"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. Let me apologize for people condemning and judging you if you have experienced this. I completely understand that if you go into Facebook groups or that if you go into certain churches that people will condemn you left and right for fornication. I do not spend my day thinking about the sexual morality of others. As he shook each of our hands, he said, “I’ll see you at the Great White throne.” I don’t know why, but his words have stuck with me through all these years.Ĭonfession #3. I don’t remember much about my conversation with Rainbow, but I remember two things distinctly: how easy it was for us to connect, despite our differences, and his parting words to me and some other worship team members. At one point, we just talked to the people. We were there for at least six hours, so we rotated jobs a lot. Our church worship team left from our church early one Sunday morning to assist the shelter in their Sunday proceedings, which included riding the buses to pick up the homeless from around Atlanta, serving breakfast, handing out clothes and toiletries before they showered, sitting and talking with them while they waited to see a doctor, and lastly, worshipping. We had to write about someone who had impacted our life in some way, and I wrote about Rainbow, a homeless man I met while volunteering at Rescue Atlanta, a homeless shelter. Writing this, I recall a paper I wrote my sophomore year in high school.
EBONY GAY MEN MAKING LOVE MOVIE
I smiled, and added the movie to my favorites. The simple fact that a movie of its kind existed (although low quality due to lack of funding) went a long way.
EBONY GAY MEN MAKING LOVE SKIN
I now had an image within me that expressed a love that reflected men of my skin color. For the first time, I felt like being a gay black guy was valid. After watching the movie, I had a newfound sense of self-worth. My attention was drawn to a movie titled Rag Tag about a passionate homosexual love that manifests within two young boys and later follows them into their adulthood, where pressures from society pose numerous challenges for the two black men. I discovered that like myself, other homosexual black men do exist. "ER MY GOD GURL, ISN'T BEING GAY LIKE AWESOME?" Hashtag, totally: if you're white.Īfter my realization that was my lack of knowledge concerning a popular gay black film I took to Google to help offer some answers. This world that I romanticized was in fact riddled with issues I had faced my entire life, they were just presented, or in this case not presented, in a different way.
This world that I once thought would fix all my problems and include me, every part of me, love me and accept me had its flaws.
Being a fairly new member of the "out and proud" LGayBT community, this was perhaps the first time I began to understand that much like the straight world I thought I never fit into, there was racism within the gay one as well.