Love Unites Us

Firsthand accounts from the attorneys and advocates who brought the historic cases and fought to secure the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. The June 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was a sweeping victory for the freedom to marry, but it was one step in a long process. Love Unites Us is the history of activists’ passion and persistence in the struggle for marriage rights for same-sex couples in the United States, told in the words of those who waged the battle. Launching the fight for the freedom to marry had neither an obvious nor an uncontested strategy. To many activists, achieving marriage equality seemed far-fetched, but the skeptics were proved wrong in the end. Proactive arguments in favor of love, family, and commitment were more effective than arguments that focused on rights and the goal of equality at work. Telling the stories of people who loved and cared for one another, in sickness and in health, cut through the antigay noise and moved people—not without backlash and not overnight, but faster than most activists and observers had ever imagined. With compelling stories from leading attorneys and activists including Evan Wolfson, Mary L. Bonauto, Jon W. Davidson, and Paul M. Smith, Love Unites Us explains how gay and lesbian couples achieved the right to marry. “An exceptional piece of work by courageous and innovative leaders.” —Eric H. Holder Jr., 82nd US attorney general “Captures the amazing story of the fight for marriage equality—in California and around the country. A remarkable journey recounted with truth and eloquence.” —Gavin Newsom, governor of California

The Vortex That Unites Us is a study of totality in Russian literature, from the foundation of the modern Russian state to the present day. Considering a diversity of texts that have in common chiefly their prominence in the Russian literary canon, Jacob Emery examines the persistent ambition in Russian literature to gather the whole world into an artwork. Emery reveals how the diversity of totalizing figures in the Russian canon—often in alliance with ideologies like the totalitarian state or enlightenment reason—strive for the frontiers of space and time in order to guarantee the coherence of the globe and the continuity of history. He expores subjects like romantic metaphors of supernatural possession; Tolstoy's conception of art as a vector of emotional contagion; the panoramic ambitions of the avant-garde to grasp the globe in a new poetic medium; efforts of Soviet utopians to harmonize the whole of social life along aesthetic lines; Mandelstam's evocation of writing as a transcendental authority that guarantees a grandiose historical rhythm even when manifested as authoritarian repression; and the mass market of cultural commodities in which the exiled Vladimir Nabokov found success with his novel Lolita. The Vortex That Unites Us reveals a common thread in the disparate works it explores, bringing into a single horizon a variety of typically siloed texts and aesthetic approaches. In all these cases, the medium of totality is the body, inspired by artistic vision and compelled by aesthetic response.

Many years ago, I had a vision full of dreams of putting a positive drop in the ocean of life to help create a better world for all of us in generations to come. I saw with a broken mirror, with a world full of tears, full of hurts and frustration with deepening pain, which cried endlessly for a red cross band-aid and cure. It was many years later that my vision was written on paper in the form of poetry. My many trials and suffering, along with many running off the road of light, with dead ends did not go in vain. I hope my many poems of love, Jesus, Mary, peace, and the poor will help to inspire each reader to open their eyes and minds wider to Jesus endless love and dreamers with authentic peace, with their hearts open to realize the suffering and the huge rocky mountain that the poor and unwanted, lost and forgotten, climb that mountain courageously day after day. You may be passing by a war hero in disguise many have despairing stories to tell. Jesus dwells in the suffering poor. He loves his forgotten lamb in the same way that he loves us. Please give them dignity and respect for they struggle for the good life with the little that they have with hopeful courage, and a trail of brokenness and pain, with hanging on to the Lord's strength and his many crosses to turn their darkness into God's light. So be a brother or sister to them and lend them a hand when you can, their destiny starts and ends with you.

The Apostolic Fathers is an important collection of writings revered by early Christians but not included in the final canon of the New Testament. Here a leading expert on these texts offers an authoritative contemporary translation, in the tradition of the magisterial Lightfoot version but thoroughly up-to-date. The third edition features numerous changes, including carefully revised translations and a new, more user-friendly design. The introduction, notes, and bibliographies have been freshly revised as well.

In this copy-and-paste world, you were created unique and on purpose as a son or daughter of the king. In this 40-day devotional adventure, the Sons & Daughters collective helps you experience and embody the truths that you are creative, holy, righteous, secure, called, confident, and loved in your day-to-day life. With insight into Scripture, encouraging reflections and declarations, and daily actions you can take to live out your faith, these devotions will enable you to unlock what has been placed inside of you and step into the fullness of your God-given identity.

Because the Catholic Epistles focus on orthodox faith and morals, the Fathers drew on them as a means of defense against the rising challenge of heretics and as a manual for spiritual warfare. This ACCS volume opens up a treasure house of ancient wisdom that allows these faithful witnesses to speak with eloquence and intellectual acumen to the church today.