For the last 3 years I have had the opportunity to be involved with Advocates for Youth through the Texas Freedom Network's Student Leadership Council. Although I have had many wonderful opportunities in my life, this has been one of the greatest! I have been empowered beyond my belief and have developed a new passion for activism. I have learned so much from the people that I have gotten to meet through the Urban Retreats and conferences and I have changed my way of thinking because of those people.

This year I turned 26 years old so I am now too old to be considered a youth and will no longer be  a part of all of the awesome events held by Advocates for Youth. Although I will miss them, I am so grateful that I was involved with them as long as I was. I have become very compelled to make a political change and I have decided that I will try to do this through my music.

I started a band called Picture Perfect Clique and we will do all that we can to raise awareness about the issues that we address with Advocates for Youth.



I just wanted to take the time for a shameless plug as well as to tell all of the staff of Advocates for Youth and Amplify thank you for all that you have done to propel me into service! This group and video was conceptualized after the talent show at the urban retreat! 

My computer broke last week and I wanted to blog on Amplify so I got in my car and drove down to my local Workforce Career Center. If you are not familiar with centers such as this, they were created out of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Although the act was very long and drawn out, the basic idea of it was to create a place where job-seekers could go and have access to computers and job skills. People who have abused the system of free computers have caused the Workforce center to implement rules for computer use and although that is understandable, I do not understand why they have banned all sites that have to do with sex education.

When I typed in www.ampliffyourvoice.org I got a message that said this site has been blocked and the reason said sex education. I followed the steps to request that they unblock this site and when I did I also noticed that they had blocked sites related to religion, drug treatment and many more.

I have been thinking about this all day and I cannot figure out why any organization that is created to deal with at-risk populations of people would limit their access to the information that they need to better their lives.

This has not been the first time that I was shocked by the politics of the Workforce Center. There was another time last year that the site manager told me that he was going to call the police and have be escorted out if I did not stop trying to register for my classes on their computer. He told me that the computers are for work search only. I guess that is the reason that they have prohibited sex education from their computers but I will raise the same question to them that I did when I was on a college website... what if I was on the site to look for career opportunities?

I ran across this interesting video on Youtube, some of you may know this girl and others may identify with some of her experiences or some of the comments on her video. I found it very interesting that  a lot of the people that commented on how they learned about sex reported that they learned about it from porn.

It brought back memeories to when my older brother and cousins found a box full or VCR tapes that they used to watch. On one tape there was an army movie and I remember watching it and midway through the movie it cut to recorded porn clips from a nudist colony as well as episodes of Real Sex. Since I did not have cable I had never seen anything like that before but I never forgot it and spent a lot of time trying to sneak that tape into the VCR and watch it.

I was about 10 years old when I saw this and had no idea how intrigued I would be by sex and I feel like I thought I knew a lot about the subject because I did watch these movies. Needless to say, I knew nothing about sex and only ended up living a life making poor sexual choices.

Here is the clip, in addition to being interesting it is also a good idea of a way to record your friends and families experiences and use these real live accounts to make more influence in our lobby efforts.

www.youtube.com/watch

I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to let you all know about a very cool FREE training that will be held in Dallas in April.

On April 17th, 2010 from 9:30-5:30 the Texas Freedom Network will be hosting a free training at the Cathedral of Hope Church (5910 Cedar Springs Rd). This training will focus on how abstinence-only eductation fails LGBTQ youth and how everyone can ban together to advocate for their rights.

If you are interested in attending this conference there is an easy sign up on the Texas Freedom Networks website.

http://www.tfn.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Dallas_Regional_TrainingLGBTQA

I hope that some of  you are able to make it! Take care of yourselves and each other.

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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