create for each other every single day. Misery even a single glorious pansy can diminishat once and turn to gladness, a secret all their own.




ResourceAbout The Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small andhome-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-sellingbusiness books.

Republished with author's permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com.



http://HomeProfitCoach.com


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