Black and gays: The shared struggle for civil rights

via The Washington Post, by Jonathan Capehart

You may recall that last month Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) and I sparred over same-sex marriage on “Morning Joe.”

You may also recall that at the end of the interview, the show’s anchor, Joe Scarborough, asked me, “[W]ould you compare the civil rights struggles of African Americans over 300 years in America to marriage equity?” Without hesitation, I said, “Yes.”

“It’s an issue of civil rights, as you said. It’s an issue of equality. It’s an issue of equal treatment under the law,” I said. “No one is asking for special rights.

No one is asking for any kind of special favors. We’re just looking for the same rights and responsibilities that come with marriage and also the protections that are provided under marriage.

In that regard overall we’re talking about a civil rights issue and what African Americans continue to struggle with is exactly what lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are struggling with today.”

That didn’t go over so well with more than a few African Americans. They don’t see the struggles as comparable, equivalent or even related.

Last Wednesday, @Brokenb4God tweeted to me, “@CapehartJ still can’t believe u think the choice of being gay is congruent to the struggle of blacks. Ain’t never seen no gay plantations!”

Clearly, she’s from the misguided pray-the-gay-away cabal, so no need to address that.

I’ll leave the cheap and provocative “gay plantations” stink bomb alone, too, and get to my main point.

What links the two struggles is the quest for equality, dignity and equal protection under the law. In short, gay rights are civil rights. It’s that simple.


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Conversation: Being Black and LGBT, Homophobia, and Transphobia

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Janet Mock and Clay Cane

Our Voice To Voice conversation series began in January with a collection of interviews between LGBT authors discussing their work, queer life and some of the challenges of writing.

In February, celebrating Black History Month, we've asked some prominent and inspiring individuals to join the Voice To Voice series so we can get an window into some of the issues that define and challenge people who are both African-American and gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Last week we featured Laverne Cox and her twin brother M. Lamar and on Monday we offered a conversation between two Charlotte, North Carolina lesbian activists, LaWana Mayfield and Rhonda Watlington.

On Tuesday we shared Meshell Ndegeocello and Toshi Reagon's discussion.

Today we're featuring a conversation about identity between Clay Cane and Janet Mock.

Clay Cane is a radio personality and journalist who's contributed to numerous publications such as The Root, theGrio, The Advocate and BET.com, where he's the Entertainment Editor. Aspiring to be a James Baldwin with a pop culture twist, he spends his Thursday nights as host of Clay Cane Live on New York's WWRL 1600AM.

Janet Mock is a writer who earned a GLAAD Award nomination for her story about growing up transgender. She's also a Staff Editor at PEOPLE.com, hosts the relationships podcast "The Missing Piece" and is writing her memoir about her adolescent journey beyond gender.

In 2012, she was named one of theGrio's 100 most influential leaders making history today for "challenging the stigma surrounding gender identity."

Here, Cane and Mock discuss their decision to be out as journalists, the duality of being black and LGBT and dealing with homophobia and transphobia, respectively.

Janet Mock: So happy to finally meet you! I feel I already know you from reading your work and being a fan of your radio show.

Clay Cane: I feel the same way! I’ve wanted to interview you for a long time. I loved your article in Marie Claire because it created such a buzz in the community and sparked a dialogue I hadn't heard in a long time. And congratulations on the GLAAD Award nomination!

JM: Thank you. The outpouring of support is surreal to me. But I'm sure we can spend the hour fan-girling out. [Laughs]

CC: Yeah, I'm sure we could go on and on. Okay, I have a question for you: Having "come out" as trans in such a public way, when you think of gender identity, what does it mean to be a woman?

JM: I can only talk about what it means to be me. I intimately know what it means to be Janet, this young woman who comes from this evolutionary existence having grown up trans.

To be a woman means standing fully in your truth and owning the totality of your experiences -- things that have really nothing to do with gender.

That sense of owning who you are is what attracted me to you. You've talked about the duality of your experience as a black, gay man, quoting Zora Neale Hurston, saying, you're not tragically colored or tragically gay. Can you expand on that?

CC: For many people, they look at being LGBT as having a tragic life: living an existence of shame, rejection and anger. That's not my story and I will not let that be my story.

Actually, being gay saved my life. If I would've been straight, I would’ve more than likely been in jail or dead like the other boys in my neighborhood in West Philadelphia.

Because I was gay, I was introverted. I would stay home and study, listening to Madonna and Prince! [Laughs] I wouldn't be the writer that I am if I don’t fully accept all of the dimensions of myself.

JM: I find that to be fully you is amazing but it's a whole other thing when you do it in your profession as you've consciously done as an openly gay journalist.

CC: I got into the writing industry via other gay men who were closeted. They felt like it would hurt their careers if they were out. Well, from the start of my career I made the decision to be who I am because I didn't want anybody to say, "Well, he interviewed T.I., but he's a faggot!" Being out made me a better writer.

You can't sit down with a stranger and get the truth out of them when you're paranoid about somebody finding out your truth. The truth is, being who I am has never stopped me from getting a job.

I wouldn't have gotten my radio show on WWRL if I had been closeted. What about your coming out as a journalist?

JM: While making the decision to tell my story, I definitely took on other people's thoughts about me, internalizing other people's transphobia.

So when I came out publicly, I was armed for people to say awful things about me. Instead, I was overwhelmingly embraced.

I wasn't expecting the love and light that actually came my way, and the opportunities that arose as well because I chose to be open about my journey.


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Artist Thomas Allen Harris on Black Gay Identity

via Advocate, by Neal Broverman

The varied issues of Africans and African-Americans is the point of "AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange," an innovative series that airs on the documentary channel WORLD and is hosted by The Daily Show's Wyatt Cenak.

Each episode is really a full-length documentary telling a different story, from the effort to get Africans hooked on solar energy to a profile on the queen of Calypso music.

Sunday's episodic film, That's My Face, is directed by Thomas Allen Harris, a prolific gay artist and producer who's shown work at the Whitney Biennial and won Guggenheim and Sundance fellowships.

Harris spoke to us about his Brazilian-based film, his childhood in Africa, and some of the projects he's working on through his company, Chimpanzee Productions.

The Advocate: Can you talk about "AfroPoP" and your film in it?
Harris: "AfroPoP" is a series being produced by the National Black Programming Consortium, a part of the minority consortium of PBS.

They’ve had this series for the last three years where they pick a certain number of films for the show. This year there are four different films, and my film, That’s My Face, is one of them. (Click here to find out where "AfroPoP" is airing near you.)

In the movie, I go to the Bahia region of Brazil. I was looking for another way of experiencing myself, kind of like a spiritual journey that Gertrude Stein and James Baldwin had when they went to Europe.

I lived in Europe and knew what that was like, so I went to Brazil. I was looking for what being black in the Americas was like outside of the U.S.

Brazil has more African-Brazilians than the U.S. has African-Americans. It’s also been interesting to me because I partly grew up in East Africa.

The Black-Brazilians were able to keep a lot more of their African roots through language and, most importantly, through religion.

I was very intrigued by their religious practices, some of which are very welcoming to gays and lesbians. It’s very different than what you hear in the press about what’s going in regards to the persecution of gays and lesbians in Africa.

Had you been to Bahia before?
I had been there before so I had experienced it. The time I went to make That’s My Face was the beginning of December.

From December all the way to February in the south coast of Bahia are all these public festivals that are inspired by these African deities and also Carnivale.

I was really doing my search in the middle of all this spectacular stuff. These Bahia festivals are very different than the Carnivale in Rio.

The latter is sort of a show and the Carnivale in Bahia takes over the whole city—all the shops close, with the exception of places selling beer and food.

It becomes a whole different world. Everything was sped up during the festival because the drums play all the night. In Brazil, the drums weren’t outlawed when Africans were brought over, like they were in the U.S.

So people in the U.S. weren’t able to pass on certain aspects of religion and communication. The drum is an important part of religious expression.

Through the drums, people start dancing and enter this trance. It’s transformative, and you’ll see that in the film.

You lived in Tanzania as a child. What do you remember of that time?
I remember people living close to the land. I went to a national school, with the local Tanzanians. We had to clean the toilets and work on the farm.

It was an African socialist country at the time, so the kids had to clean and cook.

When I was growing up there, intimacy between men was permissable.

With my friends, we could walk down the streets holding hands. Even if you hold your hands with brother in the U.S., you could get killed.

There's a very narrow way of how men can act in the U.S. What was also interesting, is that the capital of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, is so cosmopolitan.

I had friends from India, Uganda, the Philippines, England, China. It was very different than the picture we have in our minds of Africa. It made me really want to see the world and played into me wanting to go to Brazil.

The U.S. and the U.K. have started applying pressure on African nations to end the criminalization of homosexuality. Do you think that’s helping?
It’s really important that the West get clear and articulate that attacks on gays and lesbians are human rights violations. The marriage equality effort here, it legitimizes the struggle in Africa, and also in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

These countries are using gays and lesbians as scapegoats. In Africa, it’s not simply the African leadership that makes the violent crimes possible, it’s the missionaries who say homosexuality is an evil import from the West.


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LGBT racial minority hit hard by social and financial inequality

via stuffqueerpeopleneedtoknow

Black* members of the LGBT community experience stark social, economic and health disparities compared to the general population and their straight black and white LGBT counterparts, according to a Center for American Progress report.

Data in the report emphasized the intersections of the black racial identity with sexual orientation and gender identity, revealing:

■Families headed by black same-sex couples are more likely to raise their children in poverty.

■Black lesbians are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases.

■Black gay and transgender youth are more likely to end up homeless and living on the streets.

CAP recommends overcoming these issues with a policy agenda that “seeks to understand and tackle the structural barriers—discriminatory systems, conditions and institutions around socioeconomic status, race, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity—that perpetuate negative economic, health, and other life outcomes among this population.”

The report also suggests gay policy priorities, like marriage equality, underserve many populations within the LGBT community.

“Despite significant gains in securing basic rights for LGBT Americans over the past decade, the quality of life for black gay and transgender Americans has remained virtually unchanged,”

Aisha Moodie-Mills, CAP advisor on LGBT policy and racial justice, wrote in a statement.

“Marriage equality is vital to overall progress, but marriage alone is not a silver bullet to reduce the disparities black gay and transgender populations face.”

In the report, CAP made the following recommendations to overcome issues faced by the people of color in the LGBT community:

CAP recommendations for addressing economic insecurity

■Adopt inclusive family policies and safety net programs.

■Pass housing anti-discrimination laws.

■Take a comprehensive federal approach to gay and transgender youth homelessness.

■Make consumer financial protection a priority.

■Pass employee non-discrimination laws.

■Support gay and transgender entrepreneurs.

■Legally recognize same-sex relationships.


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The Faces Missing from 'The Gay Rights Movement'

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Zach Stafford

I am a gay, multiracial male who grew up in Tennessee. When I was little I felt like an outsider, like many gay folks, but my "outsider" position was not just because I was gay; it was much more complicated.

I was one of the only people of color in my school, and I was the most effeminate little boy there, as well, which pegged me immediately as a "faggot."

I also was pudgy, not very athletic, and liked video games too much, but those are all minor aspects of why I didn't fit in. Needless to say, no one around me was like me, the puggy, effeminate, brown boy living in the South -- and that was lonely.

As I grew up and got to high school, a few gay kids did start coming out, and I did make some gay friends, but these kids, due to being in a white suburb, were all white.

So my race and my gayness then began to work together, making me feel different, making me feel hopeless, making me unable to consider that it could get better.

When I watched some of my favorite gay-friendly TV shows, like Will & Grace, I would see gay folks having fun, being gay, and enjoying life in a city, most of the time.

This gave me my first insight into what being gay was, and my first suspicion that gay was not like me -- it was wealthy, it was white, and it didn't bother to have people who looked like me for me to look up to, or even begin to understand what my experience was like as a gay person of color.

After graduating from high school, moving to Chicago, and reaching drinking age, I went to the famous Boystown neighborhood and soaked in the abundance of gay bars, restaurants, centers, and anything you can imagine.

However, I felt out of place, like I didn't belong; I remember looking around and noticing that most of the men looked like Abercrombie models, or at least tried to look like them, and were mainly white.
I got very little attention there, and the little attention I got was due to my exoticism, because when one is brown, that could mean one is Brazilian, Egyptian, Puerto Rican... the list goes on. Gay had a look, and I wasn't that look.

So as I watched the YouTube Video "The Gay Rights Movement," which has recently gone viral, I got progressively sadder as the video played through footage of what the gay community seems to consider milestones.

Lots of familiar faces rolled by, and happy emotions did rise inside me, but I still felt hints of sadness, a sadness that was familiar, that wasn't new, and I knew exactly what it was: I, and a lot of other people within the gay community, were not there.

It's not like we weren't ever there; there have been tons of queer folks of color who have done amazing things in America.

For instance, the video shows Martin Luther King Jr., but not his advisor and one of the main powers behind him, Bayard Rustin, a gay black man.

The video shows Ellen Degeneres over and over talking about suicides, but not another famous lesbian who is black, Wanda Sykes.

It shows coverage of the suicides of gay male youths, but not the countless suicides of transgender people, which happen yearly and go quite unnoticed, just like the faces of trans people in the video.

It doesn't show a lot.


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MLK Day Reflection for LGBTQ Justice in the Black Church

via HuffPost Gay Voice, by Irene Monroe

Today is MLK Day, and I am proud to count myself among the many people working for social justice today who stand on the shoulders of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Too many people think King's statements regarding justice are only about race and the African-American community, thus excluding the LGBTQ community.

But King said, "[T]he revolution for human rights is opening up unhealthy areas in American life and permitting a new and wholesome healing to take place. Eventually the civil rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial justice."

Members of King's family also embrace his words, extending them to the LGBTQ community.

For example, in 1998, Coretta Scott King addressed the LGBT group Lambda Legal in Chicago. In her speech, she said queer rights and civil rights were the same:

"I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King's dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people."

Like her parents' faith, the Kings' eldest daughter Yolanda's faith in the civil rights movement drove her passion for LGBTQ justice.

"If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you do not have the same rights as other Americans," she said at Chicago's Out & Equal Workplace Summit in 2006.

"You cannot marry. ... [Y]ou still face discrimination in the workplace, and in our armed forces. For a nation that prides itself on liberty, justice and equality for all, this is totally unacceptable."

However, I must say that as an African-American minister having pastored churches, and having worked alongside black ministers and their parishioners, I have learned that whom we shout out and pray to on Sunday as an oppressed people does not have any relation to whom we damn, discard, and demonize, thus making us an oppressor to people marginalized and disenfranchised like ourselves.

The black church is an unabashed and unapologetic oppressor of its LGBTQ community and, consequently, a hindrance in progressive movement toward LGBTQ civil rights in this country.

While King would undoubtedly shake his head in disbelief concerning his brethren, he would applaud the stance the NAACP took on marriage equality.

In quelling the tension between black civil right activists and ministers of the 1960s who still vociferously state that marriage equality for LGBTQ Americans is not a civil right, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. marked the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia (when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 struck down this country's anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional) by stating the following concerning same-sex marriage:

It is undeniable that the experience of African Americans differs in many important ways from that of gay men and lesbians; among other things, the legacy of slavery and segregation is profound. But differences in historical experiences should not preclude the application of constitutional provisions to gay men and lesbians who are denied the fight to marry the person of their choice.

But if King were with us today, he would be sad about how homophobia continues within the black church community, which has a profound impact on the mistreatment of its LGBTQ community, and its inattentiveness to the AIDS epidemic ravaging the black community.

Religion has become a peculiar institution in the theater of human life. Just as the Latin root of the word, "religio," means "to bind," it has served as a legitimate power in binding people's shared hatred. But King's teachings taught me how religion plays a profound role in the work of justice.

A religion that looks at reality from an involved, committed stance in light of a faith that does justice sees the face of the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the dispossessed -- and that also includes its LGBTQ people.


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Magic Johnson Teams Up With Rappers to Address Homophobia in Hip Hop

via GLAAD Blog, by Kimberley McLeod

NBA legend and HIV/AIDS advocate Magic Johnson plans to continue educating the African American community about HIV and hopes to also address anti-gay attitudes in hip hop.

Johnson recently spoke with The Huffington Post about a new project he's developing with rappers to rally against homophobia:

As a hip-hop fan, you realize that homophobia is still an issue everywhere, but especially in the black community. When people are scared to talk about it, that's how the disease spreads. So what have you been doing to get that risk reduced?

What we're trying to do is reach out to the hip-hop community because they have power — power with their voice, power with that mic in their hand and power with the lyrics that they sing. I have a lot of friends in that industry and so what we're trying to do is rally them to get behind the cause, deliver the message to these young people that HIV and AIDS is big and it's not going anywhere. They can make a difference right away by speaking out, because they have a big fan base.

So we're finding out that a lot of them want to be involved; they're just looking for a group like ours to latch onto and be a part of it. We haven't really had any push-back from the hip-hop community.

He is currently in talks with various performers and plans on announcing their names at a press conference this year.

“It's so important that we rally — not just them, either,” he adds. “I need the hip-hop community but I also need the basketball players and football players. We need a little bit of everybody…”

GLAAD commends Magic Johnson for leading this important initiative and will post updates as details about the project become public.


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Empowering Young, Black, Gay Men for HIV Prevention

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Charles Stevens

The most recent statistics indicate that an entire generation is being impacted by HIV on an epic scale.

HIV cases among young, black, gay and bisexual men increased to an estimated 48 percent between 2006 and 2009, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Ultimately, it is impossible to discuss HIV/AIDS in the black community without addressing the importance of tolerance.

It is up to us -- relatives, co-workers and friends -- to engage our black, gay brothers in a conversation that is constructive and rooted in concern, one that turns to them for insight instead of turning them away.

There have been significant political and medical advances made in HIV/AIDS prevention.

The National AIDS Strategy, a key achievement of Barack Obama's presidency, is a prime example. By focusing with laser precision on at-risk groups and prioritizing addressing disparities in HIV, there will be historic gains.

On the scientific front, advances in biomedical HIV-prevention tools, such as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, have given us signs of hope even as we take a collective gasp at the work ahead of us.

However, HIV has never been merely a public health issue but a social one, as well. It is an issue that impacts us not only abstractly but also in a very real and tangible way.

The black community as a whole has made substantial progress, more than is credited, in terms of embracing our diversity. Many unsung heroes and heroines have taken great strides in challenging anti-gay attitudes.

Straight allies have also spoken out unapologetically in support of their gay brethren. However, there is still work to do, and HIV/AIDS makes building bridges across orientations even more critical.

The black community has just as much of an incentive to be a part of the solution: the "win" is the lives of our people, the lives of young, black, gay men. These men are valued; their lives are priceless. They are assets to our communities.

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The Down Low Made Me Do It!

via Huffpost Gay Voices, by Earnest Winborne

As a black man, I've been very blessed to have an amazing career working as a producer in television. For more than three decades, I have worked for some of the biggest names on some of the most popular shows in television history.

I've seen it all -- from producing for local television stations to working on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The View. I've been to every award show red carpet possible through my years with Extra, E! News and Access Hollywood, just to name a few.

And more often than not, I have been the only black male on the team. And as a double whammy, I am almost always the only openly gay black man on staff.

So, when the media first became infatuated with the idea of the "Down Low" back in the late '90s, for me the issues and topics were magnified because it hit so close to home -- not because I was in the closet hiding anything, but because as the token gay black man, my straight colleagues assumed I had all the answers.

But they weren't asking the right questions. All over the tube, from Jerry Springer to CNN and everything in between, everyone was talking about the Down Low.

There were books and documentaries, newspaper commentaries and radio shows. The Down Low was everywhere.

 It was so prevalent that even the straight guys on my camera crews looked up from their sports pages to ask me about it.

As the only black gay rep on the staff, I got asked, "Why are so many black gay men in the closet?" "What is it about the black community that won't allow black gay men to come out?" "Is it true that these closet cases are spreading HIV/AIDS to black women?" (This is a huge myth, and according to the CDC, it's the prevalence of intravenous drug use that is to blame.)

Then, the discussion turned to my personal life. I got asked, "When did you decide to come out? Was it difficult for you?"

And that's when it hit me. I realized my story was still new to them because my experience as a gay black person is never seen in the mainstream media. I realized that even folks in the liberal entertainment industry needed to be educated.

 I was an anomaly; they were used to seeing gay people who looked like the characters on Will & Grace or, in today's world, like Cam and Mitchell on Modern Family.

And when they do see black gay men in the media, it's usually a discussion of the mysterious men on the Down Low.

Why are these nameless, faceless people who are creeping, so to speak, getting more media attention than the black same-gender-loving (SGL) people who are open and honest and living in their truth?

Where are the black SGL role models who are productive members of our communities? Where are the television segments, talk shows, newspaper articles and stories that feature people like my friends and me?

I realized that black gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are the invisible people. Like Wanda Sykes has said, "There are no black gays. We're like unicorns. We don't exist [in the media]."


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Stop Transmitting Silence: Join us for the conversation

There is a disturbing rise
in the number of cases of STD/STI and HIV/AIDS
in the black community.

What can we do to stop this?

Come hear from elected officials, public health advocates,
faith-based leaders, parents and youth.

Wednesday, October 5th
6pm-8pm

Chicago Urban League
4510 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60653

Refreshments will be served.