Hey yall, I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but never got around to it. Had a break in the day so I took the chance to post this since I can post from the school’s laptop lol. Yall know I like to read but I recently finished a book “Hiding In Hip Hop” by Terrance Dean. It was an ok read…nuttin to scream about and recommend. I thought it was gonna be better than what it actually was. Anyway there was a section in the book that I wanted to share:
Things were different for me. He was white and I was black. His community was more accepting of his sexuality. It’s hard as hell to be an educated, smart, and attractive gay black man in the black community.
We don’t discuss sex and sexuality in our community. It’s taboo. Try to bring up the topic of sexuality and you will get shot down. No one wants to talk about it. If someone is gay in our family we whisper about them. Even though everyone knows, our families don’t want to know the details. We don’t openly discuss it nor do we tell everyone.
I’ve often heard people in white families say that they have a gay child and strongly support him or her. Or that they have a brother or sister who’s gay. “We love them no matter what,” they say.
You’ll rarely hear people in a black family say anything about their gay child or sibling. Many of us are disowned by our families. Sure, it happens in the white community, but in the black community it’s a sin before God for a man to be attracted to other men. The black churches and ministers preach emphatically on the despicable lifestyle of a gay man. As a young man growing up in the church there wasn’t a Sunday where the minister didn’t say something negative or derogatory about gay men and women.
Many nights I cried, praying to God, asking and pleading with him to take away my sinful homosexual thoughts. Man, I wanted to be straight. I wanted to live my life as a heterosexual man with a wife and kids, but I couldn’t shake my urges for men. I knew this would be my burden for life.
I had met many gay men who had been shunned by their families. They were put on the streets at an early age, their mothers and fathers refusing to speak to them. They had become outcasts. Some had suffered severe abuse from their parents who tried to beat the homosexuality out of them. Others, forced into therapy, were told it was a phase they were going through. They needed to have their heads examined, and maybe the psychiatrist could find the reason and cure. I just learned to keep my mouth shut and for good reason.
What do yall think about this? Any opinions?
