My personal elation of Barack Obama being elected president has been a bit subdued because of the passing of prop 8. With exit polls giving stats that show the strong African American turnout in California was working for Obama, but against gays, I wondered what it was like to be gay and black right now…

Here’s an excerpt from Pam’s House Blend:

written by: TerranceDC

Email: terrance@repbulicoft.com

Bio:
Black. Gay. Father. Buddhist. Vegetarian. Liberal.

Ed. Note from the site: I plan on writing something about black voters, the passage of proposition 8 in California, and the discussion that has ensued about whether the former failed in part because of the latter. In the meantime, I thought I’d republish some old content that might be relevant to the discussion.

I’d have written about it yesterday, but sometimes when they’re angry people say things they either don’t mean or that are said in a manner more inflammatory than constructive. For example, yesterday I probably would have written some things pretty inflammatory things about Black folks and religion. Would have meant them too, as much as the students who heard Keith’s speech meant everything they said in response.

One of the things I might have said about religion if I’d posted yesterday is that it can sometimes cause people to divorce themselves from reason and any ability to think critically about what they’re told.

At a seat of knowledge, a “historically Black” seat of knowledge, ignorance and superstition reign; and on a subject most of the students there would probably consider more important than anything else they study. Though if they study their other subjects the way they’ve apparently studied the Bible, there isn’t much to say about the quality of their education, if they’ve never questioned what they’ve been told and never read beyond what was placed in front of them. So, when presented with a reality that doesn’t fit neatly into the box that defines their world, they hide behind what another black gay blogger wisely defines as “headless monsters”.

And no, by the way, I no longer give a shit about defending African Americans against the notion that they’re more homophobic than whites, for the same reason I no longer give a shit about defending a Black politician like Harold Ford against the racist attack ads the Republicans are running against him. Because Harold Ford is no different than the racist Republican candidate running in Virginia, and the students at Central State University are no different than the Klan or a gang of marauding skinheads. I don’t defend anyone who would turn around and leave me and mine twisting in the wind. I no longer care.

I no longer care, because in a world ordered the way they appear to want it ordered against me and mine, every single one of them would have and should have the very life stoned out of them. Those who aren’t stoned to death can be sold into slavery. The female students and faculty should be driven from the school completely, and maybe even handed over to be raped it if means preserving the dignity of men. The Bible, the one they flip through so furiously to condemn someone else that they skip over the passages that – just a few verses down – condemn them too, says so. Part of me hopes they get it, even given what it would probably mean for me, just so long as I can stay long enough to look into their eyes, to see their faces when it arrives for them too. I’d even happily greet them in hell, if I believed in it, just to see their faces when they arrived.

I no longer care because they aren’t my people. There was a time when I would have been saddened by the behavior of the students at Central State; depressed because it would have been another case being rejected by “my people.” But no more, because they aren’t my people. They aren’t my people like Wellington Boone isn’t when he accuses gays of “raping his movement,” as though Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, an Barbara Jordan never existed. They aren’t my people, just like Michael Steele isn’t as the newsletter from Equality Maryland this week reminded me of his statement that he opposed marriage because “white gay men already have a lot of rights.”

They aren’t my people because they don’t think people like Keith, Staceyann and I exist, or that we should exist and if we do we deserve whatever we get. They don’t believe that couples like Alicia Heath-Toby and Saundra Toby-Heath exist or should exist.

It doesn’t matter to them that black gay and lesbian members of their families and communities (and churches, whether they realize it or not) stand to lose or gain the most in the fight for marriage equality.

They’re kinda like Pharaoh’s army, in all it’s various incarnations down through the ages. Looking at them, don’t see my people. I see Jeff Davis or Bull Connor. I catch glimpses of my people, hidden away behind holy walls mortared with ignorance and fortified by cruelty, suffering inside and looking for a way out.

If the students at Central State knew their own history or journeyed deeper into their faith than the stories they heard in Sunday school, the sermons they heard in church, and the condemnations carefully selected from legalistic scriptures that damn them as much as anyone else, and have been used to dehumanize them in the same way they use them to dehumanize others, then they might see the same thing I see. They’d see their people hurting because of them. They’d see my people, hurting because of them, and reach out with healing and acceptance instead of hatred and condemnation. Then to me, they’d be my people.

But they can’t and they won’t so they aren’t. And probably never will be. Period.