What it means to be black and gay

[kweerwolf]

Last February, when the debate over gay marriage had reached a particularly ugly juncture, the Rev. Gregory Daniels, a prominent black minister from Chicago, announced from his pulpit: "If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them."
On that occasion, if race had been a social club, I might have handed in my resignation.

That level of intolerance struck me as so extreme -- and so indifferent to the history of violence inflicted upon blacks by the terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan -- that it literally sickened me to think that such vile rhetoric had come from the mouth of a fellow black man.

Ordinarily there is nothing that fills me with more pride than my racial identity, but like many of us who grew up in that mythic, elusive entity known as "the black church," I have been subjected to more than a few anti-gay invectives from the pulpit.

Of course, anti-gay rhetoric isn't limited to the black church. But African-Americans seem to face unique challenges in accepting homosexuals. Having suffered intolerance for so long, perhaps we've been cruelly condemned to perpetuate intolerance ourselves.

http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/383865.html

[Maat]

1. Thanks for the post.

And I mean that.

The author of the article is an insightful person.

[msongs]

2. does his church get money from the faith based intiative welfare racket?

lotta churches taking the faith based funding are in it for the money, so will say and do what it takes to get the cash.
I view it as a welfare scheme, no matter what race/religion a church may be.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[AndyS40]

3. What about anti-black invective from gays?

This is something I've seen a lot of and as a lily white gay man it disturbs me.

I tend to separate the world into the bigoted and the non-bigoted. Somehow I realize the world is more complex than that but in my own personal calculus it remains immutable.

[NMMNG]

4. The neocons/fundies have created this mess

They went to the black churches and black leaders. They infiltrated message boards and blogs. They claimed that gays' use of the notion that their struggle for equality was similar to the Civil Rights Movement was insidious and dishonest. They said that we are gay and perverted by choice, so we don't deserve equal rights, whereas blacks are who they are by birth. Accordingly to even think of equating our "struggle" with theirs is an abomination, and an insult to blacks.

Sadly, some blacks took the bait, and a backlash against gays continues to this day.