He Must Be Gay
Prejudices of Any Kind are Damaging

Oscar Wilde once wrote that when a person can't out-think or out-debate an opponent, they will often resort to name calling. Disparaging a person is also a tactic used by those harboring feelings of inferiority. The easiest way to for a small-minded, insecure person to make themselves feel equal to someone who might be more successful, or seems to have a richer, fuller life, is to say something negative about the person... and the more negative, the better. In the Black community, which is more rampantly homophobic than most, the simplest, and most direct way to accomplish this is by whispering that the person is gay -- or perhaps more pejoratively, "a fag".

A few months ago, Cleveland City Council was debating domestic partner registry legislation that would grant gay partners (as well as straight unmarried couples) rights that have been too long denied them. At the time, I wrote a number of articles in defense of the new laws, and told a personal story about my 13-year-old son Alan, who by all appearances, was going to be gay had he lived. Some people in the Black community didn't appreciate my defending gays, so they did what I figured some of them might do: Accuse me of being gay myself... why else would I defend "those people" –- unless I too were gay?

I fully realized the possibility of such a rumor being started when I wrote the articles, but at some point in your life, you just can't allow the threat of lies by ignorant, vile and stupid people to silence you — not if you’re a writer worthy of your profession.

Actually, this isn’t my first experience with being so labeled: Back in 1993, I was in a federal prison and wanted to learn the craft of writing. There was a writers’ club in the institution, and I joined it — the only Black prisoner to do so. By far, the best writer in the club was a smallish, somewhat effeminate White guy named Billy, who was doing a 40-year sentence for placing a homemade bomb in the private plane of his business partner. He was barely halfway through his sentence when I met him.

He saw that I had some talent and was serious about trying to develop my craft (but he also could see how unlettered I was at the time) and loaned me a copy of a book from his personal library entitled Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. The book, which had been banned in Italy, quite literally blew me away, and opened all kinds of doors in my mind in regards to the possibilities of the power of the written word. Other than James Baldwin (who, by the way, was openly homosexual) no other modern writer has had as much impact on me and my development as a wordsmith.

After reading that book (among others he would recommend) Billy and I would walk around the track in the yard discussing construct, content and character development. He knew the classics well, and gave me an English Lit education that many pay thousands of dollars for at top-flight universities... and still not being able to write for shit because they have nothing of import to say.

But there was a price to pay for my ignoring prison protocol. Because I walked and talked with Billy, I was shunned by some of the other prisoners, and rumors began to circulate that I must be gay as well.

I kept walking the track with Billy because I had a choice: I could sit around with some convicts and listen to them brag about how many cars they used to own, how much jewelry they wore, how much money they used to blow in Vegas, and how many ‘hos they used to fuck... or I could discuss with Billy about what treacherous and maddening forces compelled Othello to kill Desdemona in Shakespeare's greatest tragedy.

The choice wasn't even close, but the rumors inspired by my decision followed me all the way out of prison and back to Cleveland.

Well, I do like to occasionally listen to classical music, I still write a bit of poetry for my own enjoyment (and to keep my pen as sharp as possible), and I still am prone to cry if I watch the Bambi... so, in spite of the fact that I've never been sexually attracted to my own sex, nor have I ever had sexual relations with a member of my own sex... I still — in some people's estimation — must be gay.

The problem is, there are some very talented young people out there (especially in the Black community), who will never live up to their full potential in life because of what some stupid, ignorant person might say about them if they engaged in the arts, or made friends with someone of a different sexual orientation... someone who could vastly enrich their lives. All homophobia is stupid, but we Black folks add a new dimension to the stupidity.

No wonder that it sometimes seems as if our race moves ahead so slowly, by fits and starts, only then to sometimes moves backwards, victimized by our own fears and prejudices.

While we know much about Martin Luther King, Jr., and have even named a holiday in his honor, it was Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) who, from his Greenwich Village apartment, counseled Dr. King on the techniques of nonviolent resistance and designed much of the civil rights movement. It was Rustin who told King not waste his time demonstrating anywhere the police would not arrest him. He knew that those arrests -- which would be televised around the world -- would eventually cause the walls of segregation to come tumbling down.

But Rustin could not actively participate in the movement for fear that he would damage it.

Why? Because he lived openly with his male life partner.

Should that diminish the contribution he made to the cause of Black equality?

Do any Blacks care to give back our gains because a homosexual helped to make them a reality? How is it that a race of people — who have suffered the indignities of prejudice for centuries — have not yet fully learned how damaging prejudices of any kind can be?

Shame on us.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com

Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.
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