On November 3rd, the state of Maine voted no on the issue of gay marriage in a referendum that was widely considered a test case for the rest of the nation. This vote was so important, Californians who successfully organized in support of Proposition 8, and thus outlawed gay marriage on the west coast, moved east. Groups dedicated to the defeat of gay marriage set up camp in Maine to deny consenting adults the right to legally wed. (www.miamiherald.com, story 1299203) Now is the time for African Americans to support Gay Marriage. This LGBT struggle is a civil rights issue; yet, in the Black community, we have failed to advance this cause. Indeed, too often we have advocated against it.
This summer, the national office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) called to task one of its own, Rev Eric P Lee, president of the organization?s Los Angeles chapter, for opposing California?s Proposition 8. Lee?s support of love and marriage should have been applauded by the venerable Civil Rights organization. SCLC?s unwillingness to surge forward in support of gay marriage was backwards. This Civil Rights organization was on the wrong side of this debate, the wrong side of history, and, ironically, on the wrong side of the Civil Rights Struggle.
(www.blackchristiannews.com)
Old school organizations like SCLC risk extinction with these regressive policies. They will be as derided by history for their outright silencing of LGBT Rights. Standing in the way of gay marriage today is as viciously ugly as George Wallace was when he stood in the schoolhouse door 40 years ago. (www.npr.org, story 1294680) More so. For how could any Civil Rights organization turn its back on a people struggling to express their full humanity?
During slavery, we Black folk expressed our humanity in our tears and smiles and the caresses we shared despite the overseer?s lash. And in our desire to marry, the brooms we jumped, leaped over into what we could claim as Love. Despite the law.
During Reconstruction, our ancestors stood for hours, sometimes days, to legalize their marriages. In her powerful discourse on the Black female experience, When and Where I Enter, writer Paula Giddings documents the legions of newly-freed couples who circled the Freedmen?s Bureaus in long lines to obtain a certificate of marriage from the state. (www.answers.com, paula-giddings) To publicly express their commitment. To love. What a wonderful way to celebrate Emancipation.
I am certain great scholarship equal to Giddings? important work will document the determined, similar efforts of gay and lesbian couples to legally wed. Who are we, Americans, to deny them that basic civil right? How could we, Black Americans, deny them that basic civil right? The right to hold your loved one?s hand in the hospital. To commit assets to your loved one. The right to walk down the street holding hands. How could we, knowing how far our ancestors walked, all over the south and into the north and out west and up into Canada to find and hold loved ones, how could we now, the descendants of that transgressive, liberating Black love, deny our gay and lesbian brethren and sistren the same?
Because their love is unholy, ungodly? Didn?t slave-owners use the same Book to justify their silencing of Black emotion?
Because it?s nasty, disgusting to think about LGBT love? Weren?t slaves labeled nasty, disgusting, unable to love?
So many of us simply figure: ?I don?t care what they do; I just don?t want to know about it.?
OK. But that increases life in the closet, on the DL, streaking into the night to find same sex love before returning home, to the bed of a Black woman. It increases risky behavior. Wouldn?t Black women, the fastest-growing group of HIV-AIDS infected Americans, be safer knowing? (www.cdc.gov, factsheets, aa) Wouldn?t our communities be stronger, healthier, if down-low husbands and boyfriends could simply be, openly, proudly gay?
When my friend, a beautiful brother, came out of the closet to me several years ago, he said he thought he would still marry a woman and father children one day. ?So, you?re bisexual then?? I asked. ?No,? he answered. He said he was just ?doing what he was doing? while he was young and single. It took years for him to be able to exclusively date men, come out fully, self-identify as a gay man, and reject the false image of hetero-normative marriage that for so long had compelled him to deny his basic self and, foolishly, think he would be able to live as a straight man. Before our conversation, he had been in a few relationships with women that had lasted for years. Though he was finally able to name and claim his sexual orientation, think of all that time everyone lost because he was silenced into the closet too many of us in the Black community force our LGBT family and friends to occupy.
Many also point to the fact that the gay white male is more powerful than the heterosexual African American of either gender, as the LGBT community can pass as straight while most African Americans can not pass as white. But, for our LGBT sisters and brothers, like my friend, who are Black, who are our families, who are ourselves, ?This business of passing is dangerous.?
At the start of the 20th century, Nella Larsen began to hint at the psychological damage done by sexual orientation passing in her novels Quicksand and, especially, Passing. (www.glbtq.com, african american lesbian literature) Now, at the start of the 21st, we need to probe deeper, into our own souls, into our own communities, into our own bedrooms. Into our own Truths. Into our own selves.
While Americans nosy in their neighbors? bedrooms as if they have a right to be there, LGBT folk are attacked on the streets. (www.nypost.com, video shows brutal attack) The more pressing issue isn?t whether people should experience homosexual love; the pressing issue is that same sex lovers do experience violent hate. That experience in the public realm, of hate crimes and bias attacks and verbal assaults and death, is what needs to be policed. The experiences folk have in the private realm, of loving one another, needs to be left alone. Equal protection and privacy: that?s what people deserve, simply because they exist.
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Elsa, thanks so much for posting this. Simultaneously I sent this note around:
Dear Friends,
You know that 99% of the time I only post things about writing, for writers … but today I am compelled to make an exception.
I am crying as I write this and utterly nauseated.
You know that 99% of what I post and e-mail is purely about writing, for writers. I am making an exception because I feel so lost, humiliated, powerless, scared and UNSAFE after the horror of Maine?s repeal of Gay Marriage.
This was not Alabama, people. This was Maine. Socially liberal New England. Yet the Christian Right–who elected and re-elected GW Bush–was focused and powerful enough to get out their vote, so that 53% of Maine voters voted to repeal this basic human right.
On Tuesday, November 10th the NY State legislature will vote to pass gay marriage in NY or not. As this November 5th New York Times article (?Gay Rights Rebuke May Change Approach?) discusses, after the Maine vote, our politically cautious NY senators will be less likely to stick their necks out for gay rights.
If I had to communicate one thing to all the many wonderful, loving, liberal straight people in my life who in their hearts love their gay friends and relatives, it is this:
THE TIDE IS TURNING AWAY FROM GAY RIGHTS IN THIS COUNTRY!
As you saw with 8 years of GW Bush, the Christian Right is powerful, monied and driven to make sure that the whole of this country abides by their beliefs despite us fair, rational, non-extremists (gay, straight, whatever race, religion, etc.) being the majority. There was Prop 8 in California. Now Maine. We are talking about states full of rational, progressive, empathic people…yet this is the reality. We might not understand why these extremists are so anti-gay but they exist and they are on a mission to destroy gay rights. YOUR rights, too! Folks, these same people are against organ donation, a woman’s right to choose and stem cell research as well.
Maine had gay marriage briefly then it was taken away. Ditto in California. This leaves every gay person deeply hurting.
Please, friends, I have been to many wonderful weddings–gay and straight–this year (including my own!). And I can’t tell you how many well-meaning friends and family members said things like, “Can you believe that this is happening in our lifetime? Who would have thought gay marriage would be so accepted? How wonderful!” I wish this were true, but it is not the LEGAL REALITY!
Sadly, my wife and I had to go to Connecticut to get married because it is not legal in New York. New York!!! When we travel out of state, unless it is in the HANDFUL of states where gay marriage is LEGALLY recognized, we had better have our wills, health care proxies, etc. with us in case anything bad happens and we need to act as any legal spouse would in an emergency.
I am scared and heartbroken, as are my gay brothers and sisters. We know that every single day, we live precariously, with only minimal rights, and we know what the religious extremists in this country are capable of.
PLEASE! Hear our cry and HELP!
If you are willing to help, as I know in my heart you are, here’s what you can do:
– SEND THIS NOTE to at least five people in your life (cut, paste, send…)
– ATTEND A CANDLELIGHT VIGIL for gay marriage in NY on Nov 9, 6pm in Union Square (Go to Marriage Equality New York for details.)
– TELL OTHERS: the reality is that gay marriage and gay rights BARELY exist in this country. If we want the “momentum” of gay rights to spread we can?t allow states like Maine, one of the most independent-minded, live and let live states in the union, to be bullied and dominated by Christian Fundamentalists.
– LEARN MORE: go to Marriage Equality New York for information on gay rights in NY and other states.
– TAKE ACTION. Contact your elected representatives (info at Marriage Equality New York).
THANK YOU for any way you can support this cause!
Peace and love,
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Well said, Eisa. Gay marriage is, indeed, a civil rights issue. Thank you for putting your thoughts out there, and let’s hope that right minds prevail in New York on November 10th.
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Keep telling yourself that everybody against this is an evil monsterous bigot who thinks the earth is flat and wants all women barefoot and pregnant if it makes you feel better but I’ll tell you this: Gay= Black is a fail.
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Thanks Eisa for taking the lead on this discussion. Based on some of the responses, you may need to do another piece on the misconceptions people have about religion and sexuality.
Why do people think gay people have a lifestyle (they don’t – gay folks are a diverse grouping with myriad lifestyles). Why do some think Jesus wouldn’t approve of gay people and their right to form supportive and legally protected families? Where do people get these ideas?
Heterosexuals do not have a monopoly on righteousness and goodness knows they have caused so much damage to human kind and this earth that they should not condemn others simply for their sexual orientation. Moreover, if Jesus was so hung up on sexuality, why didn’t he talk about how the gays were going to hell in a hand basket when he had the chance? I think it is because he had more pressing issues to deal with and because he had more compassion in his pinky than his followers have been able to muster for millenia.
These attitudes are sad but not surprising for religion is not an immediate buffer or antidote for ignorance. What was that posted comment before mine? James says that “Gay = black is a fail” – that doesn’t even make sense.
This isn’t about making ourselves feel better but it is about morality and bigotry. Keep challenging our minds and hearts Sistah Eisa! We need to think more and not rely upon knee-jerk responses in the face of ideas that challenge us.
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Thanks so much for your supportive comments and for elevating the discourse!