Prophecy

Today I was going down memory lane and decided to go through my old high school yearbooks. One thing that is amazing is the evolution of my appearance--which continued in college too. But I was enjoying reading everything that my friends and classmates wrote in my yearbook. When I got to Senior year (when I was with the young woman I was to marry and I had NO IDEA I was gay), I came across one message in particular that I literally said, "Wow!"

The Calling

I've been in prayer about quite a few things lately. For a while though, I've been really meditating on something that I feel God has called me to, but I just haven't been able to figure out how to respond to it.

I am in my last 8 months here in Merced, California (I'll be going to California State Polytechnic University-Pomona). Which is both a blessing and a mildly sad thing for me. It would be a blessing because I have planned most of my high school career to leave Merced and do my best to never return--that plan didn't exactly work out well. But mildly sad, since I know I won't live in Merced again after this (well that is my plan at least).

Since I've come out of the closet and became an activist that actively seeks to bring communities together and bring about human equality and social justice, I have to admit that I have done very little within my own community of Merced. Which brings me to what I feel God has been calling me to: until I leave in August/September, I plan to dedicate myself to working in the area and giving something back to the Merced and surrounding LGBTQ communities.

Because the LGBTQ community is somewhat underground in this overstimulated conservative former "cow-town," I know it is going to be a partial challenge as to finding the needs of the queer community. The route I'm looking at, would be working towards getting a community center that would serve as a resource center for education, information, outreach, and support. Given that I will only be here until August/September, I don't know if I will have a full up-and-running center by then, but I would like to have things on the roll and ready to hand over to someone to keep the dream going.

This is going to involve working heavily with the LGBTQ community and surrounding Pride centers (ie. Stanislaus Pride Center). I will need help! I don't exactly know where to begin, as I have never done this before. I can use support and prayer! Shoot me an email at vdcervantes@gmail.com if you have some advice or anything.

Queer Sex Education 101

I recently posted a blog on QueerMerced.com about my frustration with the school systems. It becomes more and more apparent to me the way many of our schools are dictated by conservative fundamentalist perspectives. In California, that's shocking usually. But after looking around online, I discovered that there are very few schools that accommodate LGBTQ topics in their curriculum.

There is a lack of recognition of the LGBTQ community within the school systems. When it comes to Health class, gay and lesbian students are being left out of the picture when instructors teach about safe-sex practices, STD/STIs, and family structures. Is this just not surprising and should be ignored? Or is time for change? Read More.

Remembering Heath Ledger

I never write about celebrities, nor write huge memorial blogs about them when they die, because I didn't ever really know them personally or anything--although I did cry when Anna Nicole Smith passed though, because I was ready for her to make her big come back.

But I would like to spend sometime to reflect on the life of Heath Ledger. As many of you have heard, Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York apartment today by police over a suspected drug overdose--which is tragic, because I find that to be a terrible way to go.

I offer remembrance to Ledger though, because I personally found him to be an important person to the gay community. Although he was straight, he definitely raised lots of awareness of the gay and lesbian community. With his role in the infamous Brokeback Mountain, where Ledger played an "in-the-closet" gay cowboy who fell in love with his partner (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). Brokeback wasn't important just because it was a movie about gay stuff. It was important because for once, people were able to see the emotions, affection, and truth to a same-gender relationship. It gave people an opportunity to see the oppression that the LGBT community faces on a day-to-day basis. People were able to see how many married men struggle with their sexual identity and how suppressing such things affects your family and yourself. It's so much more than just having sex in the wild. It's a real love story that has become a beautiful resource.

Heath Ledger will be remembered.

Dream of the King

Today in the United States we celebrate the life of the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I remember in elementary school they would gives us Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. portraits we could color with the 35 brown crayons they distributed. As many of us may know already, Hillary Clinton was recently criticized for her suggestion that president Lyndon B. Johnson helped to make Dr. King's dream a reality with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While I am a republican proponent of Clinton (on most issues) I do have to disagree with her on this subject.

While I was on the Equality Ride, my friend Robin Reynolds presented a valuable question: What stopped lynching? Was it Lyndon B. Johnson? Was it the Civil Rights Act of 1964? No. No. And no. What stopped lynching was the fact that it became wrong and inhumane to do such a thing. It required the change of hearts and minds to come to the realization that dehumanizing and murdering another human being because of the color of their skin was unacceptable and wrong.

We owe these understandings to the work of Dr. King and many other civil rights leaders. Sure, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 contributed a little bit, but it the end it became a change of hearts that stopped lynching.

40 years later though....is Dr. King's dream still being heard? Are we living in a country where

"all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

We are in a decade of new oppression and new injustices, but in the words of the King family: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice every where."