The CLGS Blog
Ex-Gay to Headline Boston's GospelFest
Every year, Mayor Tom Menino’s office of Arts, Tourism, and Special Events puts on its annual Boston GospelFest at City Hall Plaza. Because the GospelFest is a public and taxpayer-funded community event, it’s opened to all, even its African American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities.
The Lingering Shame of Pride
Pride parades and a host of festivities will be taking place all over the country this month. Our packed social calendars reveal something else as well: the deep fault lines marked by race, class, and gender identity. In addition to “Gay Pride” events, there will be a segment of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) population attending Black Gay Pride and Latino/a Gay Pride events.
Honoring Notorious Gladys Bentley
In celebrating Black History Month, I want to celebrate the courage and strength of sistah-warrior Gladys Bentley (1907-1960).
Bentley, a 250-pound African-American lesbian (who today we would consider transgender), was known as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs."
Her fall from the entertainment spotlight, however, is a cautionary tale about what can happen to us during a repressive political era when both church and state are our enemies.
Black and Queer in Nazi Germany
Missing from the annals of African American history are the documented stories and struggles of African Americans, both straight and “queer,” in Nazi-era Germany. Valaida Snow, captured in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen and interned in a concentration camp for nearly two years, is one such story that is forgotten every Black History Month in celebrating our heroes and survivors.
Pat Robertson: Haiti and Theodicy
Religion-based bigotry has been the mainstay of the Rev. Pat Robertson's bully pulpit. And he mounts this pulpit as an über-God, possessed with an inherent omniscience in knowing not only the mundane and wicked thoughts and actions of human beings but also in knowing the cataclysmic actions of God’s wrath on humanity.
Black Gays Invited to the White House
Just as my enslaved ancestors never could have imagined an African American family residing in the White House, so also my African American LGBTQ brothers and sisters who fought in the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York's Greenwich Village could scarcely imagine receiving a special invitation to welcome us for a visit to the White House.
Race and Queer Divide in Election of Lesbian Priest
On December 5th cheers reverberated across the country with the news that at the 114th annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles two women were elected as bishops: Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce of California and Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool of Maryland.
While each election carried its own controversy, Glasspool’s keeps the church’s issue of queer bishops front and center.
If both women are approved by a majority of bishops their elections will signal that the U.S. Episcopal Church is aggressively moving forward on both gender and gay justice.
Lesbian Priest Re-ignites Church Storm
Since the 2003 consecration of V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, the church’s first openly gay bishop, that set off a worldwide firestorm of reactions, both positive and negative, the recent election of an openly lesbian candidate, the Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool of Baltimore, as bishop suffragan (an assisting bishop) of the Diocese of Los Angeles, will re-ignite the storm once again.
And her election hangs in the balance.
Pastor Donnie McClurkin's Gay Church
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is the largest African American and largest Pentecostal church in the United States.
And as the largest denominational black church in the country it is also the loudest in rebuking homosexuality.
With many of the gospel music industry mega-stars from COGIC, the church's charismatic worship style shouts to a black gay male queer gospel aesthetic every Sunday. And the church is conflicted with itself.
Leading Voices: Bishop John Shelby and Christine Spong
On July 27, 2010, CLGS presented Bishop John Shelby Spong and his wife Christine M. Spong the Leading Voice Award for their long-time advocacy for LGBT people.
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