Black GLBT Event Draws Mostly White Crowd

By Ethan Jacobs

At the start of a town hall meeting at Boston's Club Café to discuss the relationship between the marriage movement and the black community, state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson wasted no time in pointing out the elephant in the room: While the town hall meeting featured a panel of black speakers and a black moderator, the 25 person crowd in the audience was overwhelmingly white. Wilkerson said the fact that so few people of color turned out for the event shows how much work the marriage equality movement must do going forward to reach out to communities of color. She referred to remarks made earlier in the evening by MassEquality board president David Wilson, who is black, that there had long been a perception by many in the community that the marriage movement was a white movement.

''I just want you to know that I think that it is not unusual that the audience makeup is what it is precisely because of what David has said. And so no one should take this as a sign of discouragement as much as affirmation of the work that we have to do,'' said Wilkerson.

She added that while marriage equality is an important topic, it is not the most pressing issue facing the black community in Boston.

''But I do think that there are still many people of color, particularly in the LGBT community, who are still living their life and all of the issues that we have to deal with every day, and so an invitation to talk about this may not sound like something at the top of the list. It doesn't mean that it's not important. It just means there are a whole lot of other things that are on that plate,'' said Wilkerson.

The town hall meeting is part of a newly launched effort by MassEquality and the National Black Justice Coalition to increase and improve outreach to the black community on the issue of same sex marriage. The organizations sponsored a similar forum in Worcester Oct. 30, and on Nov. 12 they will host a training session for community members to learn how to use a publication called ''Jumping the Broom: A Black Perspective on Same Gender Marriage'' as an outreach tool in the black community. During his remarks to the audience Wilson said that one of his goals as president of the MassEquality board is to increase outreach to communities of color.

''So as you hear me talk over the next few months and certainly in my first year you're going to hear me talk about outreach to all the communities, not just the white community. So it's going to require a lot of work on our part, but this is certainly the first step,'' said Wilson.

Al Toney, one of the co authors of ''Jumping the Broom,'' moderated the discussion, and the panel featured four speakers: Lucretia Godfrey, program director of the Dudley Square Outreach Initiative and a mother of a lesbian daughter who is trying to start a Dorchester chapter of PFLAG; the Rev. Irene Monroe, a columnist for InNewsweekly and other LGBT publications; Gary Daffin, executive director of the Multicultural AIDS Coalition (MAC) and co chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus; and Pam Johnson, a consultant and community activist.

Johnson told the crowd that the lack of a large black presence in the audience was not indicative of a lack of interest in talking about the issue in the black community. She said it was a sign that the black community and the white community are not having the conversation together.

''I know that we've bandied about the idea of not really feeling welcome and those kinds of things, but I also want to talk about it from the perspective of an entitled black woman who has her own environment and her own communities and her own places in which she talks about these particular kinds of issues,'' said Johnson. ''It is not necessarily that the conversation isn’t taking place. It isn't necessarily taking place in these environments.''

Monroe said one of the problems with the marriage equality movement was that it was not framed in a way that resonated with the black LGBT community nor with the black community as a whole.

''When you talk about family you get more people on your side within the African American community as a whole than when you talk about marriage the way it's framed in a white context that looks like, 'Oh, this is a leisurely option that we just want to do,' as opposed to talking about marriage equality in the context of saving the black family, and that's every child,'' said Monroe.

As an example she talked about her own family. She said members of her partner Thea's extended family were not initially supportive of their decision to get married. But when Thea's brother was sent to jail and the family was faced with the choice of having the mother raise their children alone, letting them go into state custody or allowing them to be adopted by their lesbian aunts, Monroe said the family chose the latter option, and they saw how important their marriage was in creating a stable home for the children.

Monroe said one factor that turned off many people in the black community from the marriage equality movement was the effort by many people in the movement to connect the issue of marriage equality to the black civil rights movement.

'' When you use images that come out of the civil rights movement and even in some way misappropriate the text of certain civil rights leaders you have stolen not only our history but you have rewritten the history. ... It's not that it is not a civil rights issue, it's the way in which you pitched it that really looked like, ' Okay, you're stealing our history,' at the point of not even addressing the origin of what this is about,'' said Monroe.

Daffin said that one of the obstacles to winning the support of the black community as a whole was the depiction of black clergy in the LGBT media. He accused the LGBT community of portraying black pastors who opposed same sex marriage as ''not worthy of respect,'' but he said many of those pastors may support the LGBT community on other issues. He said as part of his work with the MAC he sat next to Bishop Gilbert Thompson of Jubilee Christian Church, the most high profile ally among the black clergy in Boston of the activists working to ban same sex marriage, during a service where another openly gay man talked about living with HIV. Despite Thompson's penchant for describing same sex marriage as ''a radical social experiment'' and proponents of marriage equality as '' demonic forces,'' Daffin said Thompson was very respectful as he listened to the man talk about his experience as an HIV positive gay man. He said the marriage movement must to show respect to Thompson and other members of the black clergy if they want to win over the black community.

''The first level is you have to be able to respect people and disagree with them ... And particularly in the black community because there is a certain level of respect that the community gives to people in certain positions, if you don’t show that respect you are losing them,'' said Daffin.

Godfrey told the crowd that watching her daughter struggle with coming out inspired her to try to form a chapter of PFLAG in Dorchester specifically targeting people of color. She said her daughter, who is 19, has faced rejection from some family members, particularly from older relatives involved in the church. She also said her daughter and her partner were forced to leave their apartment after people learned that they were a couple, and she has had problems on the job since she came out. Godfrey said she hopes a PFLAG chapter could help inspire people in the community to embrace their LGBT children.

''Hopefully they will come, listen, be open minded and start accepting the children,'' said Godfrey.

MassEquality Campaign Director Marc Solomon asked the panel what could be done going forward to reach out to the black community. Daffin responded that one of the marriage equality movement's goals should be to get more black people involved in the LGBT community. He said it is out black LGBT people, not the mainstream gay community, that will have a transformational affect on the black community's attitudes towards marriage and other LGBT issues.

''With respect to the African American community in general I think we've just got to figure out a way to get more people of color involved in the gay community overall. ... It's tough to do, but that I think is the main challenge, people feeling empowered enough and privileged enough to say ' I'm gay, and I'll respect you, and you will respect me, period,’" said Daffin. '' How we’re going to do that, I don't know.''