Are the homosexual and black churches just big closets??

I have been thinking of just how many churches there are in this country, and in my small area.  Here there are 2 “gay” churches, both in hiding, not listed, as is apparently the MCC church in Baton rouge-but look at the ones that are listed on the website of Gayellow Pages—which include the Unitarian and mainline churches that are only gay-friendly, so don’t count.
 
But what do we have to show for these hundreds of “gay” churches?  They have been around for a decade now.
 
But here you can't find the two unless you know someone.  And the Unitarian church in Shreveport is not really gay-friendly.
 
But the question also is, how much good have all the black churches done?  We think they did a lot, but it was a few and Dr. King that did the civil rights work.  Troy Perry did a lot, mostly personally, but do you see many MCC people speaking out on our civil rights?
 
And for the black churches I only have to look at my town.  The worst part of town has 5 black Baptist churches in a two block area, and the area has the most crime in town.  The next biggest crime area has no churches. What does that tell us?  And the areas are all black and the crime is black on black.
 
It was Bill Cosby more than black heterosexual male preachers who has spoken out to challenge the young black women and men to stop being so irresponsible, having kids they can't take care of, dropping out of school with no way of getting a job in this era of computers and globalization of jobs.
 
Who are the preachers talking about?  How much harm homosexuals are doing by seeking same sex marriage.  And quoting the Bible that, if they actually practiced what it says, would have them still slaves.
 
And how much help have the “gay” churches been in working to get homosexual citizens our civil/equal rights?  How much good can they do if they are not even openly gay?  While we of all people don't want preachers telling us who to vote for, we sure want them to tell everyone how much still needs to be done to get us equal rights.  It is assumed that the professional gay/lesbian groups, medical doctors, lawyers, etc. are educating others in their professions.  Certainly we expect the few political groups to be trying to educate the members of the parties—Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, etc.
 
Where are the grass roots leaders our community needs?  Where are the black church people who are speaking out on issues? The rightwingers sure are, and they are raising lots of money by promoting fear of homosexuality among the ignorant church goers, or those sitting at home watching the tv evangelists.
 
While many homosexuals are no longer religious, it is nonsense to ignore the fact that most Americans are religious and that those in our community that are deserve help-find mention of the churches in the g/l media-when has the Advocate had an article on churches in cities around the country?
 
Soulforce is one effort.  People who can’t do anything themselves can donate money to such efforts.  But only when we can see they are actually dong something—as Soulforce is.
 
There needs to be a C-SPAN like conference on what our homosexual religious groups are doing and getting support for them.

Pre-Christmas Thoughts

Oh, am I enjoying Christmas Day-even though I'm not religious. 

One of our recent e-mail dialogues made me think of a good former friend, co-worker, Rudi Steinert, who was also a former HIC board member, who passed away before Don Slater, though I can’t remember when.  He lived across the street on Calumet from Tony and Don, where Dale Jennings lived before he went into the nursing home. He had relatives killed in the holocaust and was a very practical person. He got on the bus everyday and rode to a stationery store in Beverly Hills, and hosted several ONE/HIC events in his apartment. 
 
He would pick up men on Main St. (Need I say more?) Then he would clean them up, feed them, have sex and return them to Main St.
 
The reason I bring him up, is that he would explain the reason behind this special ad as sent by Jeanne Barney.  He said, the older you get, the more choosy you get.  It is nature's way of saying, I know I can’t get the young cute ones, but fortunately, I don't want them if they have any defect-so I am more\ selective—I reject them before they can reject me.  Sour grapes or something.

The ad Jeanne brought to our attention, from Craig’s List or some similar place:

I can host in my Q-shaped apartment on 39th Street between Delancey Street and Ninth Avenue. Please, no weirdos, druggies, smokers, drunks, hippie-types, fems, fats or African American colored black Oriental Asians of color. Sincere only need apply.

 

Architect published first Walt Whitman Work

I read an article by Eric Brock in a local paper (The Forum Newseekly, which is sort of the local L.A. Weekly) by a local historian on architects about one who designed octagon houses/building. Brock says that this man was also the person who paid for the publishing of the first Walt Whitman work. 
 
We need people to read all sorts of things and let the rest of us know about coverage on the subject.  We miss “Fenceberry,” both of whom are dead but were the modern version of Jim Kepner’s Tangents column. With so many articles and mentions of homosexuality, there needs to be volunteers who will let us know articles in publications or TV shows we should see.

On the Senate Caving in to Bush's War Funding plan

I realize most of you have not lived as long as I have, and been around to see politicians from Roosevelt on.
 
I can remember when it was the (Southern) Democrats who were racists and stopped any civil rights legislation, etc.  So it is short-sighted to blame Democrats for reality. As I said in my yearend email, my cause has made progress under every politician and “government” since the movement started in 1950, so it may be something to try to understand why—and I think this is true of the women’s and black’s civil rights movements.
 
But I, and those I have worked with, would still feel the same way even if we had not made progress yet.  It can be done, under our system.  The question is, how will the 10% of the population that is homosexual, plus our allies, friends, and families, vote in the coming elections?
 
We have as much voting power-assuming the voting machines are honest/accurate—as the “evangelicals.”  We have not made the progress we could have because rich queers have not supported our efforts all these years.  They of course think their money makes them safe and hidden—as if they are not called queer behind their backs, as are blacks, etc.
 
It is one thing to have been in the closet in the ’50s and ’60s, but money can be given to a cause anonymously, and the voting booth is secret. It is unforgivable for so many “gays” to keep waiting for a few cute celebrities to make “safe” for them to be open—they benefit already for the sacrifices others have made since 1950.

Our enemies support their cause; too many of us do not support ours. That is what makes the difference, and politicians have to be realistic.  It is the obviousness that we ARE making progress and our numbers are growing that has made the politicians work for us now, as much as they are.  If they are to lose the religious bigots’ votes, they might have to be able to replace them with gay votes.

On Gay Retirement Centers

I would think our community would be interesting to us oldtimers if we could live where we could have meetings and share our experiences over the years.  And I would think college students would want to visit and hear these experiences to compare them with how life as a homosexual is today.  And it is even better if some of the people have lived in other places, not just good ole Southern California—although we have to pity them for not having been that lucky.  (I’m in LA, the state now, as I couldn’t afford to live in L. A. but of course loved it for the over 30 years I lived there and worked with ONE, Inc. and (also co-founded) the Homosexual Information Center.
 
We have lost the pioneers such as Harry Hay, Morris Kight, Don Slater, Jim Kepner, et al., but can you imagine what a pleasure living in a place with them and hearing them talk, even argue—maybe they are doing it in heaven of course.  But there are “pioneers” being made in our movement today and you may have some of them living there in the coming years and our community will be better off for having them safe and having time to share ideas as well as memories.  And the Center in Hollywood could have the benefit of these people.

For information, visit Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing in Hollywood, CA.

Homosexuality in the media just this week

I wonder what we could say if we decided to do a “report” to our community/movement pioneers, most of whom left us in the last decade.
 
I can tell them several things just this last week and they are all positive.
 
The Williams Institute (UCLA Law School) has issued several important reports on their research on who “we” are and where we are.  We are everywhere, and seem to be going into the “red” areas of the nation, including as families.
 
And there is new work at the Columbia University Law School’s Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic that helped get asylum for a Jamaican who feared harm if he returned  home.
 
Several gay/lesbian publications gave their readers Lisa keen’s  column on the Human Rights Campaign’s list of gay-friendly companies/businesses. The list has grown each year. This would make Don Slater and others happy since it means that private enterprise has been ahead of the government in giving us equal/civil rights even though many governments have also worked for domestic partner benefits and civil unions over the year.
 
Obviously the most important legal advance was the ending of the sodomy laws in the Lawrence Vs Texas close decision by the U S Supreme Court. Equally important an advance is legal same sex marriage in Massachusetts and in theory the equal “marital” rights in civil unions in New Jersey and other states.
 
I believe the media has slowly gotten better. And I believe that the entertainment “industry” has gotten much better—starting with the movie of the decade, Brokeback Mountain. And intelligent homosexual characters in major television shows such as Brothers and Sisters. These shows have discussed our issues better than some of us have.
 
When C-SPAN gives us coverage of a great speech by a homosexual preacher (in this case Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson) at a university (NOVA Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale FL) there can be no excuse for homosexuals and our allies to not know what resources are available to discuss religion and homosexuality.  And we can spread news of such shows by cell phones and the Internet, neither of which were available to our pioneers. 
 
The dropping of the “T” coverage in the ENDA bill in congress has gotten our movement/community to discuss not only the relationship among our various parts—although I seldom hear anything on bisexuality—but how we can work in politics for our cause?
 
We have a dozen or so gay/lesbian libraries/archives, all of which need support from our media and community, and at least that number of really good newspapers and magazines. There are queer courses at almost every major university, as well as g/l groups at the colleges.
 
Our causes seems to have NOT been slowed no matter who was president or who controlled congress.  That is an interesting sociological fact that needs to be investigated and explained.
 
So it seems to me that we have great reasons to feel gay and celebrate the past year and look forward to the coming decade, even though we will loose more pioneers, we will hopefully add new pioneers for this century.

Kameny Takes on Brokaw: His Open Letter to Random House, with Walter Williams's Reply

This letter is worth reprinting, as are Walter Williams's comments, posted as a comment below.


November 26, 2007
 
Mr. Tom Brokaw
c/o Random House Publishing Group
 
Ms. Gina Centrello
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
 
Ms. Kate Medina
Executive Editorial Director
Random House Publishing Group
1745 Broadway
New York, New York, 10019
 
Dear Mr. Brokaw and Mmes. Centrello and Medina:


As a long-time gay activist, who initiated gay activism and militancy at the very start of “your” Sixties, in 1961; coined the slogan “Gay is Good” in 1968; and is viewed by many as one of the “Founding Fathers” of the Gay Movement, I write with no little indignation at the total absence of any slightest allusion to the gay movement for civil equality in your book Boom! Voices of the Sixties.  Your book simply deletes the momentous events of that decade which led to the vastly altered and improved status of gays in our culture today.  This change would havebeen inconceivable at the start of the sixties and would not have occurred at all without the events of that decade totally and utterly ignored by you.  Mr. Brokaw, you have “de-gayed” the entire decade. “Voices of the Sixties”??? One does not hear even one single gay voice in your book. The silence is complete and deafening.



As a gay combat veteran of World War II, and therefore a member of the “Greatest Generation,” I find myself and my fellow gays as absent from your narration as if we did not and do not exist. We find Boom! Boom!! Boom!!! in your book about all the multitudinous issues and the vast cultural changes of that era. But not a single “Boom,” only dead silence, about gays, homosexuality, and the Gay Movement.



The development of every other possible, conceivable issue and cause which came to the forefront in that period is at least mentioned, and is usually catalogued: race; sex and gender; enthnicity; the environment; and others, on and on and on—except only gays.



In 1965, we commenced bringing gays and our issues ”out of the closet” with our then daring picketing demonstrations at the White House and other government sites, and our annual 4th of July demonstrations at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Smithsonian Institution displayed these original pickets last month, in the same exhibition as the desk where Thomas Jefferson drafted The Declaration of Independence. The name of the Smithsonian’s exhibition?  “Treasures of American History.” In your book: No Boom; only silence.



About 1963, a decade-long effort commenced to reverse the psychiatric categorization of gays as mentally or emotionally ill, concluding in 1973 with a mass “cure” of all of us by the American Psychiatric Association. No boom in your book; only your silence.



The most momentous single Gay Movement event occurred at the end of June, 1969, when the “Stonewall Rebellion” in New York, almost overnight (actually it took three days) converted what had been a tiny, struggling gay movement into the vast grass-roots movement which it now is. We had five or six gay organizations in the entire country in 1961; fifty to sixty in 1969; by the time of the first Gay Pride march, in New York one year later in 1970, we had 1500, and 2500 by 1971 when counting stopped. If ever there was Boom, this was it. In your book, no Boom, only your silence.



About 1972, Elaine Noble was elected to the Massachusetts state House of Representatives as the first elected openly gay public official. I had run here in Washington, DC, the previous year for election to Congress as the first openly gay candidate for any federal office. Harvey Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco. No boom in your book; only your silence.



Mr. Brokaw, you deal with the histories of countless individuals. Where are the gays of that era: Barbara Gittings; Jack Nichols; Harry Hay; Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons; Randolfe Wicker; Harvey Milk; numerous others? No booms in your book; only silence and heterosexuals.



Starting in 1961 a long line of court cases attacked the long-standing U.S. Civil Service Gay Ban (fully as absolute and as virulent as the current Military Gay ban, which actually goes back some 70 years and was also fought in the 60s) with final success in 1975 when the ban on employment of gays by the federal government was rescinded. In your book, no boom; only your silence.



The assault on the anti-sodomy laws, which made at least technical criminals of all gays (and most non-gays for that matter, although never used against them) and which was the excuse for an on-going terror campaign against the gay community through arrests the country over, began in 1961 and proceeded through the ’60s and onward. In your book, 
no boom; only your silence.



In 1972, following up on Stonewall, the first anti-discrimination law protective of gays was enacted in East Lansing, Michigan, followed by the much more comprehensive one in D.C. in 1973, starting a trend which now encompasses some twenty states, countless counties and cities, and has now reached Congress in ENDA. In your book, no boom; only your silence.



The Sixties were a period of unprecedented rapid social and cultural upheaval and change. We gays were very much a part of all that. A reader of your book would never have the slightest notion of any of that. In your book, no boom; only your silence.


At the start of the Sixties gays were completely invisible. By the end, and especially after Stonewall, we were seen everywhere: in entertainment, education, religion, politics, business, elsewhere and everywhere. In BOOM our invisibility remains total.



The only allusions to us, in your entire book are the most shallow, superficial, brief references in connection with sundry heterosexuals. Where are the gay spokespeople? We are certainly there to speak for ourselves. But in your book, only silence.



Mr. Brokaw, I could go on, but this should be sufficient to make my point. The whole thing is deeply insulting. As I said, you have de-gayed an entire generation. For shame, for shame, for shame. You owe an abject public apology to the entire gay community. I demand it; we expect it.



Gay is Good. You are not.




Sincerely,
 
Franklin E. Kameny, Ph.D.


Dr. Franklin Kameny
5020 Cathedral Ave., NW
Washington, D.C.  20016
FEKameny@webtv.net
202.362.2211
 
Kameny Papers Project
www.kamenypapers.org