by Pam Spaulding
Reading Alvin's earlier diary ("From 'outside agitators' to 'wealthy gay activists' - Some of us black folks haven't learned a thing"), it's good to remind people that there are black folks who DO get it. Rev. Walter Fauntroy may have been director of the DC bureau of Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but that clearly didn't enlighten him to the fact that civil rights are human rights. He has hopped into bed with charlatan Bishop Harry Jackson.
However many others who were part of the black civil rights struggle, like Congressman John Lewis, who will keynote at Equality Alabama's conference later this month, have our backs.
Civil rights legend Julian Bond does. As an activist who has faced jail for his convictions, as a veteran of more than 20 years service in the Georgia General Assembly, a university professor and a writer, he has been on the cutting edge of social change since 1960.
He was a founder, in 1960 while a student at Morehouse College, of the Atlanta student sit-in and anti-segregation organization and of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As SNCC's Communications Director, Bond was active in protests and registration campaigns throughout the South.
The chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is well-known as a strong supporter of LGBT equality. He has made it clear to audiences not comfortable with the idea of "civil rights" being used in the context of LGBT rights that there isn't ownership of the term. The man has paid the price on the front lines of the movement to achieve rights under the law for all people.
***
I recently received an email from Julian Bond about the issue of the NAACP and the struggle to move rank and file to support civil equality for the LGBT community, as its national board has. I must confess, however, that when I saw his email in my inbox, I nearly fell out of my chair in awe and paused before opening it.
When I replied I told him about how some of my writing about the intersection of race and LGBT rights has spurred both productive conversation and derision. Getting people in the door at first can be easy; getting black LGBTs to return and advocate publicly for their own rights is another.
Salon and Huffington Post have been challenging venues where painfully angry comments by religious black readers cannot fathom that Bond or NAACP CEO Ben Jealous would actually support equality. One delusional commenter cast aside that support by saying they "sold out" to the Homosexual Agenda (are we now paying off people to support us?). When someone stoops that low, I can laugh, but seriously, there are people so intimidated that they want to hold on to this homophobia for dear life in ways I simply cannot understand.
But I replied to Mr. Bond and said that will not deter me and others who feel the same way from continuing to start conversations that may be uncomfortable, but sorely needed -- after all, the weight we bear is a feather compared to the weight those on the front lines of civil rights struggles have suffered under over the years. As he so eloquently said to me:
I do not believe the battle for LGBT rights will ever be won until we can diminish the homophobia in black communities and until more in the black LGBT community join the battle openly. (It is awfully easy for a straight man to say "come out" - I can only imagine the scorn and derision that would follow some who did so.)
I've often wondered what would be the result of black LGBT churchgoers standing up in the churches they attend and saying "I'm gay - you know me - I'm like you. I am what God made me. Why do you treat me so badly?" (It is equally easy for a non-churchgoer like me to say that.)
If not a churchgoer, I am an optimist - and I believe the day when equality for all reigns will soon come.
