Gay is NOT the New Black

At the Blogger Summit on the weekend of December 5-7, I had the privilege of meeting Rev. Irene Monroe (pictured at left) who was one of the summit attendees. Rev. Monroe is a Ford Fellow and doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School. One of Monroe's outreach ministries is the several religion columns she writes - "The Religion Thang," for In Newsweekly, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender newspaper that circulates widely throughout New England, "Faith Matters" for The Advocate Magazine, a national gay & lesbian magazine, and "Queer Take," for The Witness, a progressive Episcopalian journal.

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As a black minister she had some unique perspectives on what the larger LGBT community needs to do to build a more cohesive coalition to further the cause of LGBT rights. While I do not necessarily subscribe to all of Irene's views, she is on point on some issues and her views are worth considering. Pam's House Blend has a diary written by Irene and here are some highlights:

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The Proposition 8 debate has brought much consternation and polarization between white LGBTQ communities and African Americans. . . . . But here's an example that defused the tension in much of the heterosexual African American community when it was publicly arguing that same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue: In commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia in the June 12, 1967 historic Supreme Court decision that advanced racial and marriage equality in this country, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., marked the anniversary by stating the following: "It is undeniable that the experience of African Americans differs in many important ways from that of gay men and lesbians; among other things, the legacy of slavery and segregation is profound. But differences in historical experiences should not preclude the application of constitutional provisions to gay men and lesbians who are denied the fight to marry the person of their choice." And in April of 2006, NAACP LDF filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case brought by New York same-sex couples challenging their exclusion from marriage.

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But the Marriage Equality movement neither extends its reach beyond its concerns within its community nor outside of it. How the marriage debate should have been framed -- in a way that speaks truth to various LGBTQ communities of color and classes -- has not been given considerable concern.

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And with no public language to adequately articulate the unique embodiment of LGBTQ communities of color and classes within the same-sex marriage debate, this has become contentious. The dominant white queer languaging of this debate, at best, muffles the voices of these communities, and, at worst, mutes them. In other words, in leaving out the voices of LGBTQ communities of color and classes, the same-sex marriage debate is hijacked by a white upper class queer universality that not only renders these marginalized queer communities invisible, but -- as it is presently framed -- also renders them speechless.

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If African American LGBTQ people are not included in the history and in the decision -making issues involving queer life, how then can the movement expect our participation, let alone the rest of the African American community? Sadly, if racism continues to go unchecked in the Marriage Equality movement it won't only cost California's LGBTQ community the right to marry, it will cost us all.