It has been over a decade now since Hurricane Katrina barreled through New Orleans (NO). Today, much of the Big Easy has gotten its groove back. But the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, the largest of seventeen wards of New Orleans—and predominately African American—has not. The demographic group that unfortunately has been, and continues to be, invisible in this story of recovery is its African American LGBTQ community.
read more
Like so many African American women, myself included, Sandra Bland’s death, resulting from police brutality is not new news. The national attention it’s receiving is, however. The reality of unarmed African American women being beaten, profiled, sexually violated and murdered by law enforcement officials with alarming regularity is too often ignored – especially with the focus of police brutality on African- American males.
read more
I am a child of the Black Church. And like so many of my African American LGBTQ brothers and sisters we continue to have a troubled relationship with our places of worship. But like so many of them, I, too, am unsettled by the news of this recent spate of church burnings. None of the church burnings have been labeled as hate crimes- yet I cannot help but notice these church burnings are occurring suspiciously in rapid succession following the Charleston black church massacre, which left nine dead-including its senior pastor.
read more
When Atticus in “To Kill A Mockingbird” states to Scout, “Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand,” as a thoughtful and measured response decrying racial prejudice, no one would imagine Lee’s second novel “Go Set A Watchman,” to reveal the blight of racial strife in Atticus as an aging angry bigot and separatist. And news of Atticus taking a 180-degree turn has sent shockwaves across the Internet.
read more
American novelist William Faulkner wrote in his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” As we all try to move away from America’s racial past, this recent massacre reminds us of it. For decades now, America has refused to broach the topic of white privilege. During Black History Month in 2009, then-US Attorney General Eric Holder offered an explanation as to why.
read more
With thirty-seven states now legal proponents of marriage equality along with our nation’s capitol LGBTQ Americans and our allies knew it would be just a matter of time before the issue would be brought to the U. …
read moreHere in LGBTQ-friendly Massachusetts, there are not too many places where we are not welcome. We are invited to conferences, schools, public events, and churches. Don’t be complacent, though. Next week, April 23- 25, Christian conservative evangelicals …
read more
I wish Leelah was alive today. She would know how a petition on the White House website with 120,000 plus signatures calling for the enactment of “Leelah’s Law to Ban All LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy” not only went …
read more
With a new understanding about suffering and how it victimizes the innocent and its aborts the Christian mission of inclusiveness, Jesus’ death at Calvary invites a different hermeneutic than its classically held one.
read more
