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??? 

So I need some advice from you all on this. I have a 13 year old nephew who is being raised by my passive-aggressive grandmother who does not believe in addressing any issue. My nephew does not have any one to look up to aside from friends that are taller than him.

The other night my aunt came back home and found a few teenage girls sitting on the porch at 2am waiting for their mothers to come and pick them up. There were other boys that were there with my nephew but the police made them go home.

In addition to this incident I have read his text messages that talk of highly sexual behavior and I have no idea how to address this with him. A lot of people I know think that I should not assume he is active so I asked. To get me off his back he said no. I am not sure if that is true or not.

I thought the other day that maybe  I should be more blatant and ask him very specific questions about what he has and has not done and give him some guidence on decision making according to what he has and has not done.

I am not sure where to go from here with him because I want to make sure he is making good decisions but I know he has not been educated and he does not feel comfortable talking to me.

What should I Do???????

 Today I participated in a lobby day at the Capitol in Austin, Texas. The turn out was wonderful! There were over 200 people that came to lobby our senators and representatives on funding comprehensive sex education.  

Walking into the capitol was sort of ironic because it was filled with middle and high school students from bands and choirs from all over the state. Although their presence at the capitol may have been related to music, I felt like our messages to our representatives and senators had more of an impact because the capitol was filled with youth. 

As I listened to the bands play and the singers sing beautiful songs, it made me think about the eduction that the young people are receiving. I am sure that in their band classes the teacher does not teach that there is only one effective way to play the flute. I am sure that their choir teacher does not teach them that in order to be an effective songstress, one must sing in one uniformed key. Math teachers teach students to use formulas to solve problems but even if the formula is presented as the only way to solve a certain problem most teachers feel a certain responsibility to teach different methods of computing the formula in order to get the right answer. It makes me wonder why sex education is not taught in the same manner. 

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***WARNING THIS BLOG POST MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO THOSE WITH CLOSED MINDS****

Okay so I have been writing a paper about African American men on the down low and my research has taking me to places that I never would have imagined that I would be. I have been from the library to DL chat rooms to the bible! 

I must admit that I am perplexed with religion at this point in my life because I was raised in a Southern Baptist church but as I have grown to understand the world better I have began to understand that I am far more concerned with finding the things that connect us all than I am with trying to understand why Jesus is the only way to God. 

My research of the down low and experience with the common argument, "God created Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve or Madam and Eve" that I have gotten from other Christians has propelled my interest in creation in the bible and thus lead me back to Genesis. 

After reading most of Genesis I got this basic understanding:

God created Adam and then decided that man should not be alone and should therefore find a help mate. Before he presented Adam with a woman God presented Adam with animals. Adam recognizes that none of the animals were ideal help mates. God then created Eve. Eve was later  persuaded by the serpent to eat the fruits off of the forbidden tree and as a result Adam and Eve were clothed and kicked out of the Garden of Eden and doomed to painful child births and a whole bunch of other stuff. Adam and Eve came to know each other and from them came son’s Cane and Abel. Cain was hyper masculine and ended up killing Abel and later came to know his wife and had a lineage of children. 

Of course there is more to that story but that is the part that I am focusing on at this time. The story of Adam and Eve is extremely important because it tells a timeless story about the choices that God gave man and acknowledges an underlying lesson in human sexuality. Before Adam was given a woman he was able to choose a beast. God had already spoken sexual energy into the world because before he created Adam and Eve he created the beasts and told them to be fruitful and multiply.

The bible does not go into detail about the tactics that Adam used to decide why the beast were not the ideal help mates but be it through experimentation or a gut feeling, Adam did not keep a beast as his help mate. God then gave him the choice of a woman. The arguments were correct God did not create Adam and Steve but after Adam and Eve were sent into reality, they came to know each other and the second round of people that were created were Cain and Abel. One is left to question who Cain and Abel were intended to mate with. The son’s were left to use their sexual energy on their mother, their father, their brother or take their pick of the beasts in the field: unless of course there were other people in other nations that had already been there or come but were not mentioned. The bible does not mention any other people on the face of the earth before these 4 people so it left me wondering, "Who the hell is Cain's baby's moma?" 

I called my extremely conservative Christian granny and she said that is an age old question that no one has the answer to and when they were young they speculated that Cain mated with an attractive gorilla! I called my bible reading RBG brother and he said that there were other nations but the bible on focuses  on that nation. Although my granny talked about the gorilla jokingly, there was a speck of belief in her voice leaving me to wonder if most Christians have an underlying belief in Darwinism but choose not to acknowledge it because they are beating around the bush like Adam and Eve after realizing they were naked. 

My search to find answers only left me with more questions so I would really appreciate some insight or guidance on this matter. If you have gotten this far in my blog post I will show you my appreciation by leaving you with some quotes to use or marinate on!

War.  Rape.  Murder.  Poverty.  Equal rights for gays.  Guess which one the Southern Baptist Convention is protesting?  ~The Value of Families

There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex.  People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats.  ~Elton John

I'd rather be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.  ~Charles Pierce, 1980

The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals.  That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals.  It's just that they need more supervision.  ~Lynn Lavner
 

December 10th, 2008 was a National Day Without Gays. The day was created by civil rights advocates in response to Proposition 8 that was passed in California in November banning same sex marriage. I happened to be in California on vacation when this proposition was passed and was surprised at how passionate people were about this issue. My mother is a registered voter in California so I was able to ask her how she voted for this proposition and I found that she was among the 70% of African American voters that voted for Prop 8. I was very surprised that she voted this way because she has always been a very liberal person and has a countless number of gay friends.

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(My Plans for tomorrow)

Today is December the 10th and I'm feeling okay
No sickness, no stress
I'm just calling in GAY

Yesterday I grocery shopped so today I'm store free 
None of the stores are getting money from me
I told my boss why I'm calling in she asked "what did you say"
I responded, " you heard me, I'm calling in GAY!"

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My abstinence-only curriculum helped me make the decision to have unprotected sex for the first time with a guy whose name I can’t remember.

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