Big, Black, Beautiful - Homophobic? on SameSame.com.au

Since time immemorial – or maybe just the 1970s – it seems that wherever a big African-American diva goes, a posse of adoring gay boys follows in her wake. We’ve loved to love Donna Summer, pulled up repeatedly to Grace Jones’ bumper and now we’re feelin’ fierce – Sasha Fierce – about Beyonce.

Over the years there’s been all matter of speculation about what it is that compels us to our brash, fuck-off black divas. Perhaps they best embody the ideal of talent, sexiness and take-no-bullshit attitude to which many of us aspire. And maybe we empathise because we, too, have struggled to articulate our voices over a cacophony of prejudice and discrimination. Whatever the reason, to paraphrase another diva, we got the love for our beautiful ebony ladies.

But do these ladies love us back, or is our love unrequited and masochistic?

Nearly thirty years later, La Summer is still forced to deny making claims before a hitherto-adulating gay male audience that AIDS was god’s divine punishment for our chosen lifestyle. And was Beyonce really, as she claimed, ‘taken out of context’ when she allegedly said in response to Britney and Madge’s legendary lip-lock that “I always carry myself like a lady… [god] wants people to celebrate their bodies, as long as you don’t compromise your christianity in the process”? Naturally, Beyonce’s people instantly went to great lengths to assure us that this child of destiny loves her gays, just as Summer refutes her alleged homophobia by pointing to her many years of charitable HIV work.

But are these women really motivated by big gay love or by marketing realities – that is, keeping a substantial portion of their listening, purchasing audience on-side while secretly harbouring resentment against us?

The recent historic US presidential election, in which Barack Obama inspired all Americans, especially African-Americans, to believe ‘anything is possible’ is not just a tired cliche, was a turning point in black American politics. Sadly, however, on the same day thousands of African-American voters turned out in unprecedented numbers to vote for the Illinois senator, many of these same voters also apparently voted against LGBTI equality. Exit polls taken in California, which admittedly are small enough to warrant qualifying any results, nevertheless pointed to 75% of African-American women voting 1’Yes’ on Proposition 8, an initiative designed to quash the state Supreme Court’s recent enactment of same-sex marriage. The narrow success of the proposition has been partially attributed to the disproportionately high number of non-Anglo Californians voting in its favour, and indeed 75% was a higher percentage than any other ethnic and gender combination of voter demographics.

On The View, African-American panelist Sherri Shepherd explained the ‘struggle’ she, and perhaps many women (that show’s audience seemed to be on her side) feel reconciling ‘my friends who are gay … (and) not wanting rights taken away from people being able to care for their partners’ with her Christianity, which informs her belief that ‘marriage is between a man and a woman’. According to Shepherd, her pastor should not be jailed for ‘preaching the Bible’, though presumably, she’d be only willing to defend teaching biblical literalism when the so-called ‘sanctity of marriage’ – as opposed to say, slavery, which also gets a big tick in the Old Testament – is at question.

Once again, The Man Upstairs is the common link binding individuals to their (alleged) homophobia, or opposition to same-sex marriage at least. Unfortunately, dogmatic anti-queer preaching is colourblind – in America, pastors espousing fear of and intolerance towards queers and same-sex couples are just as likely to be black as white. In 2004, bishop Eddie Long, pastor of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, made national news when he and Bernice King, daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., led a 10,000-strong march at the gravesite of her father to denounce gay marriage. According to the good bishop, ‘cloning, homosexuality and lesbianism are spiritual abortions. Homosexuality is a manifestation of the fallen man.’

It’s difficult to know what Dr King would teach on homosexuality were he still alive today. Though his daughter would have comprised one of the 75% of pro-Prop 8 African-American female voters were she a Californian, his widow, Coretta Scott King, would not. Right up until her death, Scott King was a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage and would criticise, and draw criticism from, the same Georgia pastors alongside whom her own daughter was marching. She once told the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force that ‘I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people… But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

Of course, Scott King was only one of the many African-American allies of LGBTI equality who, in spite of – or perhaps because of – their religious beliefs, see parallels between their own battle for civil rights and empowerment and that of queer Americans. Former presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton has chided clergy in black churches who preach anti-gay intolerance from their pulpits. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, one of the US’ peak racial advocacy organisations, believes ‘every American must be allowed to contribute to society without facing unfair discrimination on account of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation’.

And getting back to the divas, ex-Miss America turned Ugly Betty uber-bitch Vanessa Williams recently won the Human Rights Campaign’s ‘Ally for Equality’ award for her ‘outstanding contributions in support of equality for the GLBT community… (and) her outspoken support for marriage equality and same-sex adoption rights’. Racism should never blind us to the positive work of thousands of African-Americans who don’t share the attitudes of Shepherd, Long or Bernice King.

Still, it’s a great pity that on November 4, African-American women, members of two of history’s oppressed and marginalised groups, felt compelled either by their faith or other factor(s) to vote in favour of discrimination born of prejudice. Beyonce, Inaya, Faith, Angie and Kelly all give us gay boys the pulsating, thumping beat of life on the dance floor; hopefully in time some of their sisters will give us the thumping beat of their hearts in support of equality.