Blacks, Gays And The Church: A Complex Relatnship : NPR

Contents:

• ‘IT’S MY FLORIDA TOO’: PULSE SHOOTG SURVIVOR BRANDON WOLF ON BEG BLACK, GAY AND THE ANTI-RON DESANTIS
• BLACKS, GAYS AND THE CHURCH: A COMPLEX RELATNSHIP
• COMMENTARY: BEG GAY THE BLACK CHURCH
• BLACK CHURCH: GAYS ARE
• DOCUMENTARY EXPLOR THE REALY OF BEG BLACK AND GAY IN THE CHURCH
• GAY BLACK PASTORS REVEAL 'DOWN LOW' LIFTYL ON NEW 'IYANLA: FIX MY LIFE'

‘IT’S MY FLORIDA TOO’: PULSE SHOOTG SURVIVOR BRANDON WOLF ON BEG BLACK, GAY AND THE ANTI-RON DESANTIS

In a culturally nservative muny, where gog to church and buildg a fay were heavily emphasized, Ahn felt his gay inty kept him “om beg able to participate Korean culture. He learned to embrace beg both Korean and gay, so much so that he directed “Fire Island, ” a groundbreakg queer Asian Amerin rom- released last year. Beg Asian Amerin and LGBTQ+ n feel lonely, wh stutns such as ethnic church often disavowg non-heterosexual relatnships while tradnal LGBTQ+ spac such as gay bars n be unwelg to people of lor.

“Fdg plac like GAMeBoi, where beg queer and Asian do -exist … It’s not like a 1, 000-year-old Korean cultural rual, but I uld create a new rual, ” said Ahn, a recent Friday, hundreds packed QT Nightlife’s monthly K-Pop Night at Micky’s, a Wt Hollywood gay club a block or so east om the old GAMeBoi posed for selfi a pk Barbie box wh dis balls hangg overhead. ” (Michael Owen Baker / For The Tim) Even historilly gay neighborhoods like Wt Hollywood or San Francis’s Castro district, Asian Amerins have long been ignored or fetishized, seen as feme and weak. In 2019, then-Wt Hollywood Mayor John Duran argued that he did not appropriately touch a member of the Gay Men’s Chos of Los Angel bee “he’s a skny Korean kid wh pimpl on his cheek.

BLACKS, GAYS AND THE CHURCH: A COMPLEX RELATNSHIP

” Asian Amerin advocy groups cricized Duran’s remark, wh API Equaly-LA potg to the long history of discrimatn agast Asian men gay muni such as Wt Hollywood, whose clubs “ed to require three forms of photo intifitn om anyone they perceived as Asian. In other words, where Bud Light has buckled unr prsure as bigotry grows agast the LGBTQ+ muny, Gay Water’s creator Spencer Hodson wants his new boozy brand to be the anthis of that. “The key issue that Bud Light tapped to was the fact that they didn’t unrstand their re dience and know enough about them,” Hodson, a gay man, told CNN about the ntroversy that began when the Anhser-Bch beer brand sent fluencer Dylan Mulvaney a n of beer.

The two chatted about the limed amount of gay people wh , and wh Hodson burnt out om his tradnal day job tech, started the nned cktail. Hodson built up a strong social media followg on TikTok and Instagram durg Covid-19 and is g some of the money om that (as well as om iends and fay) to help fund Gay Water.

“Gay is an umbrella term and the ia behd the brand is to be as clive as possible, which means we want alli, we want straight people to be part of this muny we’re buildg.”. For now, Gay Water is sold largely onle (wh a few retailers) and four sugar-ee flavors — watermelon, lime, peach and grapeu — at lnch.

COMMENTARY: BEG GAY THE BLACK CHURCH

Gay Water might not have the ep pockets pared to s petors, like Whe Claw, but “even at small sle, pani of many siz are havg succs makg spir-based seltzers and premixed cktails,” Bryan Roth, an analyst for Feel Goods Company and edor of the alhol beverage newsletter, Sightl+, told CNN. “There’s lots of space the spir-based seltzer tegory which Gay Water n play, pecially if the brand n offer a cultural or emotnal nnectn that will feel more excg than the prospect of another peapple-flavored vodka seltzer om natnal or ternatnal rporatns,” Roth said.

Of urse, other drks e the word “gay,” too, cludg Gay Beer and So Gay Rosé, Hodson noted, which are also tryg to reach the queer muny and offer them an alternative the straight-domated space. | Getty ImagThe four ndidat for bishop of an Epispal Church dce that recently garnered headl for refg to bls same-sex marriag have dited that they will allow the Epispal Dce of Albany has been whout a bishop sce the rignatn 2021 of William Love, who had issued an open letter 2020 refg to enforce a nomatnal le requirg all dc to allow for the blsg of gay marriag.

”Ward wrote that he believ the issue of gay marriage is “tly plited” and that he rpects all sis on the issue, addg that if elected bishop, “honorg theologil diversy would be a prry. ”“Seekg rolutn and a mutual path forward would volve a basic mment to rpectg the digny of every person, affordg genero pastoral attentn to every voice, and seekg Holy mon ground on nonilly sound footg, ” Ward July 2018, the Epispal Church General Conventn passed Rolutn B012, which required all dc to bls same-sex unns, removg earlier provisns that allowed several dc to prohib such measur, due to them beg nflict wh the biblil standard of B012 allowed clergy to refe to perform gay weddgs, required bishops who oppose them to let another bishop provi pastoral support for the same-sex uple and to provi a prit to perform the November 2018, Albany Bishop Love released an open letter statg that he refed to enforce the rolutn his dce. When Pete Buttigieg, an openly gay man, vied to bee the Democratic printial nomee earlier this year, he opened a natnal nversatn about the relatively low levels of support for LGBTQ people and same-sex marriage by Ain Amerins, pecially among olr members of the Black Church.

BLACK CHURCH: GAYS ARE

They found that “relig nomatns play a strong role stcturg attus about the moraly of homosexualy, and support for specific polici of toleratn and nondiscrimatn.

” They also nclud that “Ain Amerins are signifintly more likely to view homosexualy as wrong, keepg wh their nservative Prottant origs and high rat of relig participatn.

DOCUMENTARY EXPLOR THE REALY OF BEG BLACK AND GAY IN THE CHURCH

Though Sherkat mentns Ain Amerin wrers om the 1960s and 1970s who claimed that homosexualy was primarily a whe phenomenon and therefore anthetil to black inty, is possible that relign-driven antipathy fluenced the wrers’ views. ”Wolf had sought refuge Florida 15 years ago when he was done wh ral Oregon, the childhood home where he suffered embedd racism and homophobia on a daily basis.

Among his motivatns for wrg the book was to reclaim tersectnaly om DeSantis and others on the right who seek to hijack explas: “I wanted to give a human flavour to what tersectnaly actually looks and feels like and what feels like to experience racism and homophobia at the same time. Growg up a nservative majory whe town was difficult bee the same kid who would ll me the N-word on one day would ll me a homophobic slur on another day and I was nstantly navigatg the tersectns of those two thgs.

Last month DeSantis’s mpaign released an anti-LGBTQ+ vio assailg Tmp for his past support of gay and transgenr ments: “It is a sry time to be not jt LGBTQ but LGBTQ and Black this state and ultimately that’s the tent. As a member of his uncle’s church Cleveland, he says he remembers when the ngregatn’s openly gay choir director and his male partner would brg food for the church potluck, folks would whisper about which dish was so nobody would eat and “tch AIDS.

GAY BLACK PASTORS REVEAL 'DOWN LOW' LIFTYL ON NEW 'IYANLA: FIX MY LIFE'

“Sce HIV/AIDS was tomatilly lked to homosexualy back then, you’d hear a lot of the fire-and-brimstone-type speech, about how beg gay was an abomatn and a s. Unfortunately, says the former Executive Director of Queers for Enomic Jtice and Policy Instute Fellow wh the Natnal Gay & Lbian Task Force, not much has changed sce then.

He says that while nowadays Christian LGBTQs (Lbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgenr or Queer) large ci n opt to attend queer-iendly church, those livg small towns or the south mt eher worship at home or quietly attend predomantly heterosexual on, at the risk of beg found out.

“I ed to attend the New Life Tabernacle Church Brooklyn, ” he says, “and my bt iend at the time–who I hadn’t told I was gay–was about to get married.