Chicken, Black Church Folks, and Gay Marriage

 

This is a word association that currently leaves me somewhat empty, angry and sad. The recent Chick-fil-A Support Day proves that even in the age of so much progress, we are moving backwards in a way that is truly frightening.  Having grown up in the Black Church I feel as qualified as anyone to discuss the experience. It amazes me that ever since President Obama spoke out in favor of same sex marriage, the Black Church and African-Americans with no sense of history have lost their collective minds. I can say that during the president’s evolution to the revelation, I knew that he had a sense of decency that started before watching his LGBT staffers and listening to his children.  Of course, this has again divided the country.  It’s funny how the economy, jobs, and gun control are not at the top of the Black church’s agenda. Those things are directly affecting Black folks. Perhaps eating chicken in the name of marriage preservation is simply a good low hanging fruit to pick?

The black church, along with the tireless efforts of the conservative right, most recently made North Carolina, the 30^th state to weigh down their state constitution with an anti same-sex marriage recognition amendment.  As with Proposition 2 in Texas, heterosexual common law relationships ALSO have no recognition or semblance of marriage equality.  This means that couples living together in “sin” will also have their long-term relationships and the rights that SHOULD go with them, spat upon in the eyes of the state.  In both cases, the Black church made their voices known, while quoting Leviticus, too.  My mouth dropped to the floor as newscast after newscast, repeatedly showed pastors chiming in from pulpits and press conferences with these more than vocal church ladies in hats, screeching with anger and disgust about how it’s wrong, and against God’s law, ad nauseum, while holding Chick-fil-A in their hands.  This craziness has even brought Neo-Nazis and some Black people together.  That’s some deep hatred, baby!

When I was growing up at the Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Galveston, TX., back in the 70’s and early 80’s, I had my moments when I knew that something was different with me.  Of course there were the obvious signs, like being in the choir, where I also became an extra piano player for the youth choir, AND I worked the hell out of those Easter and Christmas Pageants.  My behavior was that of a disciplined, articulate, and all around fabulous kid.  However, I heard the talk of “Grown Folks”, especially when we had visiting churches with their flamboyantly fabulous choir directors and musicians.  The things they would say were so heinous and Un-Christian.  The hypocrisy that lives within the Black Church is notorious. Bishop Long of Atlanta, home of Chick-fil-A, is still one of my favorites.  I will never forget the scandal that ripped through a neighboring church, when it was discovered that the preacher had a few of the female congregants to himself while still married.  Even in my own beloved church, one of our junior ministers fathered a child out of wedlock,  NEVER married the mother, and the “funny” rumors floated around him, too.

I have a younger sister from my father’s parental indiscretions. While on a visit that happened to coincide with the imminent passage of Proposition 2 in Texas, my own beloved, adulterous father had the nerve to challenge me with the famed Leviticus 18:22 scripture, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” What really threw me was, that up until then, my father had been far more accepting of me being gay, or at least I thought.  During that verbal sparring, I then had to remind him of Exodus 20:14 , “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, and I followed with “if Homosexuality did not make one of the top 10, then leave me the hell alone, because clearly the Bible can be used by anybody.”  He was not amused, but eventually he got over it. 

So as I listen to these congregants and their pulpit join hand in chicken greasy hand with their white, God-fearing counterparts on their quest to deny people their basic human rights, I am reminded that some of these people of color do not realize that their words are equally hurtful and idiotic, like the dogs and hoses used on many of them during the Civil Rights movement. The only reason that my church-hopping, African-American people are not getting the connection is because they do not feel that as LGBT people, our problems with acceptance in this country are the same, and they do not want to accept that the hatred rationale and the right to have slaves are historically based in the same Bible that they are thumping at me and the LGBT population. I know that they, too, are cherry picking which scriptures to toss out, because have you been to an after-church fish fry? I wonder how many of them are still eating shrimp, wearing polyester, and secretly banging the choir mistress? They have also forgotten that it was a Black gay man, Bayard Rustin ,who organized the famous, most pivotal, Civil Rights moment: the March on Washington in 1963.  How convenient?

Someone posted on my Facebook page that they had seen a person of color respond to a question, “Why is the African-American community not able to see the similarities?”  I am paraphrasing the answer, “until gays are hunted, hung and ridiculed, don't look to us for sympathy." I have 4 names for that person:  Brandon Teena, Matthew Shepard ,Michael Sandy, and Sakia Gunn.  I understand that these people were not traded and sold, but you cannot deny they died because someone did not like them for being who they were.  Because we live in a different time with LAWS, there shouldn’t be opportunities to just openly hunt and hang a person, gay, straight, or otherwise, without consequence.  However the aforementioned people, had they lived, might agree, that the persecution is STILL THE SAME.

It's really interesting to see my African-American brothers and sisters forget that the White churches some 50-60 years ago and beyond, justified loving the Lord while hating and enslaving Black folks. What they will realize, as soon as these battles to save the “sanctity” of marriage are over, and these unholy unions have ceased to serve their agenda, is that they will go back to being called everything else but the children of God, especially in the South. In a country where the Bachelor and the Bachelorette are still society’s models for the ability to get married, this  CULTURE WAR is not over, honey!

In order to fight, we all need to know where to go.  No matter in what state you are living, there is an organization that needs your help.  Donate or volunteer.  A “ Kiss In” sounds nice, but I predict not as effective and has the potential of becoming dangerous considering the gun laws in this country.  The supporters of the appreciation day showed their might with their money. That is what people in America seem to really understand. Considering the state of obesity in this country, encouraging more fast food consumption is a shame, but to do it in the name of hatred disguised as also protecting the First Amendment, is really shameful. Do whatever you have to do to stop these people from taking away our rights in the name of God, and if you are still dying for Chick-Fil-A, and you don't want the gay guilt, try this recipe.

Keep Laughing and Stay Fabulous