Race Matters in LGBTQ Issues

From www.parentsociety.com site:

Much of the civil rights movements of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community has been led and funded by out, white, gay men. With the news surrounding the Supreme Court hearing of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Prop 8, there were many out, white, gay men who were front and center on television, radio, in the press, and blogging about it, myself included. When J.C. Penney and Amazon.com sell their clothes and Kindles, they are using more white gay parents and their children or couples as part of their advertisements on mainstream shows. I write out of a white, middle class, same-sex, out-gay, Christian-centered context.

During our LGBTQ Week festivities at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), the historically black college/university (HBCU) where I teach, there were two films that provided me with a chance to consider a context that has been foreign to me in the past, but is quickly becoming more normative the longer I teach there. The first film was a documentary movie, Friends of Essex, by Amir Dixon. The title was an homage to Essex Hemphill, a Chicago-born poet, and Marlon Riggs, a Texas-born poet and educator, both who wrote about the experiences of African-Americans who were out and gay. As part of the narrative thread of his film, Dixon chose several young, gay, black men, who talk about race, identity, masculinity, and sexuality.
The second film was a popular film that had been out in theaters nationwide: Pariah, the story of a high school senior in Brooklyn, NY who comes out to her friends and family. Pariah follows the young woman Alike’s life as she too struggles with her identity shaped by race, the feminine, and sexuality, risking friends, facing heartache, and coming out as a lesbian to her conservative African-American family. Alike’s salvation is found through writing and poetry, which illuminates her pathway out of her troubled life.

Read more here: http://www.parentsociety.com/todays-family/mixed-race-families/race-matters-even-in-lgbtq-families/