Category: Inclusion

No faith community knows better than the Black Church how religion-based bigotry shapes prejudicial attitudes many white Americans once held toward African Americans in this country. Religious texts have been interpreted to justify some of this country’s worst crimes against our community, resulting in the legality of slavery, the lynching of black boys and men…

It has been not quite a century since Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated in January, 1948 at the age of 78 in New Delhi, India, and the bevy of hagiographies on him are now being replaced with truth-telling biographies on the Gandhi nobody knew. The most recent one is titled, “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and…

Irish and African-American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities share a lot in common when it comes to being excluded from iconic institutions in their communities. For LGBTQ African Americans, it’s the Black Church, and for LGBTQ Irish, it’s the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. St. Patrick’s Day has rolled around again, and like…

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College…

If during your tenure as a student at Harvard you did not encounter the Reverend Peter J. Gomes, you have not had the quintessential Harvard experience. For undergraduates, if they were paying attention, Gomes bookended their four-year experience at Harvard with his welcoming remarks during orientation and his baccalaureate address at graduation. In between those…

Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has done the unimaginable. It has cracked a firewall in black media with the two titans of black print and online news – Essence and Ebony. In October 2010, Essence.com, the online companion to Essence Magazine, featured a newly wedded lesbian couple in its “Bridal Bliss” section –…

In celebrating Black History Month is year I want our West African ancestral religious contributions to also be lifted up. One of them for me, as a lesbian, is the contribution of Vodun. Why? Because of its spiritual tenets of acceptance of all people of all sexual orientations and gender expressions. As one of the…

Black History Month is that time of year when the achievements and courage of people of African descent are acknowledged and celebrated. However, for decades now, Black History Month has not once acknowledged or celebrated the contributions of its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities. Our omission from the annals of black history would…

Last week, Martin Luther King tributes were taking place across the nation. And the spirit of MLK and the courageous acts of our foremothers and forefathers of the civil rights movement are etched indelibly in many of our hearts. But the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King’s era of the 1960’s, many would say,…

As Americans we have a hard time talking about race in this country when the n-word is not involved. And when this epithet is, predictably, we behave schizophrenically. And much of the kerfuffle is about who’s staking a claim on its use. The now recent kerfuffle concerning the n-word is focused on Samuel Langhorne Clemens’,…