Category: Inclusion

Having voice in the Black Community is still an arduous struggle for its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) community. As we cross over into 2012, one of our biggest accomplishments in 2011 has been the various ways in which LGBTQ of African descent have employed different public venues to be heard. And these venues…

Just last month, Gay Black Men News (GBMNews.com) folded. It was a unique online eZine because it brought a perspective of the news as it related specifically to gay men of African descent. And its circulation was global. Ralph Emerson, publisher and founder of GBMNews said: “We are blessed with a large following of avant…

Bishop Eddie Long, one of the Black Church’s prominent pastors of “prosperity gospel,” and bling-bling theology in the Southeast, is neither flashing his gold nor silver these days. The embattled pastor had hope settling, for an undisclosed amount, the sex scandal lawsuit alleging that he used his influence, trips, gifts and jobs to coerce young…

Homophobia runs deep! So deep that it also impinges on the animal world. Toronto’s zoo is splitting up a pair of same-gender penguins. These Happy Feet males, Pedro and Buddy, jokingly referred to as “Brokeback Iceberg” have been nesting with each other for a year. The reason for the boys split up, a zoo official…

Gays on television today is nothing new. And we can thank Ellen DeGeneres’s watershed moment in April 1997, when she came out on her sitcom “Ellen.” Today’s openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) television personalities are Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Lynch, Rachel Maddow, and Rosie O’Donnell, to name a few. These personalities have…

It’s not easy for any person of African descent to be LGBTQ in our black communities, but our transgender brother and sisters, are the most discriminated against among us. And a recent study corroborates this fact. The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), in collaboration with the National Gay and Lesbian task Force and the National…

Before returning to New England for the second time, I served two African American Presbyterian Churches. And during that time I never thought, two decades ago, that the entire church body would change its position on LGBTQ worshippers. But a historic yet bittersweet moment happened on October 8th in the Presbyterian Church (USA). And the…

In a supposedly post- racial society, one would think that the n-word was buried and long gone with its troubled eras of race relations in this country. But as American novelist, William Faulkner, wrote in his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” As we all try…

Southwest Airlines got issues. And those issues, on any given day or flight, appear arbitrary to its customers. For example, little did lead guitarist for the punk rock band “Green Day” Billie Joe Armstrong know that flying while wearing “saggy pants” can evict you off Southwest Airlines. This past Labor Day weekend, on September 1,…

One minute past the stroke of midnight on September 20th, the long awaited repeal of President Bill Clinton’s 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT)” policy was lifted. At precisely 12:01 a.m. EST, the popping of champagne bottles began, along with cheers and tears celebrating the end of a repressive era that prohibited LGBTQ servicemembers from…