(no subject)

I could listen to The Reacharounds all day.

Silence = Death

(Besides my work with queer youth, I earned my M.Ed. at BU, so this is particularly important to me.)

~//~

THE LIST
September 24, 2002

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1. ACTION ALERT: BOSTON UNIV. TAKES SWIPE AT GAY YOUTH

This is a rather disturbing story from Boston. At the end of this story, I'm going to ask you to please take action to help these kids.

The chancellor of Boston University (BU) has ordered a local school (grades 8-12) run under the university's auspices, the prestigious BU Academy, to disband its two-year-old gay-straight alliance. BU Chancellor John Silber's apparently thinks gay-straight alliances "get involved in the sexuality" of young students, when in fact, gay-straight alliances are about promoting tolerance in high schools so that gay kids don't face violence, either at their own hands or at the hands of their fellow students. According to one press report, Silber is so upset at the alliance's existence that he allegedly threatened to cut funding to the academy if it did not drop the gay tolerance group.

40% OF MASS GAY AND BI YOUTH ATTEMPTED SUICIDE

According to the Boston Globe, "gay-straight alliances started in Massachusetts nine years ago as an antidote to the exceptionally high suicide rate among gay and bisexual high school students. According to a Massachusetts Department of Public Health report released in May 2001, about 40 percent of that student population have attempted suicide. Since the 1993-94 school year, Massachusetts has helped pay for gay-straight alliances at schools that want them. It is the only state that does so. Last year, the Department of Education handed out a total of $285,725 in grants of between $500 and $3,000 to 156 schools. Today, more than 800 schools in 47 states have similar alliances on campus and the number of groups has more than tripled in the last three years, according to the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network."

MILITANT FUNDAMENTALISTS LAUD BU'S ANTI-GAY MOVE

Not surprisingly, militant fundamentalist lobbyists are crowing over BU's decision to kill the gay-straight alliance. One Massachusetts anti-gay activist responded to Silber's decision: "This is a behavior that is medically and psychologically extremely self-destructive, and they are telling kids that they should feel good about doing it."

No, ma'am. What's extremely self-destructive is telling kids who have a 40% record of attempting suicide that in fact they are sick and not deserving of acceptance or tolerance.

This is an important issue folks, one that involves gay and questioning youth who need our support. I've done some research and gotten contact information for Boston University, including Chancellor Silber and a number of the university trustees. The trustees are particularly important as they recently replaced the university president, fearing that he wasn't up to the task of raising an additional $1 billion for BU over the next decade. Well, I don't think the new guy is up to the task either, and we need to let the trustees know that.

PLEASE CONTACT BU ON BEHALF OF GAY KIDS

So, please contact BU Chancellor John Silber and the other contacts I provide you below, including the BU alumni association, and the various trustees. Also, among the university's trustees is Jeffrey Katzenberg, who launched Dreamworks SKG along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. If anyone out there has contacts with Katzenberg, Spielberg or Geffen - or any of the other BU trustees - can you please let them know about this issue.

MESSAGE:

Boston University should stop bashing gay youth and reinstate the gay-straight alliance at BU Academy (and if you're an alum of BU, tell the school if their decision is affecting your desire to make future donations to the school or to send your kids to Boston College instead).

PEOPLE TO CONTACT (please contact everyone below):

BU Chancellor John Silber - phone: 617-353-4300

BU Alumni & Development Office - email: alumweb@bu.edu - phone: 617-353-9500 - Fax: 617-353-5838

BU Board of Trustees:
- Elaine Kirshenbaum, director of health policy for the Massachusetts Medical Society - ekirshenbaum@mms.org - call toll-free, 1-800-322-2303, and ask for extension 7223 or dial direct: (781) 434 7223

- Richard DeWolfe, chairman of the board of trustees, and chairman and CEO of DeWolfe Companies, Inc - phone: 781-863-5858 - info@dewolfe.com

- Frederick Bertino, president and creative director of McCarthy Mambro Bertino LLC - phone: 617-670-9700 - fax: 617-670-9711

- Dexter Dodge, president and chief executive officer of Freedom Capital Management - phone 617-725-2300

- Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dreamworks (again, if anyone has a contact to Katzenberg or Dreamworks, please pass the word to them).

For more background on this issue:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/249/metro/BU_tells_Academy_to_drop_gay_group+.shtml

Boston Globe editorial on this issue:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/250/editorials/Sex_miseducation_at_BU+.shtml


(Copyright 2002 John Aravosis)

Do not read beauty magazines, they only make you feel ugly.

I think that tonight I'm going to play "catch up" with my life. I was supposed to have plans with qaphsiel, but for various and sundry reasons, we've decided to postpone.

There's so much that I haven't done because I've been running around in other states or entertaining people from other states or spending a lot of time on the telephone. I've just been compiling a list, and let me tell you, it's a little daunting.

There is currently no food in my house because I haven't had a chance to go grocery shopping in weeks and weeks. There are a number of things I need to do around the house that require things I need at the grocery store (like cat litter, for one). There are a number of things I've wanted to do for some time, like finish watching The Celluloid Closet, like look for things to put in my office, like take an autumn walk through my neighborhood. Hopefully I'll do all of that this evening.

In the meantime, I'm finding myself internally conflicted again. My desires are always so crystal clear and concrete when there's something keeping me from them. Then the pathway opens and I deliberate, balk, deliberate, get excited, deliberate, get scared. I am perpetually five years old, always wanting what I think I can't have, and then when I get it, not being sure if I wanted it in the first place.

I would like people to challenge me on this and other issues sometimes. But which people? Not all of them, certainly. That definitely would run up against the boundaries I erect in different circles, with different people. Why do most of my very best and most trusted friends live so far away? I wonder, too, if I do that on purpose as well. Aren't our lives largely choice-driven? I miss Wiley.

I've had too much free time at work today. I've done too much thinking and I'm in a morose state of mind. I'll go back to my list of things to do and just try to cross them all off - that usually helps.

Answers, take three:

This is a lot of fun. :)

Want to ask a question?

gangrel_pri - A duck.

pantsie - Bad and good things (which is colored, of course, by how we perceive them) happen to all people. Why? Because life is what happens to us every day.

psychostalker - Yes. Please bring me some. You know where I live.

chutup - Yes. Though it was hard to tell because it was forced and dared and pressured and goofy. But yes. Your turn.

ralphmelton - In the next year, I'd like to get cracking on supervision hours for my Independent Social Work license, continue exploring my independent self, learn more about my brother's girlfriend, and live happily ever after with whod81. I'd also like to get back out your way to visit. And see some new states.

p.s. I still can't get enough of The Reacharounds.