SwimFinsSF

Gay High School

I’ve got all SORTS of mixed feelings about this:

First public gay high school to open in NYC

On the one hand there is a lot to be said for creating a safe place for GLTB students to go where they can focus on getting an education without being harassed for who they are. There are FAR too many kids being abused in schools around the country for being gay - whether or not they actually are and it often makes it impossible for them to learn in high school. This leads to an EXTREMELY high suicide rate among queer youth… (think back to the number of times you heard the term ‘fag’ when you were in school)

On the other hand it seems to be missing the point in my mind and postponing the point at which these children learn about the realities of the real world (the good ones and the bad ones). Shouldn’t the point really be to ensure that if kids are being harassed in their schools for who they are, gay or otherwise, then shouldn’t we make the administrations of the other high schools accountable and responsible for stopping that abuse.

But maybe thats an idealized goal that can’t happen in the short term and a gay high school is a solution that can.

But doesn’t creating a separate gay high school make it that much harder to make the non-gay schools safe.

And as a parent I would also be concerned about the quality of a general education coming from a school that focused. Would my child have all of the same course selection and quality of teachers that are available at other schools.

Hmmm… Still pondering this one…

Dore Alley

By the way - Kevin, Brian and I went to the Dore Alley Street Fair yesterday which was a lot of fun. I know a lot of people who cringe when you mention this fair but I always have fun. Sure, its full of a lot of STRANGE stuff that you don’t see in most places in the world - and a lot of stuff that I could do without seeing. But if you can set that aside for a bit there is a lot of other fun stuff and a really good collection of folks. I just think people who go for their first time are so mesmerized by the more extreme folks that they miss the rest.. If you ask me hot boys dancing and drinking beer in the sunshine can’t be all bad…
Anyway - Kevin took some pictures that we posted yesterday:

Pictures from Dore Alley

domain shuffling

So I FINALLY broke down and got a place to host all of my various domains so I’m in the process of shuffling things around… Ultimately i’ll be moving my blog onto one off those domains but for the time being it’ll stick here since I need to learn how to setup and configure MT on my own (Matt has been kind enough to handle that for me thus far)… I also need to rework my old personal web site so it doesn’t look so dated - its been offline since we moved and when I pulled it out of mothballs this morning it was a HUGE disk space hog (since I was hosting it myself) and was kind of dated..

So stay tuned - there are changes afoot..