Safe Zone Dialogues: Exploring the LGBT Community

          UAB is a very diverse campus and it is wonderful to see so many different cultures and worlds coming together to form one amazing place. However, something that I learned very quickly here is that people would rather you keep your opinions to yourself if you are not accepting of certain beliefs or practices of those around you. I am a born-again Christian, with very strong convictions against same sex relationships, bisexuality and transgender. However, this does not mean that I do not tolerate those lifestyles. I even have friends that are a part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. Regardless, I was still very apprehensive in participating in the Safe Zone Dialogues, held at UAB recently. My main concern was the fact that I knew my beliefs would be different from the panelists and probably many of my own classmates who were also participating. The LGBT community, and the acceptance of it, is still a very taboo subject in our country. And like I said before, it seems that if you’re belief is against it, people would rather not hear it, especially if you bring the Bible into it.
          Regardless of my apprehension, I attended. I was more willing to attend knowing that this would be a safe place to discuss our different ideas and beliefs. The first day we attended we heard the stories and life experiences from the panelists. Our two panelists were as different from each other as well as anyone else in the room. One was an older woman, one was a young guy. One was a real estate agent and retired teacher, the other a student. One was married before to someone from the opposite sex, the other had never had that experience. One believed you were born gay, the other felt it was more of an evolution of his surroundings. One was republican, conservative and agnostic, the other democratic, liberal and a Christian. Their own personal diversity was very surprising to me because I think sometimes we tend to stereotype all people in one group as all being exactly the same, which was definitely not the case here.
           The second part of the dialogue sessions included the Q&A portion. We were able to ask very difficult questions for the panelists to answer. The answers to some of the questions asked are listed above. However, the most intriguing thing to me was to learn the religious belief from our female panelist who believed she was born gay, but yet is a Christian. The reason this was hard for me to grasp was because I know what the Bible says about homosexuality and it clearly speaks against it. She told us that many people that use the Bible against the LGBT community take verses out of context and use them against their community. She also said that she had a chance to study the origins of those versus and they didn’t mean what they said. However, when asked to give an example of it, she took versus out of context and did the same thing to support her statements that she accused other people of doing to bring down her community.
          The other students in my class, for the most part, were very accepting and embracing of their culture, and then there was a few of us that were against it. Regardless of my feelings on the subject, I was very pleasantly surprised to see how well the dialogue sessions went. It was a great experience to learn about someone else’s life experience. Now we have forever been tied together with a single experience when otherwise we probably would have never crossed paths!

Your Tax Dollars At Work.... Or Are They?

      
            I recently had the opportunity to attend a screening of ethnographic films created by UAB students shown during the Collective Perspective film series at Vulcan Park in Birmingham, Al. The screening titled “Your Tax Dollars at Work: Documenting Federal Programs in the Magic City” highlighted documentaries that illustrated the effect of federal stimulus spending on Birmingham residents. This series was part of Vulcan Parks “Birmingham in the 1930s” and it examined life in Birmingham during the great depression.
          Before attending this documentary, I have to admit I was not very informed with what happened to the stimulus money in Birmingham and how the federal grants affected its residents. I do not live in Birmingham, Al and many of the topics covered did not and would not affect me personally. However, it was very interesting to see the hard work the students put in and finding out what actually happened to this money.
          To give a little background information, 15 students in UAB’s Ethnographic Film class taught by our very own Mrs. O’Beirne, MA and Michele Forman, MA recorded and produced seven short documentaries following stimulus money throughout Birmingham. The students, paired up in groups of two or three, each picked a specific project or organization that received federal funding and followed how they used the money. Even though all the documentaries were very interesting and important, the one that stood out to me the most was "Birmingham: YouthBuild."
          YouthBuild is an organization that offers second chances to many young adults that often do not have a college degree much less a completed high school education. They offer GED courses, construction classes and the chance to build homes for homeless families. This organization took the stimulus money and was able to keep doing great things for their organization that truly change lives everyday.
          These young anthropologists engaged in the new information technology phenomenon that is now more widley available to more contemporary anthropologists. This allowed them to use new data-gathering methods to achieve their ethnographic fieldwork.
          In the end, it was great to see many of the different ways that the stimulus money was used for the residents of Birmingham and a bit disheartening to find out that some of it was not used in the way it was intended. Overall, It was a great screening and I enjoyed seeing the film work of these students!


This is the screen where the documentaries were shown.

Me in front of a beautiful view of Birmingham at the top of Vulcan's mountain.

This is the statue of Vulcan with his spear touching the rainbow!

                                                                                      This is a replica of Vulcan's foot and is located inside of the museum. I thought it would be amusing to see my foot compared to it! lol :)