Must Watch: HRC Video Highlights Pence Dodging Questions About Indiana’s New Law and LGBT Equality

During appearance on ABC’s This Week, Governor Mike Pence repeatedly refused to answer simple questions about Indiana’s laws and critical legal  protections for LGBT Hoosiers
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/must-watch-hrc-video-highlights-pence-dodging-questions-about-indianas-new?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

SNL Takes on Indiana's Anti-Gay 'Religious Liberty' Law: VIDEO

Andy Towle

www.towleroad.com/2015/03/snl-takes-on-indianas-anti-gay-religious-liberty-law-video.html

The Only 2 Things to Know Out of Mike Pence's Dissembling Interview

Don’t bother asking Governor Mike Pence if Indiana’s new law lets businesses discriminate against LGBT people.

read more

Lucas Grindley

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/03/29/only-2-things-know-out-mike-pences-dissembling-interview

A Dangerous Rhetoric
“Rhetoric” is a term that many of us collectively harness when we smack into a political wall. Though I’ve studied this word enough to understand that phrase to be a simplistic reduction, I get why we use it this way. Rhetoric is, at its simplest, a river. It’s the systematic shell that holds whatever we put into it and takes shape from collective pressure. So whether we get a waterfall or a still lake speaks more to the water than the river itself.

What I’m saying is, it’s not the shell of a structure that offers a disingenuous, calculating voice in our political sphere that exercises forced logic. People do that.

Likewise, bills becoming laws isn’t an inherently evil system. And acknowledging that the collision of rhetoric and laws as the space of public disruption is certainly healthy for a progressive society. It isn’t about language systems, but how we use words. It isn’t a signature on a bill, but what we’re buying into.

And if you can’t extract the individual drops of water from a river and still understand what the river looks like, then we also can’t talk about a single discriminatory law without understanding our cultural vantage point. We might not have all held the pen as Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed the “religious freedom act” into law, but we are all in the room.

I’m not going to talk about nihilistic business practices at play here that are going to seriously hurt the state. Nor the historical connection to other discriminatory laws hiding under the pretext of group protection, like the wave of immigration-focused voting policies purporting to protect against “voter fraud.” There are, obviously, many examples to pool from. But I think what’s more important is how we can break this conversation, or rhetorical cycle.

Our cultural vantage point above this dam that’s about to break is the bifurcation of “freedom of conscience” as somehow at odds with our role as public citizens. Personal and collective conscience are not the same thing, but we’ve increasingly expected them to be. That’s like asking one drop of water to tell the river where to go. Or one business owner to decide for thousands of people where they are and are not allowed to shop. We’ve siloed personal conscience so now it solely applies to anyone with a deeply held religious belief. That’s not good for any of us — including those people with deeply held religious beliefs.

What good have we done when we talk about “freedom of conscience” as if it’s just in reference to our desire to experience everything we ever think and believe played out on a public stage? I’m not a psychiatrist, but that’s a textbook definition of narcissism. Maybe it’s time we all get our heads checked. Or maybe, more accurately, it’s time to get our words in check.

In psychics, there’s a law that says you can solve for all variables, but not at the same time. So, too, can people believe all things both in and out of their homes, but not necessarily at the same time.

We should always hope that the basic semblance of truth is situationally self-evident, whether it’s in Indiana or Iran. But maybe, like rhetoric and laws, that’s not enough. Let’s not hope that the “right” answer is carried victorious without a current. We have to identify what motions we’re making to signal to some transparent mechanism that we are indeed flowing the right way.

www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-hubbard/a-dangerous-rhetoric_b_6964174.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Mike Pence Dodges Questions On Anti-Gay Discrimination In Indiana
WASHINGTON — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) refused to say on Sunday whether it should be illegal under state law to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Pence appeared on ABC’s “This Week” to defend his decision to sign a controversial piece of legislation intended to protect religious liberties that critics say will enable discrimination in the state. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act would allow individuals and corporations to cite religious beliefs in private litigation. Pence’s decision to sign the bill into law has sparked backlash against the state.

In the interview, Pence dodged a question from George Stephanopoulos about whether the law would allow florists and bakers to deny their wedding services to gay couples by citing their religious beliefs. He also twice dodged a yes-or-no question on whether he believed it should be legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians under state law.

Pence defended his decision to sign the legislation, saying it was “absolutely not” a mistake to sign the law.

“If the general assembly in Indiana sends me a bill that adds a section that reiterates and amplifies and clarifies what the law really is and what it has been for the last 20 years, then I’m open to that,” the governor said. “But we’re — we’re not going to change this law.”

He said there has been misinformation about the law and insisted it was intended to protect religious liberty.

“This is not about discrimination,” Pence said, adding that tolerance is “a two-way street” and that there had been a lot of “shameless rhetoric” against the state law.

Pence said earlier this weekend that passing legislation to protect the rights of gays and lesbians is “not on my agenda.”

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/29/mike-pence-indiana-discrimination_n_6964214.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

HRC to Governor Pence: No Phony “Clarifications” of S.B. 101

Any additional legislation must include explicit LGBT non-discrimination protections & a clear civil rights carve-out in religious refusal language
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hrc-to-governor-pence-no-phony-clarifications-of-s.b.-101?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Legs: The Running Start To A Trim Tummy

With summer right around the corner, leaning out and keeping your body tight is becoming a race against the clock for a lot of people. I’m here to share some of my fitness secrets to getting the most out of your fitness routine while trying to keep the muscle on your frame and the fat dripping off. 

Your body is the most sophisticated piece of machinery you will ever operate; it’s very smart and very efficient.  It’s important to strategize your fitness routine and nutritional intake according to your fitness goals.  With bathing suit season coming toward us like a speeding bullet, keeping the tummy nice and trim is something on everybody’s minds. My little tricks for keeping trim and tight are legs and cardio.

Your legs are the largest muscle groups in your body, so it should come as no surprise they would also consume the most energy when worked at a rigorous pace. You want to try to get the most musculature moving at once in a healthy way. 

When trying to keep my core looking tight I never neglect my legs. A healthy serving of squats, dead lifts and lateral lunges are my go-to moves that rev my metabolism up through the roof as well as cardio in the morning and evening.  Cardio before breakfast in the morning can help your body consume more calories throughout the entire day, while cardio in the evening will help turn your body into a fat incinerator while you sleep. These muscle-defining moves combined with cardio in the morning and evening are sure to get you seeing a difference in your body in no time when you keep them a ritual.  

The cardio in the morning can be done at the gym or just around your neighborhood. 20 rigorous minutes is all it takes to get your body up and running while seeking out stored energy in your body, which would be your carbohydrate and fat stores. Repeating this in the evening, which I take a little longer with, will do the same thing but while you’re sleeping. When your body goes to sleep you’re actually fasting. So when you’re not taking in any food your body will be forced to burn through what it was available and stored.

The amazing thing about combining these cardio tricks with some demanding leg exercises is that by getting your muscles to respond and grow it will actually make them demand more energy to do the same movements as you progress through the exercises session by session. The three moves I mentioned are essential in my mind to any leg routine or any fitness regimen for that matter.

A squat is a great move for the entire leg. Loading some weight on your upper back and taking your butt to the ground while making sue your knees don’t cross your toes are the first steps. Heels shoulder width apart and toes slightly outwardly rotated are key to this exercise as well. Load a weight that is challenging for you and take your butt below 90 degrees. Four sets of 10 to 12 at a challenging weight will be quite sufficient along with the other two exercises that I’m going to explain. 

Lateral lunges are next on my list of fundamental fat burning leg exercises. A lateral lunge is basically a step out to the side while still being conscious of taking the butt back and making sure the knees don’t cross the toes.  One leg will be stretched out underneath you while the other will be directly under your body weight while the knee maintains a 90-degree angle while really taking that butt back behind you.

Last but certainly not least on my list is the dead lift.  The dead lift is a move that can be quite tricky your first time through. The most important thing I can stress is popping the butt out to close up the vertebrae in your lower back, bending forward from the top of the pelvis and keeping your shoulders, back and chest open. You want your feet about shoulder width apart, a tad narrower than your squat position. You really want to feel a stretch down your hamstring when delivering your barbell to the ground and snapping the butt forward to bring your body into a straight line when you come to a standing position.

Do four sets of these exercises with 10 to 12 repetitions each combined with your cardio and you’ll be seeing a trimmer, fitter you in no time. I personally like to do legs twice a week when I’m trying to lean out while doing this cardio regimen.

Happy shredding!

The Phoenix Effect, a metabolic bootcamp that gets you in shape fast, is offered exclusively at Mansion Fitness, 7914 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood.

Jeremy Kinser

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