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Society Needs Reminders About Black Gays and Lesbians




Saturday, June 6, 2009

By ALVIN MCEWEN
Guest Columnist

Recently, I got angry with an episode of “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne.”

One of the child characters, Malik, found himself in the middle of the dilemma because one of his friends was HIV-positive. The child was ostracized, and Malik had to defend him from the other children.

This the second time “House of Payne” focused on the issue of HIV and AIDS in the black community. The other time, one of the leading characters was dating an HIV-positive woman.

But at neither time did this show even talk about black gay men, who are one of the main groups affected in startlingly large numbers by HIV and AIDS.

It’s almost as if the show was saying that HIV and AIDS is a problem only when it affects the “normal folks” in the black community.

“House of Payne” is one of the most popular shows in the black community, and it has yet to have even a guest character who is gay or lesbian. But it doesn’t seem to have a problem with making jokes about someone being gay or being on the “down low.”

And this, unfortunately, is indicative of the black community.

Few in the black community seem to care about the gay community of color — our issues, or our lives in general.

According to the Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Black Justice Coalition’s analyses of 2000 Census data, there are almost 85,000 same-sex couples in the United States who are African-American. Three in five black female same-sex households (61 percent) are comprised of mothers living with at least one child. Black lesbian couple households are almost as likely as black married opposite-sex couple households to include children (69 percent).

But to hear the voices of the black media and our leadership, you wouldn’t be aware of this fact.

When our leaders talk about the problems of the black community, we know they won’t include the gays and lesbians of color.

When well-meaning activists focus on the “State of Black America,” gays and lesbians of color are absent.

When magazines such as Ebony print articles comparing “black civil rights” and “gay civil rights,” they conveniently can’t find any gays or lesbians of color to give any comments.

Instead of real conversations, gays and lesbians of color are supposed to be placated by ridiculous assurances that no one has a problem with our “lifestyle” as long as we aren’t in anyone’s faces about it.”

Then we are condemned about our supposed “lifestyle” — as if homosexuality was the original sin that drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden — while over-sexualized images in African-American entertainment, fornication and out-of-wedlock births are given a virtual pass in the pulpits. (When President Obama called out homophobia in the pulpits, he was given a standing ovation while his advice went unheeded.)

Meanwhile black-oriented television shows and motion pictures consider us as persona non gratis or simpering oversexed caricatures.

Gays and lesbians of color are being pushed in a psychological closet and muzzled by our own community. We are treated like dog dirt on the front lawn of black America, something to be avoided or eliminated with the utmost efficiency.

Young gays and lesbians of color suffer the most from this treatment.

In his classic novel Native Son, African-American writer Richard Wright demonstrated, through the turbulent life and death of his protagonist Bigger Thomas, that when society works against building the self esteem of youth, it usually creates criminals and those who engage in negative behavior.

In layman’s terms, when young gay and lesbian African-Americans are not given social and psychological support and are constantly bombarded with images of weak, oversexed, pathetically funny or disease-ridden images of themselves or no images at all, how can anyone expect the outcome of their lives to be anything but negative?

Someone must stand in the gap for our gays and lesbian children of color, even if our mainstream African-American leaders won’t.

Whether the rest of the black community approves of gays and lesbians of color is, in the long run, irrelevant. We deserve acknowledgment and respect because homosexuality is a black issue.

These are the reasons the black pride movement is. It exists so that gays and lesbians of color can remind people that we exist, have fruitful lives and are vital to the survival of the black community.

And they remind young gays and lesbians of color that God made them exactly as they should be.

Alvin McEwen is secretary of S.C. Black Pride (southcarolinablackpride.com) and blogmaster of Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters (holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com). S.C. Black Pride will celebrate its fourth annual Pride Week June 18-21.