DNC Chairman, Dr. Howard Dean, was reported on PlanetOut.com as critizing GLBT people, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans for aligning themselves with the Republican party and its platform. The Gay and Lesbian members of the Log Cabin Republicans group reported that they were insulted by Dr. Dean’s words, ("Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?"). Has the Republican Party ever stepped up for its GLBT members and people of color who align with the Republican Party?
Just the opposite: the Republican platform has done all that it can do to continuously denegrate GLBT Americans, just short of promoting acts of violence against gays and lesbians. Republicans have also reduced (and in many cases, withdrawn) funding for social programs for all Americans of color, done all that it could to negatively impact its members of color.
So, yes… who in their right mind would continue to take that kind of abuse? Not just take it, but actively support the organization that does all that it can to keep you down? A certain amount of disconnect is certainly evident when the Log Cabin members actually pay the Republicans to actually treat the GLBT members in such a horrid manner. Isn’t masochism a form of mental illness?
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Lance Bass, formerly of ‘N Sync, came out in 2006 as a gay man (see the GLBTeen entry.) Here he is speaking about the Day of Silence and the work that GLSEN does. This is a wonderful thing Bass is doing: the message is clear and concise, the images and youth are fantastic. Thank you, Lance Bass!
If you aren’t familiar with GLSEN and the work that it does, check out this video that provides a great overview of what GLSEN is all about!
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The Religious Right is working itself into a lathered frenzy about the 12th annual Day of Silence student-led observation happening on thousands of high school and college campuses across the United States. That’s fine, have fun with that if it feels good! But, and this is a big but, there is nothing like providing false and misleading information about what the Day of Slience (DoS from this point on) is all about! It is morally reprehensible for broadcasters and journalists to continue to spread their biased homophobic, hate-filled messages.
A Tucson, ultra-Christian talk radio station that is part of the Family Life Radio Christian broadcasting network of stations, has posted this article that is full of incorrect and inflammatory information. The web site, Day of Truth, is also another site that misinforms. In essence it breaks down in this manner:
- The Day of Silence is only about promoting the homosexual lifestyle and giving “the gays” a foot in the door of public schools so they can further their “gay agenda” (recruiting children for the gay forces and rack up more toaster ovens!)
- Students are FORCED to make a choice: either take sides with the homosexuals and their sinful lifestyle and not speak OR stay true to the purity of the Christian beliefs. You must either be against the epithets, violence and harassment that all students experience everyday (not just GLBT youth and their allies) OR appear that you don’t care what happens to those gays, serves them right!
- I have seen references on different Religious Right web sites that states there is no instruction on the Day of Silence; the above station states that there is some type of alteration of the standard curriculum happening on Day of Silence.
- Parents have the right to keep their children home on the Day of Silence so they won’t be exposed to different, controversial, thought-provoking ideas–the parents need to make sure that their children’s Christian upbringing and Christian purity is not tarnished or that the children don’t turn gay because they hear about gay stuff or see gay people.
Enough of this silliness! Day of Silence is simply about keeping all students safe at school. High school teens report hearing anti-gay epithets (e.g., that’s so gay, faggot, dyke, homo, etc.) every day — these are ALL students hearing these hateful, un-Christian-like words and phrases. Students hear these words and the speaker goes unchallenged by other students or teachers and the student is then filled with a sense of dis-ease:
I don’t feel very safe here if these words can be used so casually, and I’m straight and Christian! I wonder how a gay kid feels…
You know, that whole “sparrow falls” thing from the Bible.
Parents have no clue about what a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) is or why it exists on their child’s school campus. They have no clue about the atmosphere on the high school (and middle school) campus that their child is exposed to every day. Students at my school report hearing anti-gay epithets every day in all areas of school. My school has been receiving calls and letters protesting the DoS observation and this is the sixth year the GSA has been doing this!
Is Day of Silence about promoting the homosexual “lifestyle”? If by “lifestyle” they mean peaceful, cooperative, concerned and caring, egalitarian, practicing social justice, then maybe yes! Day of Silence is an opportunity for all students on campus to reflect about their school and what attending school is like for ALL the students.
Rev. Mel White, the founder of Soulforce and former writer for the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, worked with Rev. Falwell and his organization about Falwell’s homophobia and hateful, un-Christian language that helped to promote violence and aggression against gays. The Soulforce site has a record of letters sent from Rev. White — very inspiring and loving.
How can all students work to make school a place that is welcoming for everyone, gay and straight, Christian and non-Christian? Maybe the local chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Friends of Lesbians and Gays) can help to clear the air about issues of gay children and what gay people experience on a daily basis.
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Fantastic news for the Tucson GLBT community and its Wingspan Center. Jason Cianciotto has been named as the new Executive Director of the Wingspan Center. Jason comes on board as the replacement for the former Executive Director, Kent Burbank. I’ve previously written about Mr. Cianciotto on this GLBTeen entry, Truth Hurts. I’m excited at the prospect of Mr. Cianciotto’s guidance and formidable leadership for the Center — great things will happen for the GLBT community in Tucson and Southern Arizona!
Here’s Jason Cianciotto’s biography as posted (Adobe Acrobat PDF) on the Wingspan Center’s website.
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The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) has this article on their site (with coverage of a New York Times piece) about incredibly alarming rates of sexually transmitted disease infections in teenage females. The national study found that African American girls are accounting for nearly 50 percent of the infections while 20 percent of the infections are found in while females taking part in the study. The girls are infected with Human PapillomaVirus (HPV) (which young women can receive a vaccination to protect them against HPV), and chlamydia. According to the Times article,
Among the infected women, 15 percent had more than one of the diseases.
Yikes! This is outrageous and Americans must do something to counteract the lack of sexual education and information about Safe Sex, aside from abstinence discussion. What “something” must Americans do? Write to elected officials and demand that abstinence only education funding be turned off and diverted to sexual education curriculum that fully provides safe sex practices discussion and information.
Officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the findings underscored the need to strengthen screening, vaccination and other prevention measures for the diseases, which are among the highest public health priorities.
The president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, said the new findings “emphasize the need for real comprehensive sex education.”
“The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Ms. Richards said, “and teenage girls are paying the real price.”
If young women are being infected with these STDs, it means they are also at extreme risk of being infected with HIV, not to mention becoming pregnant and having to either have an abortion or drop out of school so they can have the baby/give up for adoption. Teen girls having babies is yet another issue: lives ruined, dreams and education plans put on hold. If we think we have problems with some treatable (and untreatable but non-life threatening) STDs, how about thousands upon thousands of additional HIV infections with the subsequent need for expensive treatment drugs and additional health care costs?
All because the American Taliban doesn’t think teenage girls are ever going to have sex outside of the sanctimonious state of marriage and they will always take to heart their parents’ desire for them to remain abstinent. This isn’t Stepford! Our young women need factual, accurate information to make informed decisions, something their parents obviously don’t trust them to do. These are the parents who are obviously so successful in marriage: divorce rate, domestic violence statistics tell a sobering tale that maybe the parents don’t have all the answers and their religious and political leaders don’t have their best interests at heart.
The NGLTF article had this to say about the direction religious/political leaders are steering their followers:
A vaccine is now available to prevent HPV infection, but right-wing leaders such as Tony Perkins (no, not the late, gay actor Tony Perkins) of the Family Research Council and Leslie Unruh, executive director of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, have opposed the vaccination of young people because they believe it might encourage sex before marriage.
NGLTF Executive Director, Matt Foreman, has this to say about the STD infections report:
“These shocking figures prove that the Bush administration’s rejection of science-based sex education in public schools and its obsessive support of homophobic abstinence-only programs — now totaling $1.5 billion — has not only been a complete waste of money, it has clearly endangered the health of teenage girls.
“It’s long past time for Congress to end all abstinence-only funding and to insist that every young person in this country have access to honest sex education that focuses on health, not moral judgments.
“And, in light of the extremely high rates of HPV infection, it’s also long past time for right-wing leaders to drop their outrageous opposition to the vaccination of young women.”
So, what can you do as a young adult, male or female?
- Talk to your parents about these reports and the damage being done in this country. Share your views and let your parents know how you feel about these issues!
- Talk to your school’s principal about the lack of accurate information and replacing the ill-conceived (no pun intended) abstinence-only curriculum.
- Talk to your school district’s School Board during the open call for comments from the community about the statistics from these reports and what it means to you as a young adult.
- Email your District’s Superintendent about replacing curriculum that is endangering the lives of young women.
- Write letters to your state’s Superintendent of Schools and Board of Education about these issues.
- Write to you state legislator and federal congress person and senator about these issues. They need to hear from citizens.
- Have your parents do the same for all of the above! Their voices really do matter and the above parties do listen to parents.
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Lawrence King was a fifteen year-old eigth grade student in Oxnard California who lived in the foster care system. Lawrence self-declared himself as gay with a feminine gender expression –make-up, nail polish, high-heeled boots, a young man with an obvious sense of style.
Eigth graders go through lots of changes: physical changes, hitting puberty in a big way, on an emotional roller-coaster, subject to lots of pretty intense peer pressure. One of Lawrence’s classmates reported that the male students in the class “were pretty freaked out” with Lawrence’s expression of his identity. Recent news discusses information that Lawrence asked his classmate, Brandon, to be his Valentine.
Brandon David McInerney, a fourteen year-old classmate of Lawrence, brought a gun to school last Tuesday (Feb. 12, 2008) and shot Lawrence twice point-black in the head during class in front of twenty of his fellow classmates. Brandon was captured by police hiding a short ways from school.
Lawrence was declared brain dead on Wednesday, Feb. 13 and his organs were harvested on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2008.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Francisco X. Alarcón, award winning poet, university instructor, and author will be visiting the University of Arizona campus locations in February for poetry readings and events. He will also be the guest for poetry readings and discussion with local Tucson GSA groups hosted by the UofA Poetry Center. Tucson’s GLBT Center, Wingspan, provides this information about Mr. Alarcón:
writes in English, Spanish, and Nahautl. His work embodies themes of history, culture, and contemporary Chicano, Mestizo, and gay identity; it ranges in form from sonnet to Aztec chant.
University of Arizona Press has this to say about Mr. Alarcón:
[The] author of ten volumes of poetry and several books of bilingual poetry for children. He has been a recipient of several literary prizes, including the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the UC Irvine Chicano Literary Prize. He currently teaches at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Spanish for Native Speakers Program.
The University of California at Davis Spanish Department provides these notes about his recent publications:
Author of nine volumes of poetry, including Body in Flames/Cuerpo en llamas (1990), De Aztec oscuro/Of Dark Love (1991) and Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation (1992). He has published two textbooks for teaching Spanish at the college and high school levels: Mundo 21 and Pasaporte al Mundo 21 (D.C. Heath).
The UC Davis newspaper, The Dateline, has a glowing article here about Mr. Alarcón with extensive information about his upbringing, education background, and his many interests and projects.
CDO GSA members will be attending the special poetry reading at the Poetry Center on an all-day field trip. Needless to say, members are very excited with the prospects of hearing such an important poet/scholar/writer as well as meeting up with other local GSAs. I’m very excited to have this opportunity to meet such a dynamic and exciting poet.
Technorati Tags: CDO GSA, Francisco X. Alarcón, GLBTeen, GSA, poet, poetry, UofA Poetry, UC Davis
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Here’s a really funny, clever video on DailyMotion that is a promo for the San Francisco GLBT Film Festival held each year in June at different theaters around the City.
Technorati Tags: GLBTeen, video, San Francisco GLBT Film Festival, DailyMotion
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Here’s a story about an interview that Jason Cianciotto, (Research Director, Policy Institute) did on MSNBC about GLBT teens talking to incoming high school freshmen during orientation. Cianciotto did a face-to-face interview with a major homophobe, Peter LaBarbera of one of the pre-eminent American Taliban organizations, Americans for Truth.
This is a good read and great comments from readers. My high school has a freshmen orientation which is called Link Crew: upper class students (Juniors and Seniors) work with the Freshman throughout the year, acting as mentors for the new students. The GSA has asked that a movie, Voices of GLBT Youth, be shown during one of the orientation meetings, but apparently this has never happened; no freshman has ever seen this movie during Link Crew. Maybe the GSA students really need to speak to the Freshmen this year after the movie is shown.
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Federal study confirms abstinence-only programs don’t work
The Gay Lesbian Task Force Task Force posted this article on their web site: A report released April 13 and commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirms that federally funded “abstinence-only” sex education programs simply do not work.
“Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been utterly wasted on ‘abstinence-only until marriage’ programs. Why? To appease a rabidly vocal minority that cares more about getting our government to promote their religious ideology than they do about the health of young people.”
- Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman
So, is this really a surprise? All we need to do is look at the pregnancy rates, the number of new STD infections by age group. The statistics don’t lie. And who’s getting pregnant and infected with Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) at the highest rates? Young people of color who aren’t hearing any other message but “abstinence-only”. We’re signing a death warrant for these young people when they don’t hear about safe-sex practices, don’t wear condoms, don’t use dental dams. Pregnancy is a tragedy for a young person with her life ahead of her. Of course, we don’t want students having pre-marital sex, but if they do, they need to protect themselves. We need to stop unwanted pregnancies.
Technorati Tags: The Task Force, GLBT activism, abstinence-only, minority youth, US HUD, American Taliban
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