Then came the forced outings of the '80s, when HIV-AIDS hit the black homosexual community and the phrase "eligible bachelor" took on new suspicions. This was the time black people began to do some doubletakes, probing the previously secret lives of sons, uncles, brothers, even husbands who began to fall ill with the new mysterious disease. Fears, now tethered to something real and deadly, helped stoke old prejudices and homophobic sermons arose from many a pulpit — all the while, many black families took in their loved ones and nursed them with loving care, even those who still couldn't say the word: gay.

Lately, though, we have seen new gay and lesbian images and less ignorance in the heterosexual community about homosexual lives. AIDS-related deaths have slowed (although new HIV cases have steadily increased) and black gay femininity and lesbian masculinity are out of vogue. Homo thugs have come to counter the snap queen image and lipstick lesbians are now more popular than butch dykes, rendering useless the crude gaydar of even a decade ago.

In this new climate, black gays and lesbians are refusing to live their lives on the down-low or in the gay ghetto. Increasingly, they are opting for the mainstream of black life instead, disavowing the painful history of being both black and gay. The battle cry now is, I refuse to choose one identity over the other.

"I am of African descent and I am lesbian, and the two are equally important," says Samiya Bashir, a writer, poet and editor, who says she's proud of all of her identities and "wouldn't have it any other way."

Today, there are still many black men and women leading double lives, putting on a straight front in public while enjoying very active private homosexual sex lives. But a growing vanguard of out-and-proud black gays and lesbians is pushing down-low to the bargain basement of lifestyles. Their voices —whether in arts and letters, corporate boardrooms, or just at the neighborhood block party — are lending a new flavor to black life in America. As the gay poet and activist Essex Hemphill predicted before his death in 1995, "we are not going away with our issues of sexuality. We are coming home."

One BET Comicview comedienne made light of the new high visibility of black gay life in America, "Just how large is this damn closet?" she joked.

The answer to her question is: it was massive. For centuries, most gay Americans of any race kept their sexuality closeted. It wasn't until the Stonewall uprising in 1969 — a rebellion led in part by black and Latino drag queens — that gays and lesbians began coming out in large numbers. But the gay liberation movement of the 1970s was largely white and male, and most African Americans never felt fully included under its rainbow flags. Many black gay people just stayed in the closet, sharing the intimate truth of their lives with only a select few.

And the black community played along, pretending that homosexuality wasn't — couldn't be — a black thing. When it was mentioned, the intolerance was palpable. Still, along the edges, there was often an unspoken acceptance.

"The black church is perhaps the most homophobic and most homo-tolerant institution in the black community at the same time," says Keith Boykin, a former assistant to President Bill Clinton and author of One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America. "The fire-and-brimstone message is sometimes homophobic, but when you look beyond the minister, you see that the music directors, the choir members, the organists and even deacons are homosexual. And they have always been accepted."

With the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s came a new movement of black gay activism, built around providing care for the dying, which ultimately led to greater visibility and the rise of black gay organizations and coalitions and, eventually, black gay pride celebrations in cities like Atlanta, Washington, Houston, LA, Chicago and New York.

"From the beginning of the American revolution, through the Harlem renaissance — James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Alain Locke to Bayard Rustin — until now there have always been black people who didn't think of themselves as gay — that's a 20th century term — but who loved others of the same sex," says Boykin. "People knew about them, but their sexuality was never really discussed."

Explaining the silence that typified black gay life, Bruce Nugent, the most openly homosexual writer of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote, "you didn't get on the rooftops and shout I f_ _ _ _ _ d my wife last night. So why would you get on the roof and say [you were homosexual]? You didn't. You just did what you wanted to do."

But now that silence is being questioned. Bashir says she finds it important to be "out" and outspoken in her work, because "so many gay and lesbian youth go to books to find themselves, so if we don't have our stories of triumph as examples to guide them, what good are they — really?"

Others come out but reject old labels, choosing to identify as "same gender loving," rather than "gay." What's important, they say, is that they are living open, honest lives.

On Fridays and Saturdays in Providence, Rhode Island, a group of gay black men, many of them Harvard or Brown University students and grads, regularly gets together for drinks. Nothing about them is outrageous. Looks range from dreadlocked boho to timberland-wearing b-boys and haute-couture buppies. Until they start sharing coming-out stories, the pains of growing up gay or lacing their language with gay jargon, they are indistinguishable from a group of young straight black men.

One of them is Dimitry Anselme, a Haitian-born African American.

"Our openness creates a public record of our presence," says Anselme, who came out to his family while he was in college. "For me, it is important to be vocal because I want people to know I'm not ashamed and I have nothing to hide."

Pride and visibility are equally important to Roy Dunaway, a chef originally from New Orleans, and his partner of six years, Layard Pabs-Garnon, an accountant and Sierra Leonean immigrant. The Maryland couple say they face challenges living their lives openly — there are so few role models for gay and lesbian couples — but that it's worth it.

"The truth is, I am black. I can't change that. I am also gay; I can't change that either," laughs Pabs-Garnon. "What I can change, though, is whether I chose to come out of the closet or not. I chose to, because I want the people in my life to know exactly who they are dealing with."

In spite of this growing sense of pride, black gays and lesbians have a ways to go. Politically, they have yet to organize in any way, even though many find themselves not quite fitting in with the white gay establishment or the wider black political power structure. And their rates of HIV/AIDS and other health problems are higher than their white counterparts. Sometimes though, a voice raised in pride is just the first step in making a new space for one's life.

"We've always been here," said Boykin. "We aren't going anywhere."