NOTE: CROSS-POSTED AT THEBLACKCRITIC.COM
A little over five years ago, I had to have a long talk, mano a mano, with my little brother. He was in love with a very smart and beautiful woman. It was well known that he planned on asking her to marry him. They had been dating for eighteen months. He was fairly certain she was the woman he wanted to dedicate the rest of his life to making happy. But he was making a mistake. During fifteen of the eighteen months he’d dated her, she had cheated on him with her ex-boyfriend.
I had been vacationing in Egypt, so I discovered the truth a few weeks after other family members did. When I returned to the states, my sister pulled me to the side and laid out all the evidence. The facts were overwhelming and indisputable.
No one had dared to break the news to my brother before I returned. His affection for this woman was so overwhelming they feared it would completely shatter his spirits. They’d tip-toed around the issue on a few occasions, planting subtle hints here and there like Easter eggs for a five year old. But no one had the courage to be blunt and direct. They knew–from past experience–how irrational black men could sometimes be when blinded by love or passion.
My sister wanted to personally confront my brother’s girlfriend. Hours later, my mother advised waiting awhile before telling him the truth. Some felt my brother had ignored the obvious signs of infidelity and therefore wouldn’t be receptive to the revelation. My cousins and other family members suggested we snatch my brother’s gun collection just in case he found out before we broke the news to him. To me, none of these options were acceptable.
Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes the truth can be so painful, a force so emotionally crippling, we opt out of seeing it even when it’s staring us in the face like a mirror. But the price we eventually pay by submitting to delusions is far worse. I believe we lose a slice of our maturity–possibly even our humanity–when we embrace a version of reality that’s based more on fiction than truth. The thing that really separates children from adults is not just age and physical development, it’s also the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake. Children can be conned with those Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause stories but only the most gullible of adults would fall for such nonsense. Truth allows us to remain grounded. It’s the stepping stone for responsibility. It’s the doorway to reality–even when large chunks of that reality is both dark and painful. Telling the truth to adults is always the best option.
It’s in this spirit that I’m going to attempt a truthful, direct conversation with black folks now. I’m going to be brutally honest and straight forward in this discussion because too many of my brothers and sisters are lying to themselves right now. They have become confused toddlers throwing emotional tantrums over perceived slights–real or imagined. It’s going to be a painful conversation, many will walk away angry and disgusted, but it’s one that has to be dealt with head on.
Ever since the polls revealed that close to seventy percent of African-American voted yes on California’s Proposition 8 initiative, several outspoken members of the gay and lesbian community expressed outrage. Many people in the gay and lesbian community felt betrayed by a race of people who have a unique relationship and history with discrimination in America. There were a few people who were so upset and distraught by the results they hastily scrambled together a few erroneous numbers and began pointing accusatory fingers at Black people. They argued, ridiculously, that the Black vote was the deciding factor for Proposition 8 passing. A few other people, thankfully not many, seemed to believe Black people "owed" the gay and lesbian community their vote in exchange for a vote for a black president. When Proposition 8 passed, a lot of hurt and disappointment transformed into anger which eventually mutated into finger pointing. Someone had to be blamed, and the first slew of polls made Black people seem like a more obvious target than Christian hypocrites and the Mormon cult.
Several Black people took the bait. In no time at all, overzealous Sharptonites charged into the arena, swords drawn, ready to fight a race war with a minority group as blatantly oppressed as we are. Several Black people accused gay and lesbian messengers of using black people as scapegoats. Far too many Blacks began boldly declaring that their "former" partners in the struggle for equality were now racist. They even went so far as to dig up statistics that proved the gay and lesbian community supported the 2008 republican nominee John McCain more than they did the 2004 republican nominee George W. Bush. A backyard brawl seemed in the works when a few Black people began researching the poll numbers and determined that there was no way enough eligible Black voters existed in California to be the determining factor for Proposition 8 to pass–even if you accounted for a reasonable increase in the number of "likely" Black voters. Yes, Black people may have voted seventy percent in favor of Proposition 8, they argued, but if Black people had voted "no" by the same ratios as other demographics, the bill would have still passed. These tidbits became Black talking-points, and they were distributed so widely and argued so fiercely I suspect Karl Rove took notes.
Listen brothers and sisters, you are all arguing moot points. It doesn’t matter how many Black people live in California. Arguing about population robs us of the deeper truth. I don’t care if only 30 Black people lived in the state of California. If virtually 70% of those 30 Black people are misguided Negroes willing to discriminate against fellow human beings, then we have a problem. Don’t get so caught up tussling with an odd collection of angry gay commentators that you miss a chance to deal with the bigotry that’s deeply rooted in our community towards homosexuals. While you are over here drawing battle lines with a wayward segment of the gay and lesbian community, your great aunt and second cousin are still touting their homophobia at family reunions without being challenged.
This is not a time when we can afford to get distracted by sideline arguments over how many Blacks live or don’t live in California. At this point in history, we can’t waste our energy on silly witch hunts for new people to tag as racists. We finally have a ripe opportunity to confront the truth of homophobia in the Black community. It would be a disgrace to squander this opportunity by focusing our attention on a few ignorant hotheads who think blaming Black folks will heal their hurt and disappointment.
Truth is, we have had a huge problem with homophobia in the Black community for decades. In 2003, Benoit Denizet-Lewis wrote the essay "Double Lives On The Down Low" in the New York Times that tried to grapple with the issue, but it may have been too soon:
"Today, while there are black men who are openly gay, it seems that the majority of those having sex with men still lead secret lives, products of a black culture that deems masculinity and fatherhood as a black man’s primary responsibility — and homosexuality as a white man’s perversion. And while Flex now offers baskets of condoms and lubricant, Wallace says that many of the club’s patrons still don’t use them.
Wallace ticks off the grim statistics: blacks make up only 12 percent of the population in America, but they account for half of all new reported H.I.V. infections. While intravenous drug use is a large part of the problem, experts say that the leading cause of H.I.V. in black men is homosexual sex (some of which takes place in prison, where blacks disproportionately outnumber whites). According to the Centers for Disease Control, one-third of young urban black men who have sex with men in this country are H.I.V.-positive, and 90 percent of those are unaware of their infection.
We don’t hear much about this aspect of the epidemic, mostly because the two communities most directly affected by it — the black and gay communities — have spent the better part of two decades eyeing each other through a haze of denial or studied disinterest. For African-Americans, facing and addressing the black AIDS crisis would require talking honestly and compassionately about homosexuality — and that has proved remarkably difficult, whether it be in black churches, in black organizations or on inner-city playgrounds. The mainstream gay world, for its part, has spent 20 years largely fighting the epidemic among white, openly gay men, showing little sustained interest in reaching minorities who have sex with men and who refuse to call themselves gay."
Here is the truth brothers and sisters: A large portion of the African-American community is either gay or lesbian. Many of the Black men who go out of their way to portray themselves as masculine DMX impersonators are undercover homosexuals. A lot of the Black men who attack gay men in public, are actually gay in private. A high percentage of Black women who are currently in relationships or marriages are unknowingly involved with brothers on the Down Low. Countless black women are lesbian by preference but date and marry men as a means of masking their sexual orientation. The patriarchs of our communities, elderly Black men and women, often distort Christianity in order to justify their hateful attitudes towards homosexuals. This is the reality. Closing our eyes and sticking our heads in the sand wont make this reality disappear.
There are many reasons for this secrecy. One of the main reasons is the oppressive intolerance most African Americans have generally shown towards homosexuals. This may destroy the delusions of progressive Negroes who have escaped the hood, but the reality is very damning: most African Americans have a bigoted attitude toward gay and lesbian people. Many Black people cling to homosexual stereotypes as fervently as Ku Klux Klan members cling to racial stereotypes. There are black families all across this great nation with gay members who are shunned or ostracized because of his or her sexual orientation. There are other black families in America that remain a solid unit so long as the gay or lesbian member never openly admits his or her preference sexually. Two in three Black people you talk to about the issue will decidedly pick-and-choose which parts of the Bible they follow in order to argue homosexuality is a sin.
You can pretend outrage at the gay and lesbian community all you want, but this is our current reality. Still, as horrible as these realities are, the embarrassing truth is that so many of us tolerate this bigotry from friends and family members and have done so for decades. Shooting spit balls at a few careless gay writers or bloggers won’t change this problem in our communities. I understand how frustrating it can be to constantly feel used as a scapegoat. This won’t be the last time, I assure you, so you might need to grow a thicker skin.
Calling another group of people racists isn’t going to combat the homophobia our Bible-toting grandmothers have. I sometimes wish the NAACP had buried the R-word instead of the N-word. Pretending like our community doesn’t actively engage in a discriminatory attitude towards gays won’t help us confront the issue. Ask any openly gay Black man you know how many married Black men or Black men in relationships they have dealt with who are on the Down Low and you will understand how hypocritical our homophobia actually is. And refusing to challenge religious hypocrites who use the Bible to justify discrimination makes us no better than the people who used the Bible to rail against interracial marriages.
This must change, and now is the time. We must confront bigotry against gays and lesbians with the same uncompromising passion we use to challenge racism. We must enlighten our elders and try and stop them from following in the footsteps of the same mentality that once gave us Jim Crow Laws. As Obama predicted, we are the ones we were waiting for.
The biggest challenge, from my experience, will be the religious challenge. It’s currently acceptable–even encouraged–in America to be a religious hypocrite. People are determined to believe what’s convenient instead of what’s right. Still I recommend we charge forward.
The next time your sweet old aunt yanks out her Bible and repeats the few scriptures her pastor quoted that call homosexuality a sin or an abomination, take the time to discuss it with her. Ask her to show you in the Bible where it says one sin is better or worse than another sin. (Trust me, it’s not there. With the possible exception of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, there is no such thing as a hierarchy for sin in the Bible. A sin is a sin. Yet, the people who point judgmental fingers at others using Christianity as a spear are merely hypocrites who usually have not even read the Bible in its entirety–they’ve read Harry Potter books and hundreds of other thick books from beginning to end, just not the book that’s supposed to be inspired by God.) When your sometimes-religious-sometimes-not-religious girlfriend or boyfriend looks at you and declares that homosexuality is wrong or unnatural or a sin, ask him or her if she thinks heterosexuals who fornicate should also be discriminated against since the Bible teaches that fornication is a sin and is wrong as well. Christians hypocrites have used the Bible as a conduit to push amoral agendas for centuries–a quick study of history will reveal how slave masters in America used the Bible to justify slavery (for the record, slavery is accepted and even encouraged in the many parts of the Bible). Don’t forget that after 1915 the Ku Klux Klan rebooted as a Christian organization. When your Mormon buddy knocks on your door and explains his or her reason for being for Proposition 8, kindly remind this history revisionist that for over a century the Mormon church considered Black people cursed and refused to allow us to become priest.
When Jesus was surrounded by religious hypocrites threatening to stone a prostitute, he didn’t bow down just because they quoted random scriptures repeating the law in the Bible. He didn’t make social or scientific excuses for the prostitute the way we sometimes do to defend homosexuality. Instead, Jesus stood up to them and made them see the bigger picture. He challenged them to confront their own imperfections instead of pointing out the imperfections of others. This is why the words of Jesus, "He without sin cast the first stone," is so powerful. Jesus didn’t argue details. He didn’t debate interpretations. He merely reminded the hypercritical lynch mob that they were sinners too. When all else fails, I think we should actively remind these holier-than-thou bigots in our race to follow Jesus’ example with actions not just lip service.
This will anger many people, it will hurt the feelings of others. Still, we can’t afford to participate in a movement that threatens to belittle the dignity and discriminate against fellow human beings. The truth isn’t something you deliver to folks only when it’s convenient.
When I met with my brother five years ago, I felt guilty delivering such dreadful news. Still, I believed he deserved to know the truth. Immediately. I knew there was a possibility he would never completely trust another human being again as long as he lived. I knew there was a change he would get upset with the wrong person and want to grab a shotgun and seek out the ex-boyfriend, sentencing the dude as a co-conspirator in an emotional crime. I knew that my brother’s naturally chirpy nature would become clouded and soiled for several months, if not years. But I also knew I had to give him the truth, raw and uncut, and force him to deal with it.
Dear brothers and sisters, here is the truth. You can’t fight the bigotry in the gay and lesbian community based on flimsy evidence. But you can fight the bigotry in our own communities. Do it.