The above video shows Reverend Dennis W. Wiley and Christine Y. Wiley articulating the reasons why they support marriage equality for same-sex couples.
In Saturday's Washington Post the Wileys published an incisive editorial which explains for a wider audience some of the roots of black cultural opposition to same-sex marriage and race-based homophobia in general.
We are sometimes asked what accounts for the homophobia within the AfricanWow! Read those paragraphs again. They really do an excellent job of detailing the reasons for some Black homophobia while expertly dismantling them.
American community. This question seems to assume that the community is
disproportionately homophobic compared with other racial and ethnic groups.
We are not aware of any credible study that has conclusively proved this
assumption. However, our first-hand experience has convinced us that
homophobia within the black church and the wider community is real. And the
factors that have nurtured these beliefs over the years are complex.
When issues of gay rights and gay marriage come up, the first question many
black people ask is, "What does the Bible have to say about it?" This
seemingly innocent question doesn't acknowledge that when we approach the
Bible, our perspective has been shaped by where we were born, by whom we
were raised, what Grandma taught us, where we went to school and what our
pastor preached in church -- usually conservative ideas on matters such as
homosexuality. Therefore, we tend to interpret the Bible not objectively,
but through the lens of our cultural and historical context.
The conservative strand of black religion is evident in what Harvard
professor Peter Gomes calls "bibliolatry" -- the practice of worshiping the
Bible rather than worshiping God. It is also found in a "literal"
interpretation of the Bible that focuses more on the letter of the text than
on its spirit, and concentrates on passages about domination, oppression,
hierarchy, elitism and exclusion rather than on the major themes of love,
justice, freedom, equality and inclusion that run throughout the Bible.
A more complicated element of black homophobia is the lingering influence of sexual stereotypes that originated during slavery. According to theologian Kelly Brown Douglas, the myth of "over-sexualized" black bodies portrayed
black men as violent "bucks" who posed an ever-present threat to white
women, and black women as "Jezebels" who seduced white men.
These stereotypes served to justify the whipping, lynching and castration of
black men, and to excuse the sexual violation of black women by white men.
They were just one element of what blacks had to struggle against to gain
acceptance and respectability in white society, especially during the late
19th century and the first half of the 20th. On this matter, religion has
often been a vehicle of suppression, accommodation and control. While the
church was a refuge from the horrors of racism and played an empowering role
in African American history, it also taught black people to repress
behaviors -- especially sexual behaviors -- that might attract unwanted
attention, appear uncouth or seem threatening to white people.
A final piece that shapes black attitudes toward same-sex marriage is the
preoccupation with racism in the black community. This obsession, although
justifiable, has led to a failure to appreciate how racism is inextricably
connected to all other forms of oppression. Those who fail to see this
connection may resent the comparison of gay rights with civil rights. But as
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere."
Last week, two black D.C. Council members voted against the same-sex
marriage bill. But five black council members voted for it. Our black mayor
signed it on Friday, and our black congressional representative has promised
to defend it on Capitol Hill. Although the bill faces the possibility of
intervention by Congress, something revolutionary is happening in this city
to debunk the notion that the black community's homophobia is entrenched.
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