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By: IRENE MONROE
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QUITE A LOT was accomplished over the last year in the lives of African-American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. As we cross over into 2006, here’s a glimpse back at our creative genius and collective strength that got us through the raging culture wars of 2005.
Activist Keith Boykin came up with the idea of building an organization that addresses the social justice issues of African-American LGBTQ people, founding the National Black Justice Coalition in 2004.
In October 2005, the NBJC became official, when the organization was approved for 501(c)(3) status.
In July 2005, one of D.C.’s prominent African-American ministers, Willie Wilson, set off a firestorm with his now-notorious sermon denouncing lesbians and gay men. This is the same Reverend Wilson, pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast D.C., who in 1999 opened his church for a forum on discrimination against same-gender loving people.
In August 2005, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the well-loved, liberal African-American pastor, wrote an article for the magazine at his Trinity United Church of Christ that shocked many in his Chicago congregation, which has a same-gender loving ministry.
Wright complained that his denomination’s ordination of “a homosexual” got more press coverage than their social gospel.
“Are 44 million Americans with no health care insurance less important than ‘gay marriage?’” Wright wrote. “Why aren’t black Christians in an uproar about that?”
In August 2005, Rev. James A. Forbes, senior minister at New York’s Riverside Church, held a conference to address anti-gay rhetoric spewing from conservative pulpits.
Rev. Al Sharpton, along with his National Action Network, became a leader in the fight to stamp out homophobia in the black church. Why the personal stake in the issue? His sister is a lesbian.
And while misogynistic and homophobic lyrics are a mainstay in hip-hop music, hip-hop artist Kanye West challenged fellow rappers to eschew those rhymes.
While many African-American ministers led the campaign against marriage equality, many African-American gay men and lesbians were not so wedded to the idea, either.
Social research continued to show that African-American same-gender households have everything to gain in the struggle for marriage equality and more to lose when states pass anti-marriage amendments.
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the October 1995 Million Man March, Minister Louis Farrakhan announced an October 2005, Millions More Movement March.
Not surprisingly, Farrakhan’s invitation to an “all-inclusive” coalition of African-American civil rights leaders once again excluded LGBTQ groups.
With a promise that there would be an LGBTQ speaker at the event, Keith Boykin was dropped on the day of the event, but Cleo Manago, founder of Black Men’s Xchange, a gay Afrocentric support group, was not. Why? Manago mirrors the fundamental sentiment of Farrakhan’s theology: a conscious separation from the dominant white heterosexual and queer cultures.
J.L. King became the country’s poster boy by exposing “down low” behavior in his 2004 best-seller, “On The Down Low,” and the topic continued to dominate black gay debate in 2005.
Keith Boykin dispelled the D.L. hype in his gay bestseller, “Beyond the Down Low,” in which he argued the black church and its sexual politics contribute to the “D.L.” subculture and its role in the AIDS epidemic.
“Ex-gay” activist and minister K. Godfrey Easter depicted his dramatic transformation from gay to straight in “Love Lifted Me Because of the Church: Why One Can Not Be Gay & Christian.”
And Terry McMillan, bestselling author of “How Stella Got Her Grove Back,” spent 2005 “waiting to exhale” from news that her husband, Jonathan Plummer, who inspired the blockbuster movie hit, is gay.
Three-time WNBA MVP and Olympic gold medalist Sheryl Swoopes came out in an interview with ESPN the Magazine.
And after a dearth of black actors in “Queer as Folk,” “Queer Eye” and “The L Word,” there was a deluge of applause for the black cast of “Noah’s Arc,” which premiered on Logo, MTV’s gay cable channel.
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