Black Supporters of Gays Ignored
Deb Price, The Detroit News, Jan. 12, 2004

Something’s been wrong with the picture of gay America: It’s been way too white for way too long.

That distorted image has had damaging consequences: Seeing so many white faces accompanying gay stories, many heterosexual African-Americans understandably equate being gay with being white. Sensing discomfort and disapproval in their families and churches, many black gay men and lesbians stay closeted, both from those they love dearly and the media.

Meanwhile, mostly white right-wing groups have effectively showcased well-known African-Americans who oppose gay equality.

The result of all this?

Americans are much more likely to know that Colin Powell opposed allowing gays to serve openly in the military than to know that supporters of gay marriage include such prominent African-Americans as Coretta Scott King, Congressman John Lewis, former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, actress Whoppi Goldberg, Democratic presidential hopefuls Al Sharpton and Carol Moseley Braun, and the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist denomination.

And probably few heterosexuals of any race realize the key role that gay African-Americans are playing in the legal struggle for equal rights for those of us who’re gay.

Last summer, when the Supreme Court handed gay Americans our biggest victory ever, African-American Tyron Garner and his white partner made history for successfully challenging their arrest for private, romantic intimacy.

And as the recent Massachusetts ruling that marriage licenses must be given to gay couples beginning next May demonstrated, black gays are central to the drive to allow gay couples to marry in this country. That ruling grew out of a suit filed by seven couples, two of them black-white unions. And in New Jersey, a black lesbian couple is among the couples fighting to wed.
Yet the fact that gay America is every color rarely gets broadcast.

"When 99 percent of the time the image they see about gay rights is a white face, black heterosexuals will go, ‘It is not a black issue.’ Yet we who are black and gay know just how important being able to marry is to our relationships," says North Carolina activist Mandy Carter.

Now, valiantly countering the effort to drum up support in the black community to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriages, a black gay group is working to improve the picture. The new National Black Justice Coalition plans to seek allies in black churches, reach out through the black media and talk at leading black conferences to stress how such a ban would hurt black same-sex families. (Contact: http://hometown.aol.com/nbjcoalition/)
"When we talk about marriage equality as a civil rights issue, the African-American community can be an ally," says gay African-American Keith Boykin, a former aide to President Clinton and with Carter is a founder of the Justice Coalition. "It’s a question of framing the issue."

Polling illustrates the coalition’s uphill road: Blacks are more likely than whites to think sexual orientation "can be changed" (58 percent versus 39 percent in a Pew Research Center poll in November) and to think gay sex should be illegal (64 versus 48 percent in a December New York Times poll). On gay marriage, survey results are mixed, with Pew finding 60 percent of both blacks and whites opposed, but the Times reporting much more black opposition (75 versus 59 percent).

Gary Daffin, co-chair of a leading Massachusetts gay group, says persuading fellow black gays to be out in the black community is central to changing hearts.

"Gay and lesbian people of color have to show the courage that our ancestors showed in fighting racism and segregation," Daffin says. "What changed history was people saying, ‘We are going to put our lives on the line because we don’t want our children to live like this.’ We don’t want the next generation of black gay kids to have to hide."