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3 Church Sissies: Gayness and the Black Church
- The University of North Carolina Press
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church sissies gayness and the black church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 When people think of the South, after foodways and hospitality , religiosity is often what comes to mind. But not just any religiosity: the South is frequently associated with a virulent and unrelenting fundamentalism. Some believe it is a fundamentalism that sets moral standards even its followers cannot uphold, and certainly the scandals surrounding fallen televangelists like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart seem to provide evidence of this. Indeed, in the Bible Belt, the Ten Commandments are just the tip of the iceberg on a long list of ‘‘thou shalt not’’s. It is hardly surprising, then, that many folks consider homosexuality incompatible with ‘‘righteous living.’’ While the black church has often upheld many fundamentalist tenets, the way those guidelines have been enforced or practiced has always been more nuanced—because they had to be. Black church parishioners have not always had the luxury of waiting on divine intervention when it comes to obtaining equal rights. In slave communities, for instance, religious gatherings sometimes became sites for plotting rebellions . And ‘‘stealing away’’ was code for heading North rather than going to heaven. As an institution, the black church historically has been the cornerstone of black thought, politics, spirituality, and morality in America. As C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya suggest, ‘‘The Black Church has no challenger as the cultural womb of the black community.’’∞ In the South, in particular, the black church has been a formidable presence in the struggle for racial equality, from slavery on through the civil rights movement. As in many institutions, however, its progressive public face has often camouflaged more problematic internal policies and attitudes—sexism and homophobia being just two. That is, until recently, when the camouflage has sometimes been discarded. As mentioned in the Introduction, the current leadership of the black church has been more explicit about its stance on homosexuality by openly opposing gay marriage and supporting other antigay gayness and the black church : 183 legislation. Slowly shifting from a tolerant ‘‘don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy to one of explicit condemnation, the black church, more than at any other time in its history, seems to be turning its back on many of its own: gays and lesbians. Why, then, do so many black lgbt individuals remain in these religious spaces? The answers are complex. According to some of the men in Sweet Tea, despite the church’s homophobia, it is a place of comfort—a place, ironically, where they were first accepted, where they first felt a sense of community and belonging. Ultimately, it is a contradictory space, one that exploits the creative talents of its gay members even as it condemns their gayness, while also providing a nurturing space to hone those same talents. It is contradictory in other respects as well. As more than one narrator attests from personal experience, for example, ministers who preach homophobic sermons are sometimes known to have had same-sex sex themselves. On one of my trips to South Carolina to conduct interviews, I discovered that a scandal had just erupted between two prominent black churches in Greenville . According to rumor, the ministers of these churches were having an affair and were caught having sex the Saturday night before church by one of their wives. The scorned ‘‘first lady’’ of the church reportedly proceeded to share what she had witnessed with the congregation the next morning during the announcements portion of the worship service! While such high drama may be unusual, many black churchgoers are familiar with ministers who preach homophobic sermons but are known to have dalliances with their male parishioners. Other contradictions are manifested by gay church members themselves. Some of the narrators acknowledge the homophobia of their churches yet are committed to remaining members. Their explanations for remaining often center on how they have separated, at least psychologically, the minister ’s homophobic discourse from the space itself. In those instances, they claim to have distanced themselves from the ‘‘church’’ as represented by the preacher and other authority figures and to focus more on their ‘‘individual/ personal’’ relationship with God—one that emphasizes the fact that God made them in His own image and therefore they are not an ‘‘abomination’’ in His sight, as some of their pastors suggest. Therefore, when a minister gay bashes in his or her sermon, these men don’t internalize it or take it to heart because those words, in the way they have rationalized it, don...