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Saturday, June 11, 2011

Wayne Christian and his Senate Bill

For context, please go here:
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/82nd-legislative-session/video-pansexual-amendment-debate/

"While you were sleeping last night, State Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, resurrected an amendment to SB 1 that would ban colleges from using state funds or university facilities for gender and sexuality centers. This is a must watch series of videos!!"






  I would like to take a few moments of your time to set the record queer and correct:
While I was growing up my mother often told me that "I didn't understand, I didn't have the whole story" when quite often with my dragon heart and genius mind I often saw the complex mess of life more clearly than many.

Of course in his testimony Wayne Christian took things out of context. So, let me please try to attempt to put them in context.

The questions he read off from a handout (from UT) were most likely a visualization, guided thinking technique often used to create empathy and understanding for what another goes through. One takes a predominant audience identity and questions it in the same vein that LGBT identities are questioned every day.This creates a cognitive dissonance and dissociation that can be used to highlight how others feel.

As a sidenote, I find it interesting that the honorable Wayne Christian could not speak his own gender identity.

The video taken from Texas A&M's Cay Crowe presentation....ooooh, where do I begin.

  1. The student who took this video violated the sanctity of a safe space in the same manner of those people who videotape visitors to planned parenthood. This student took a sacred trust and betrayed his/her fellow aggies and the environment created
  2. The student violated copyright law by not getting permission to tape and rebroadcast
  3. The student created terror by posting to YouTube showing he could get into a sacred space of fellow students and reveal to public what was private. Safe spaces are not safe when people feel that their identities, what they are learning, etc will be broadcast to the whole world
  4. And finally, Cay Crow did this safe sex presentation free of charge as a service to students before break. In my mind it is better to teach a student how to operate heavy machinery (ie anal sex) instead of just letting them go at it without any guidance. We know students are going to have sex, we know they are going to have all different kinds of sex, the best method for their own safety, the safety of their partners, and the safety of all of us (STI's to name just one effect), is to give them practical, sound, safer methods of doing what they are going to do in the healthiest methods possible.

So, it is late....but my brain was burning as Wayne Christian used that crap out of context.

And with that I have to applaud Lowell Kane and the Texas A&M GLBT Resource Center for all they do to provide safe and nurturing environments to students that I love and care for so very much.

I may work in the community, and not at A&M. I may not experience some of the fallout of this first hand. But, my roots in this community have grown deep. My love of TAMU's potential has always been strong and the antics of Wayne Christian and also what has been going on here at A&M are sad, abhorrent, and have lighted my ire.

Wayne wants equal treatment. Lifting up diversity is not a zero sum game honorable lawmaker. When GLBT students get something, it does not automatically take away from straight students who are reinforced with heterosexual teaching, training, reference, and health care centered on them and their "lifestyle" every single hour or every single day.

When are we going to stop this damn debate that by thinking of others we somehow hurt those who are in the majority.