GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE FEBRUARY 11, 1994

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Healing the great divide between blacks and gays

Continued from Page 8

actually targeted people of color with their homophobic message. As white lesbian activist, Suzanne Pharr, points out in an excellent article "Racist Politics and Homophobia" (Transformation, July/August 1993):

"Community by community, the religious Right works skillfully to divide us along fissures that already exist. It is as though they have a political seismograph to locate the racism and sexism in the lesbian and gay community, the sexism and homophobia in communities of color. While the Right is united by their racism, sexism, and homophobia in their goal to dominate all of us, we are divided by our own racism, sexism, and homophobia." (Italics mine.)

The right's divisive strategy of enlisting the black community's support for their homophobic campaign literally hit home for me in June. A black lesbian who lives in Cleveland, where I grew up, called to tell me that a group of black ministers had placed a virulently homophobic article in the Call and Post, Cleveland's black newspaper.

Entitled "The Black Church Position Statement on Homosexuality," the ministers condemn "homosexuality (including bisexual as well as gay or lesbian sexual activity) as a lifestyle that is contrary to the teachings of the Bible." Although they claim to have tolerance and compassion for homosexuals, their ultimate goal is to bring about "restoration," i.e., changing lesbians and gays back into heterosexuals in order "to restore such individuals back into harmony with God's will." One of the several sources they cite to prove that such “restoration" is possible is the Traditional Values

Foundation Talking Points, 1993, a publication of the Traditional Values Coalition. The ministers also held a meeting and announced their goal to gather 100,000 signatures in Cleveland in opposition to the federal civil rights bill, HB 431, and to take their campaign to Detroit and Pittsburgh. A major spokesperson for the ministers, Rev. Marvin McMickle, is the minister of Antioch

Baptist Church, the church I was raised in and of which the women in my family were pillars. Antioch was, on a number of levels, one of the most progressive congregations in Cleveland, especially because of the political leadership it provided at a time when black people were not allowed to participate in any aspect of Cleveland's civic life.

McMickle states, "It is our fundamental, reasoned belief that there is no comparison between the status of blacks and women, and the status of gays and lesbians." He explains that being black or being female is an "ontological reality. . . a fact that cannot be hidden," whereas "homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle. . . defined by behavior not ontological reality."

By coincidence, I met Rev. McMickle in May when Naomi Jaffe, an activist friend from Albany, and I did a presentation on black and Jewish relations at the invitation of Cleveland's New Jewish Agenda. Antioch Baptist Church and a Jewish synagogue cosponsored the event. My cousin had informed me that McMickle was a very important person in Cleveland and that he had just stepped down as head of the NAACP. Naomi and I were struck by his coldness to us throughout the evening in sharp contrast to the kind reception we received from both the black and Jewish participants who were mostly elder women. We guessed that it was

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because of his homophobia and sexism. Little did we know at the time how right we were.

When I first got news of what was going on in my home town I was emotionally devastated. It would have been bad enough to find out about a major black-led homophobic campaign in any city in this country, but this place wasn't an abstraction, it was where I came from. It was while growing up in Cleveland that I first felt attraction toward women and it was also in Cleveland that I grasped the impossibility of ever acting upon those feelings. Cleveland is a huge city with a small town mentality. I wanted to get out even before I dreamed of using the word lesbian to describe who I was. College provided my escape. Now I was being challenged to deal with homophobia, dead up, in the black community at home.

I enlisted the help of NGLTF and Scot Nakagawa who runs their Fight the Right office in Portland, Oregon, and of members of the Feminist Action Network (FAN), the multi-racial political group to which I belong in Albany. Throughout the summer we were in constant contact with people in Cleveland. FAN drafted a counter petition for them to circulate and in early September several of us went there following NGLTF's and Stonewall Cincinnati's Fight the Right Midwest Summit. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, the group that had been meeting in Cleveland had fallen apart.

We had several meetings primarily with black lesbians, but found few people who were willing to confront through direct action the severe threat right in their midst. Remaining closeted, a reluctance to deal with black people in Cleveland's inner city, and the fact that Cleveland's white lesbian and gay community had never proven itself to be particularly supportive of anti-racist work were all factors that hampered black lesbian and gay organizing. Ironically, racial segregation seemed to characterize the gay community, just as it does the city as a whole. The situation in Cleveland was very familiar

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to me however, because I've faced many of the same roadblocks in attempts to do political work against racism and homophobia in my own community of Albany.

I cannot say that our efforts to support a visible challenge to the ministers in Cleveland was particularly successful. The right wing's ability to speak to the concerns and play upon the fears of those it wishes to recruit; the lack of visionary political leadership among both black and white lesbians and gays both nationally and locally; and the difficulty of countering homophobia in a black context, especially when it is justified by religious pronouncements, makes this kind of organizing exceedingly hard. But we had better learn how to do it quickly and extremely well if we do not want the Christian right wing to end up running this country.

Since returning from Cleveland we have been exploring the possibility of launching a nationwide petition campaign to gather at least 100,000 signatures from black people who support lesbian and gay rights. One black woman, Janet Perkins, a heterosexual Christian who works with the Women's Project in Little Rock, Arkansas, has already spoken out. In a courageous article entitled, "The Religious Right: Dividing the African American Community" (Transformation, September/October 1993) Perkins takes on the ministers in Cleveland and the entire black church. She calls for black church members to practice love instead of condemnation. She writes:

"These African-American ministers fail to understand they have been drawn into a plot that has as its mission to further separate, divide and place additional pressure on African-Americans so they are unable to come together to work on the problems of the community...

"What is needed in our community is a unity and bond that can't be broken by anyone. We must see every aspect of our community as valuable and worth protecting, and yes, we must give full membership to our sisters and brothers who are homosexual. For all these years we have seen them, now we must start to hear them and respect them for who they are."

This is the kind of risk taking and integrity that makes all the difference. Perkins publicly declares herself an ally who we can depend upon. I hope in the months to come the gay and lesbian movement in this country will likewise challenge itself to close this great divide, which it can only do by working toward an unbreakable unity, a bond across races, nationalities, and classes that up until now this movement has never had.

Barbara Smith is a black feminist writer and activist. She is the editor of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, and is cofounder and publisher of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

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