First off, please watch this. It's probably the best commercial of all time.

Second, I held my TFN event last week! It went very well thanks to everyone who contributed. I had about 20 people show up, which is a good number for the size and political stand point of my town. We watched Abstience comes to Albuquerque and had a discussion period afterwards. Everybody at the event agreed that comprehensive sex ed was the best thing to teach kids. Sooo lets get on the ball Texas, we need this!

If you look on any campus in the country you are bound to see students walking around with little white ear buds in their ears. In the age of mp3 players iPod is king. It provides the soundtrack to our daily lives as students. Even with less expensive choices for music players, iPods easily provide the most popular and aesthetically pleasing devise. iPod users brand loyalty to Apple goes far beyond just buying an iPod.  Consumers also dress their devices in colorful accessories, and download songs and applications from the iTunes and App stores.

Several weeks ago Apple decided that is was going to start regulating some of its Applications for the iTouch and iPhone. The change comes as concerned individuals have voiced their opinions about the sexual lewdness of certain iPod apps. While some applications have minor sexual overtones, some apps are nothing short of pornography.

Apple has responded by removing several hundred apps, and in the shuffle of doing so has deleted certain apps that were not inappropriate while failing to delete pornographic ones.  In the coming months the App Store hopes to create a explicit section to attract interested adult consumers.

Because Apple is becoming such a wide used product they have a real responsibility with the regulation of their applications. After recently reading an article in the San Fransisco Chronicle by Carol Queen, a cultural sexologist, I began to better understand the importance of this matter. Queen explains that everyone "has a right to sexuality" as well as sexual entertainment when that person is of age. It is in our nature to be interested in sex, so should Apple really hide it behind a barrier? The answer, I believe, lies in better regulation of the app store. Apps that clearly demonstrate pornographic purposes should be moved to a section specifically for pornography. Apps with minor sexual overtones should not be labeled explicit, and kept in with the other apps.

Apple has a huge responsibility here, and hopefully there going to make the right move. Sexuality is unfortunately stigmatized in cases like this, but hopefully will prevail. Adults who wish to enjoy adult entertainment and explore their sexuality have every right to do so.

The Thursday before last the Texas Youth Leadership Council with the Texas Freedom Network Student Chapter of the University of Texas at Austin held a sex education event on campus at UT Austin, which turned out to be a great success! With the help of hard working volunteers, we got 110 petition signatures on both the state petition for the Education Works Coalition and the federal petition for comprehensive sex education funding. We also collected written stories, supportive posters, and video stories about the state of sex education in Texas. We talked to hundreds of students from different parts of Texas, and some from across the country about their sex education experiences. The consensus was that abstinence only education doesn't work and its time for politicians to be realistic and stop endangering the lives of teens. Take a look at the video we put together from the event, sign the online petition, and let me know what your story was!



-Kenzie

About a month ago my high school had a special guest speaker, Kenni Thomas, who was part of the Black Hawk Down operation. He spoke to us about his experience and his music career. The assembly was sponsered by our local Abstience Only group. The thing that really bothered me was that after Kenni Thomas got down after his very inspirational talk, a member of the Abstience Only group got up and basically told us that we could never be as successful as him if we had sex, so don't do it. Obviously not having sex is a good choice to make, but just because you do it doesn't make you a bad person and even if you do have sex and get pregnant that doesn't limit how successful you can be in your lifetime.

So why do schools allow for people to come in and say such things? Even more so at a school that has an extremely high pregnancy rate, and if there are so many girls pregnant, think of how many are having sex and just haven't got pregnant yet.

Schools shouldn't put such a bad name on sex and make it a shameful subject and rather teach us to protect ourselves instead of just saying don't do it.

Hey everyone :]

Recently the Texas Freedom Network held an event in Houston, Texas at a local restaurant where we screened the documentary "Abstinence comes to Albuquerque" and then had a discussion about our beliefs and experiences regarding sex education.

Here's a short video for all of you who might have missed it :]

School Health Advisory Councils (SHACs) are legally required in every Texas school district to make recommendations to local school boards regarding health policy in their schools. SHACs were originally created so that local community values could be represented in sex education in the school district. However, more recently SHACs have been making recommendations concerning all health related issues in schools, such as physical education, substance abuse, nutrition, safety, school environment, fitness, hygiene, mental health, but rarely sexual health. 

Recently, I have been attending School Health Advisory Council (SHAC) meetings for Austin Independent School District. What I have seen leaves much to be desired from the eyes of a sex education advocate. Sex education has been mentioned once, in a small group, when I brought it up. While it is obvious that we are facing health issues such as obesity, depression, and substance abuse, it is not acceptable to cut out sexual health or stop at a day of abstinence.

Texas currently has the 3rd highest teen birth rate in the country, and although our ranking has gone down since we were number one, our teen birth rate has actually increased to 63 births per 1000 females ages 15-19. Clearly, we have a serious problem on our hands. Texas claims to be handling our high teen birth rate by teaching abstinence-only education in public schools. Unfortunately, abstinence-only education leaves out information about condoms, contraception, healthy relationships, anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy. Further, abstinence-only education regularly includes medically inaccurate information, conservative religious views, shame and fear based tactics, and gender stereotypes.

Texas needs to start taking unintended teen pregnancy seriously by offering a full comprehensive, medically accurate sex education to teens. Although sex education won't solve the problem alone, it is the first step. Until we offer the information teens need to make responsible, healthy, and safe decisions about their bodies, our teen birth rate will only continue to increase.

It should be no surprise that as time passes certain policies and procedures must be updated to reflect certain changes in both the student body and the world in general.  Baylor’s policies are not immune to such changes.  It was only a few years ago that the school’s HIV/AIDS policy read:

The Baylor community will seek in all prudent ways to witness to God's love by ministering to persons with AIDS, their families, and their friends, as they face the hardships and certain death associated with this disease. We will seek to incarnate God's comforting, supporting, and forgiving presence.

Not surprisingly, that was changed to its current form following a student and faculty outcry at the archaic and doomsayer nature of the policy.

Following that same nature of change, the Sexual Misconduct Policy has gone through a bunch of makeovers over the years.  The latest states:

In all disciplinary procedures, Baylor University will seek to be redemptive in the lives of the individuals involved and to witness to the high moral standards of the Christian faith. Baylor will be guided by the understanding that human sexuality is a gift from the creator God and that the purposes of this gift includes (1) the procreation of human life and (2) the uniting and strengthening of the marital bond in self-giving love. These purposes are to be achieved through heterosexual relationships within marriage. Misuses of God's gift will be understood to include, but not be limited to, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual assault, incest, adultery, fornication and homosexual acts.

While the policy does sum up Baylor's Sex Policies fairly well, it could use some work.  Putting homosexuality in the same breath as sexual abuse and incest is simply ignorant and offensive. This should be changed. 

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Answer:  ‘Baylor is a Christian school for Christians, not a Gay school for Gays’ as one of our more brazen commenters (read troll) has so eloquently pointed out.  This logic would be flawless if it were the case that the qualities of Gayness and Christian-ness were actual opposites.  This is not the case, however.   

Some Christians view homosexuality as a sin, and some do not.  This is one of the most prevalent debates heard around Baylor regarding LGBT rights.  Is homosexuality a sin? 

The thing that most Baylor students seem to miss while forming their judgments about this issue is the frame in which the debate is being held.  The gay students and their allies are arguing that homosexuality is not a sin, meaning that based upon their Christian beliefs, homosexuality is not a sin.  That’s right.  These students are Christian, and many of them chose to come to Baylor because it is a Christian University. 

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There is a pretty famous rapper named Lil Wayne. He is leading a generation of young people who listen to him music whether he said he wanted to be a leader or not.  He has a lot of very popular songs and I have heard a lot of his music.

There was a scandal a few years ago where some pictures surfaced that showed him kissing or in a very intimate moment with Baby who is a male colleague of his. More recently he has taken on a new slang term where he makes sexual innuendos about men and completes them by saying "no homo" some examples of this are lines like "i got money out the a**, no homo" or
"Just shot a video with R. Kelly, but no homo though" or even something asinine as "aha ha ha no homo". I often wonder about his underlying need to say "no homo" so much. It makes me wonder about the scandal with Baby but even more about the truths that he freestyles in a lot of his other raps.

Lil Wayne is not the type of rapper to show shame is some of the odd things that he does. He talks very openly about the mind altering out of this world drugs that he does. He has songs were he talks about doing so much cocaine that he can not feel his face or the wild nights he has with lots of women and his crew and Ecstasy. I am not one of the people that homosexuality is the result of drug use but I am one of the people that knows that drug use can affect some one's sexual behaviors. I do not know what goes on behind their closed doors but  I hope you are able to see what I am alluding too.

The last thought I will leave you with. I am a recording artist so I know the technical side of recording. For those of you who don't know about what goes into recording a song I will tell you a little secret. If I go in and record a song and my lyrics are "It's a rainy night in Georgia" but I forget them and accidentally say "It's a rainy night in Alabama" my sound engineer can go in and take out Alabama and "punch me in" at in so that I only have to say "Georgia instead of saying the whole line". Lil Wayne is a rapper known for freestyling and for those of you who have never freestyled it is a very awkward thing to do  because you have to rhyme off the top of your head and still make sense and be very comfortable with the random thoughts that may come out.

One one of Lil Wayn'e freestyle CD's he has a song where he says

Who's better than, man f*ck him
I prolly f*ck (?) and what's new
And if u hating on us yea f*ck u
And if them bit**es want  to f*ck
We wanna f*ck too

I inserted a (?) where the gender was in question because a natural rhyme and what it sounds like he says is (him) and it would make sense to sarcastically say "and what's new" and then change genders and say if someone else like a woman wants to do the same then he would do the same with her. When I google the lyrics I see that amateur Lil Wayne fans have her inserted in that line. I don't believe it and it makes me wonder if his sound engineer cleaned up his truth for his image... Again not sure what goes on behind closed doors but I advise his fans to read in between the lines.

As you know I am an advocate for equal rights so it doesn't matter to me what he does or whom he does it with, I just wish that we could move to a place where people would not feel obligated to hide their realities behind silly little catch phrases that perpetuate hatred. The funny thing about Lil Wayne's "no homo" tag is that if I put it on a name tag and added a little mark it would go from reading " Lil Wayne, No Homo" to "Lil Wayne No, Homo" .

Brother, Brother, there are far too many problems with the world around me but as I grow older I realize that I can not solve them all.  I try to so sometimes i wonder if my works are a waste of time. I got a little confirmation the other day that told me otherwise.

I am a member of Advocates for Youth as one of the members of the CAMI states. I live in Texas. Recently I went to the Urban Retreat in Washington, Dc and while I was there I was able to be fueled up with the energy for activism. While I was there I remember thinking and talking about all of the groundbreaking things that I was going to do when I got  back to my state. I thought of all the lives I would reach and all the awareness that I would bring. But months later as I look at what I actually accomplished I realized that it was basically nothing.

I am naturally very inquisitive so I wondered why I didn't get anything done. Was I too lazy, what are my real intentions, what are my real beliefs? I realized that a part of me cares a lot while the other part of me could care less. I think that sometimes it is more comforting not to care or get involved. I have had a lot of problems in my personal life and these problems consume me.

At times I believe that I decide to care less because I focus too much on the pains of the world and when I do that my heart grows weak. Since I do not blog a lot I do not expect many of you to know me but I will tell you that one of the most important people in my life is the father of my child and my life partner and he has been in prison for going on 6 years. As we speak he is locked in a cell for 23 hours out of a day and I know him well enough to know that he is not an animal or serial anything. Since he has been there I have realized that our US prison system is one of the most deranged and demented systems that I have ever seen.

As I fight for equal rights and equality and sexual freedom I often think about the prison systems where sexuality is not free and is mandated. A man can get written up for having an erection in prison but why don't people care? Did you know that in most prisons even federal especially in the backwoods states the inmates are allowed to receive Nuddie magazines that showcase White women but they refuse to accept magazines that showcase Black women. I never  thought I'd fight for the right for a person to receive a nuddie magazine but if I believe in equal rights I should believe in equal rights. I wonder what would happen if a man in prison tried to receive a nuddie magazine that only showcased men.

The reason that I wrote this blog is because this is the reason that I have been distracted from this fight that we fight as advocates for youth. This issue area is usually not presented in our conferences and not what we go in to lobby for but I believe that it needs to be inserted. This issue area is what makes me wake up on random days and call my Congressional leaders. This issue area makes me stay up and spend sleepless nights on Thomas.loc.gov reading new bills and taking extensive notes (and believe me, even in school I am not a note taker).

In prison, there seems to be an underlying rule that sexuality is outlawed and expressions of sexuality are prohibited. I jokingly told my husband that the next time I come to see him I am going to intentionally get kicked out so that I can sue the Bureau of Prisons. I will go in and follow all of their rules, I will dress in dress code and not touch him at all, but I will dance very expressively and make sexual gestures  towards him in my actions. I will get kicked out because I know the routine but my question is WHY???