On Mallm X's 80 birthday, <b>Peter Tatchell</b> reveals the hidn gay past of the Amerin black natnalist lear.
Contents:
MALLM X - GAY BLACK HERO?
October is Black History Month Bra – a wonrful celebratn of the huge, important and valuable ntributn that black people have ma to humany and to popular is also worth celebratg that many leadg black ins have been lbian, gay, bisexual or transgenr (LGBT), most notably the US black liberatn hero Mallm X. Black people are not one homogeno heterosexual mass. Whether he was gay, straight or bisexual should not matter.
There has never been any black person of siar global promence and regnn who has been publicly known to be gay or bisexual. Young black lbian, gay and bisexual people n, like their whe unterparts, often feel isolated, guilty and secure about their sexualy.
He n spire other LGBT people now, there is not a sgle livg black person who is a worldwi hoehold name and who is also openly gay. Havg an ternatnally renowned gay or bisexual black in would do much to help challenge homophobia, pecially the black muni and particularly Ai and the Caribbean where homosexualy and bisexualy are often dismissed as a "whe man's disease" what is the evince for Mallm X's bisexual orientatn? Abstag om gay sex after his marriage do not change the fundamentals of his sexual orientatn and do not mean that he was wholly straight.
WAS MALLM X GAY?
His md was beg open to new ias and he not been murred 1965, Mallm might have eventually, like Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and the black power lear Angela Davis, embraced the lbian and gay liberatn movement as part of the stggle for human emancipatn. Instead, to serve their homophobic polil agenda, for over half a century the Natn of Islam and many black natnalists have supprsed knowledge of Mallm's same-sex relatns.
Some black activists are enraged by suggtns that their hero might have been gay - or at least bisexual. Sexual eedom was not, however, part of his Perry's book documents Mallm X's many gay experienc. While livg Flt, Michigan, his roommate noticed that stead of sleepg the room they were sharg, Mallm sneaked down the hall to spend the night wh a gay transvte named Willie New York, two of Mallm's iends om Michigan remember bumpg to him at the YMCA, where Mallm bragged he earned money servicg "queers".
Perry suggts that Mallm's gay enunters may not have been entirely fancially motivated. His mascule securi and ambivalence towards women f the archetype of a reprsed gay man and pot to latent the ath of his father, when Mallm was six, he lacked male role mols and was domated by strong women - particular, his tyrannil mother. His passnate assertn that the need to feel mascule is a man's "greatt urge" dit someone doubtful of his own for his sporadic gay htlg, as Perry not, "there were other ways he uld have earned money".