The Reverend Irene Monroe

Gay white Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s notorious “Man in a Polyester Suit” maintains the stereotypical convention of black male sexuality as a monstrous phallus that is dangerous, out of control and animalistic. The gay white male photographer’s central focus on a black uncircumcised penis protruding from an unzipped pair of polyester pants reasserts the mythology of…

I have learned as both a pastor and also as a member belonging to several minority groups – African American, women and lesbian – that a popular opinion on an issue does not always reflect the right choice. Too often the right choice and the moral high ground on an issue derive from a small…

Rev. Irene Monroe is Mark’s guest Thursday, April 8, 2008 As the nation celebrates Mother’s Day this Sunday, let us as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans not forgot our mother of the marriage equality movement who died this week – Mildred Jeter Loving. There is no greater challenge before us than the issue…

“The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for…

“I want to say that I’m deeply disappointed that my dear brother Barack Obama decided not to go pay tribute and lay his wreath for the great Martin Luther King, Jr. That Brother Martin’s profound love and deep sacrifice for black people, America and humanity is in no way reducible to political calculations, even for…

Did Obama’s speech help him or hurt him? In my opinion it helped him at the expense of throwing his pastor under the bus, feeding into the media’s portrayal of Rev. Wright as a demagogue, and exonerating himself of any culpability of being associated with Wright that makes Obama look like the good guy and…

“I think that it is a legal right that they [homosexuals] should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans,” Obama…

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Valaida Snow came from a family of musicians and was famous for playing the trumpet. Named “Little Louis” after Louis Armstrong (who called her the world’s second best jazz trumpet player, aside from himself, of course) Snow played concerts throughout the U.S., Europe and China. On a return trip to Denmark…