Where is it okay to be gay?
I just read an email sent through one of those chain emails about how gay students aren’t being accepted on black college campuses. That didn’t seem that strange to me because if college is a microcosm of the real world, I see why. Being gay isn’t as accepted in the Black community as it is on TV. I can’t think of too many places in the Black community that it’s okay to be gay. We have had a hard time accepting HIV and Aids, because we have such an issue with homosexuality.
Just thinking back on my own life, I can name maybe 3 people I know who are “out” with it and about 10 I think are still in the closet or just don’t know it yet, but the signs are there. But people are real hipocrites these days. Some people will beat their woman, smoke weed they were suppossed to sell, have stolen a car, curse their mother and will get biblical with you on how wrong it is to be gay.
There are so many things that we can do to make things better in our community that have nothing to do with our sexual orientation. Why focus our energy on things we can’t change and why do we even want to change it?
Why not put our efforts toward…voting next year or volunteering in the school system or mentoring kids or being a foster parent to some of these kids who have been victims of our failed parents, families, school systems?
Growing up, my friends and I would use “gay” as a generic negative term, like if the outfit was bad, we would say it was “gay”. We would call each other gay if we were trying to belittle each other at anytime, but as I’ve gotten older, I have also become more aware and more conscious of other people’s feelings.
But really, I don’t even think about it. Gay so what? Not a big deal to me, but I had to question myself when I was asked “What if one of my boys came out of the closet?” Would I look at him differently? I had to be honest and say yes.
