Spare Change for Change: Please Donate to Obama

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/Frazier

As the new school year starts, I am full of optimism for my children.  As a class, we set goals for our futures.  These range from the traditional to the wacky.  Most claim an interest in college, and several usually espouse a preference for a career in rap or professional sports.  I take the job of getting students like Brandon to college (or becoming a successful rapper) very seriously, yet with the recent addition of Governor Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, I’ve grown even more concerned about the futures of my middle school kids.

These are students who are already facing issues of poverty, lack of quality health care, and agency in our political system.  It is now becoming clear that Republicans have a a true chance at winning this election, despite presenting a platform eerily similar to President George W. Bush, a veritable poster boy for failed representation of minorities in America.

As I imagine my students in various professions, be they doctor, lawyer, or the baddest MC on the East Coast, my hope for their success diminishes greatly under yet another Republican administration.  I shudder to think of a female student who has no choice in whether to have a child, or a male student killed in the never-ending Iraq War.  I wonder if college will be remotely affordable for students whose families inform me they need assistance paying for field trips.

In social studies we talk about the value of citizenship, but another Republican administration means more people, like the students I teach, remain second class citizens in America, restricted from the best resources available.  Despite what we may believe in our liberal bubbles, Sarah Palin could be selecting Supreme Court judges with the power to further discriminate against our rights as citizens. Please, help me support Barack Obama so that my students can follow their first-choice dream, and should rapping not work out, at least get a quality college education.

Learn how to donate here at my personal Barack Obama website

 

The Great Gay Debate over Manhunt

Despite recent victories for equality in California, Out Magazine writer Michael Joseph Gross claims gay  activism is still coming up short, perhaps due to the explosion of internet hook-up sites like the infamous manhunt.net.  Its web prominence, he writes, with member numbers gay organizations like the Human Rights Campaign or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force can only dream about, signals the priority in the gay community is sex, not rights.  His piece, Has Manhunt Destroyed Gay Culture takes a crack at what’s become the single largest online gay community in the world, with almost 1 million members globally.

Gross posits that a “post-gay” community has emerged in the last 15 years, one that has become less concerned with politics and more concerned with getting off.  Sites like Manhunt feed this trend, as the site’s very slogan, “Get on, get off” certainly promotes using the internet for quick sexual gratification.  Aside from this, the site treats sex like going shopping, as men search for what they want by scrolling through x-rated descriptions of potential flings.  He’s not preachy, noting that he’s even a subscriber, but he does manage to question the immense growth of this site as warning sign for gays that our mousepads might not be clicking in the right direction.  He writes, “We still don’t know how to have enduring relationships. We still don’t have examples. We still don’t have mentors. We still don’t have courtship rituals. We are still getting HIV.” Gross generalizes, to be sure, but the reality of gay culture moving away from a political group to a predominantly social one is worth at least recognizing before logging on and getting off online.

Check out more on the owners of Manhunt, two former real estate businessmen who tackled the online hookup scene together: