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Daily Archives: November 4, 2015
How The Tenth Challenges the Image of Black Queer Men
How The Tenth Challenges the Image of Black Queer Men
In America, there is no shortage of tropes used to describe black gay and bisexual men: Fierce, finger-snapping queens. The brother on the DL. Choir director. Homo thug.
The public consumes these stereotypes as if they are definitive representations of the lives of black queer men, but they are not. And the striking work of three black creatives — the talented founders of The Tenth — is shifting the narrative.
Khary Septh, Kyle Banks, and André Verdun Jones are at work on the third volume of The Tenth, which is a hybrid, high-quality biannual print publication that smudges the boundaries between high and low art, culture and subcultures.
Beyond the founders’ worldviews as Brooklyn-based black gay men, the trio’s sensibilities for the arts and combined experiences in various fields are what distinguish The Tenth from similar media. In the past, Jones produced TV commercials and documentaries; Septh is a creative director in the fashion industry; Banks is a professionally trained singer-actor with experience in music and acting management.
“We’re art directors who’ve worked in fashion and music and film. We’re just doing what we know how to do best, in the interest of our people,” Jones says. “We’ve made enough perfect images of white girls selling high-fashion clothes and bags for the global corporate fashion machine. We’d like to perfect our own image.”
The founders are inspiring the public to reconsider common conceptions of black sexuality. Even more, the volumes are exceptionally queer — pushing boundaries and questioning what the public considers normal. And while the founders are not afraid to combat anti-black racism, they also deal with the complications of intra-racial violence.
“But there’s something else driving the process — this need to understand our sameness as black gay men, across geographic boundaries, across class boundaries, across generations,” Septh acknowledges.
Whether explored in deftly curated photographic essays, in-depth interviews, or prose reminiscent of the black-people-loving words penned by Harlem Renaissance writers, the diverse worlds of black gay and bisexual men are centered. The Tenth, which takes its name from a W.E.B. DuBois essay titled “The Talented Tenth,” contains counternarratives on black gay and bisexual men’s lives, but it is most valuable because it provides space for black men to tell the stories of their lives, on their own terms, using language and visuals they create.
“It’s about ownership and entitlement and asserting that we too have as much right to this collective American memory, and can just as arbitrarily recolor it as anyone else can,” Septh says.
The Tenth is an attempt to rewrite and make right the public’s relationship to black gay and bisexual men, and our relationships to one another. The latter is the greater win.
Darnell L. Moore
www.advocate.com/current-issue/2015/11/04/how-tenth-challenges-image-black-queer-men
Equal Employment in Michigan: The Time Is Now
Equal Employment in Michigan: The Time Is Now
A little over seven years ago I was brought into an office and fired for cause. The reason I was let go was because, of all things, I was honest with a coworker when asked if I was gay. This is not an uncommon story.
Even after the historic Supreme Court case that gave LGBT Americans the right to marry, many of us can still be fired for getting that marriage license. The Michigan attorney whose court case prompted the Supreme Court hearing, Dana Nessel, is now pushing forward a ballot measure in Michigan to amend our constitution and enshrine workplace equality into law.
Under normal circumstances, there would be celebration. Michigan’s LGBT community, recognizing that Dana has been aggressive and successful in her past endeavors, would gather behind her. Instead, what we’ve seen is back-biting and off-year political nonsense from our largest LGBT organization.
Equality Michigan almost immediately sought to dampen expectations for the ballot measure. The list of strange and flippant reasons given by the head of Equality Michigan, Stephanie White, has created a fracture in the LGBT community in Michigan. Now, we’re left with dissecting the arguments on both sides and asking, ‘What should we do?’
One argument White made in an interview with Eclectablog can be summed up as, let’s not do this because LGBT folks might get beat up. Here’s the quote:
…like most gambling, it could produce a big payoff, or it could produce a painful cost. The people who will pay that cost are the members of our community who are already most vulnerable: trans people, poor people, and disproportionately, people of color. That’s why we have to first invest in our coalition and first educate the public before we are ready to withstand those attacks.
I wonder if she would give that advice to Dr. Martin Luther King? Would she tell the rioters at Stonewall, ‘Hey, don’t do that – you’re putting trans persons at risk of assault!’
My goodness.
The other argument, one which White used in her more public interviews with the Detroit News and other major organizations, was one about process. White believes, at least for now, that the legislative approach is the best one to ensure LGBT workplace protections.
There’s just one problem with that: her organization has done next to nothing to ensure the legislature acts. This, despite the fact that Equality Michigan has a paid policy director, Sommer Foster.
How do I know they haven’t been doing anything? I spoke with four state legislators and asked them all the same question: Has Equality Michigan spoken to you in the last year about anything? Have you ever seen them in the capitol building in the last year?
The answer, across the board, was “No.”
One senior State Senator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was emphatic, “Equality Michigan has never been to my office in at least the last year. I’ve actually never seen them in the capital,” he said.
Similar statements were echoed by a freshman state representative who also spoke on condition of anonymity, “I honestly don’t know what they do. The only place where I see Sommer is on Facebook.”
So, if Equality Michigan isn’t pursuing a legislative solution, what are they doing?
The average LGBT person in Michigan is sick and tired of waiting for the legislature to do something. Unlike the folks working at Equality Michigan, not all of us have the luxury of waiting years and years for a solution, because many of us are in hostile workplaces right now.
Not to mention, the current legislature is majority Republican. Due to the harsh gerrymandering in Michigan, the only legislative route to victory would be if the Democrats win the governors race in 2018 and get to redistrict the state in 2022. Then, there’s a possibility we could win a majority in the state house in 2024. Thus, the only viable legislative route includes waiting eight years or longer.
Are we really willing to wait that long, while our largest advocacy organization isn’t even working hard in Lansing to make it happen?
It’s about damn time somebody did something for LGBT workplace protection in Michigan. The time for talk is over. It’s time to get out our clipboards and knock on some doors for workplace equality. The time for the ballot measure is now.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
HRC Sends Letter to NFL Commissioner Following Repeal of Houston Equal Rights Ordinance
Gay Web Series ‘Flying High With Charlie’ Navigates the Turbulent Life of a Gay Flight Attendant: WATCH
Gay Web Series ‘Flying High With Charlie’ Navigates the Turbulent Life of a Gay Flight Attendant: WATCH
Gay web series Flying High With Charlie follows a young gay flight attendant living in New York, looking for love, and trying to find some respite in his time on the ground.
The series also challenges cliches about gay flight attendants (“Oh, wow, you must be banging a new guy in every city, right?”) while simultaneously traveling through Charlie’s turbulent dating life. The 5 episode web series from OutliciousTV, sees Charlie (Brandon Salerno) commiserate with his best friend and work wife (Kelsey Coughlin) over his status as a singleton, dodge his stalker ex-boyfriend, and try his hand at a three-way.
Watch all 5 episodes, below:
The post Gay Web Series ‘Flying High With Charlie’ Navigates the Turbulent Life of a Gay Flight Attendant: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
Queen Shilling Panorama
Beyoncé Ignored The LGBT Community In Houston
Beyoncé Ignored The LGBT Community In Houston
It kills me to write this post. I have spent more time worshiping Beyoncé than just about any other pop star. I’ve spent countless hours dancing to “Grown Woman” alone in my apartment. I’ve been the only guy in a dance class aimed at teaching the “Single Ladies” dance, and I loved every second of it. Beyoncé has been queen in my life since the first time I watched the “Crazy In Love” video.
But.
Over the past few months, Beyoncé has repeatedly refused the opportunity to speak out against the legalization of discrimination against LGBT people in her hometown. And as hard as it is to say this, her refusal should raise serious questions about her support for her gay, bisexual and transgender fans.
Last night Houstonians voted to repeal the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), a city ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of 15 different characteristics, including race, sex, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. HERO’s repeal is likely the biggest setback for LGBT civil rights since the 2008 passage of Prop 8 in California.
In August, I found out that HERO would be going up for a public repeal vote, and my stomach turned. Laws like HERO tend to lose, badly, when they’re put up for a public vote. I thought about my friends in Houston — activists I had worked with on HERO for months, people who had dedicated their work, their free time, and their emotional energy to ending discrimination in their hometown. I imagined watching their hard work erased at the ballot box. I imagined having to sit through another expensive, brutal campaign about whether it should be legal to discriminate against LGBT people. I wanted to help.
So I did what any god-fearing gay man does in his time of need. I turned to Beyoncé.
In August, I wrote a blog asking Beyoncé to make a single Instagram post in support of HERO. My decision to focus on Beyoncé wasn’t random. She’s spoken supportively about the LGBT community before. She’s occasionally chosen to use her Instagram account to take positions on social issues. She’s the world’s most famous Houstonian — the “Visit Houston” website has a page dedicated to Beyoncé, who said “this will always be home to me!” And with fifty million followers, she has one of the most influential social media presences in the world. A single post from her would have motivated young voters to the polls, focused national attention on the fight over HERO, and dramatically reframed the narrative away from the talking points of HERO’s opponents, who ended up saturating media coverage of the ordinance.
To my surprise, a group of young Houston activists turn the post into a fully-fledged online campaign. Before I knew it, HERO supporters in Houston were using the hashtag #BeyBeAHERO to urge Beyoncé to back the ordinance on social media. During a time when many LGBT activists would have been groaning about the prospect of a public vote, there was a kind of electricity surrounding the idea that a scrappy group of Houstonians might be able to convince the world’s biggest pop star to help them protect the ordinance they had fought so hard for.
The campaign garnered the attention of local and national media outlets including NBC, Buzzfeed, Vox, Salon, Upworthy, Houston Chronicle, and Texas Monthly. Major LGBT organizations, including GLAAD, Courage Campaign, and the National LGBTQ Task Force joined in asking for the superstar’s help. Even Sylvester Turner, the leading Democratic mayoral candidate in Houston, launched a petition asking Beyoncé to back the ordinance.
But despite repeated requests for help from HERO supporters in Houston, Beyoncé declined to comment.
On Instagram, I watched her post images from her Vogue cover shoot.
“It’s only August. I’m sure she’ll say something.”
As the fight over HERO continued, opponents flooded the airwaves with ads falsely claiming that HERO would endanger women by letting men into public restrooms – a scare tactic that’s proven incredibly successful at eroding support for non-discrimination laws. HERO supporters worked to gather endorsements from businesses and faith leaders, including Beyoncé’s pastor, who spoke strongly in favor of the ordinance. Early polling showed that, while supporters had a slight advantage, the vote would be close.
The drumbeat for Beyoncé to speak up in defense of HERO continued. Two weeks into the #BeyBeAHERO campaign, the hashtag had made over 10 million impressions on social media.
But still, nothing.
One night, I found myself lying on the grass in a park by my apartment, distraught. I had done everything I knew how to do to get Beyoncé’s team to react. I had bugged every reporter friend, forwarded every press hit, tweeted incessantly. I had given it my best shot. And I was starting to feel like a failure.
On Instagram, I watched Beyoncé post a photo of a pizza.
“Why hasn’t she said something?”
Early voting began on October 19. A number of Houston celebrities, including Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons, came out in support of the ordinance. Even Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for HERO, urging voters to vote for the measure and oppose discrimination.
But despite those endorsements, young voters, who were expected to support HERO, weren’t turning out for early voting. Supporters worried that the low turnout among young Houstonians could spell doom for non-discrimination measure on Election Day.
Behind the scenes, activists again urged Beyoncé’s team to post something, anything voicing her opposition to anti-LGBT discrimination and encouraging Houstonians to keep HERO.
On Instagram, I started at a picture of a drink Beyoncé had while on vacation.
“She’s not going to say something.”
Election Day came and went without a word from the world’s most famous Houstonian, and HERO ended up losing badly at the ballot box, stripping basic legal protections for LGBT people in Houston.
Watching HERO lose is probably one of hardest things I’ve had to experience in my work as an activist. My colleagues, my friends in Houston had fought tooth and nail to protect their non-discrimination ordinance. I remembered how excited they had been when the #BeyBeAHERO campaign launched, how energized they were by the prospect that Beyoncé might lend them a helping hand.
But last night, they could only be devastated by a massive setback in their fight to live free from discrimination.
On Instagram, I watched a video of Beyoncé posing silently in front of an American flag.
“I can’t believe she didn’t say something.”
In September, The New York Times and Daily Beast argued that Beyoncé’s brand is defined by a kind of intentional silence: refusing to make any public statements that might stray from her highly micromanaged PR strategy.
Last night, staring numbly as election returns rolled in, I thought about Beyoncé’s refusal to utter a word in defense of her hometown’s non-discrimination ordinance. I thought about the disconnect between her brand, which has thus far suggested a kind of vague support for the LGBT community, and the impulse to stay out of public battles when the stakes are high.
The few times Beyoncé has chosen to express support for the LGBT community, she’s avoided offering more than vague, kind sentiments about the need for equality. She waited to tweet about California’s Proposition 8 until the measure was being handled by the Supreme Court, firmly out of the hands of voters who might be swayed by her position. She waited nearly a full week before posting a video celebrating the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision this year. In both cases, she avoided taking a position that might make her a target in a public controversy.
HERO was different. With HERO, Beyoncé had a golden opportunity to oppose an active effort to legalize discrimination against LGBT Houstonians. It wouldn’t have taken more than a single Instagram post, but she would have inserted herself as a real, active ally, proving her support for the LGBT community is more than mere lip service.
She didn’t.
No celebrity is obligated to weigh in on social issues. Beyoncé is one of the most powerful women in the world, and she doesn’t owe her voice, her influence, to anyone but herself. Being an artist doesn’t require someone to also be a social justice warrior, and Beyoncé is entitled to avoid political disputes in the name of protecting her public brand.
But at least part of that brand has thus far suggested her support for the LGBT community. HERO offered her an incredibly simple opportunity to demonstrate that support when her fans and her hometown needed her the most.
HERO is gone, now. And for her queer fans who watched and waited while Beyoncé decided it wasn’t in her brand’s interests to speak out in defense of her hometown’s non-discrimination law, all there’s left to do is ask “why not?”
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Open Question: Do Christians believe that lgbt steal Rainbow from GOD?
Open Question: Do Christians believe that lgbt steal Rainbow from GOD?
Building the Next Generation of Equality Leaders Through HRC’s HBCU Project
Building the Next Generation of Equality Leaders Through HRC’s HBCU Project
Over the Halloween weekend, HBCU students, administrators and faculty from across the country gathered for a weekend of training, networking and most importantly, empowerment.
HRC.org
PHOTOS: Alex Minsky Strips Down For A Brighter Future In 2016
PHOTOS: Alex Minsky Strips Down For A Brighter Future In 2016
If there is a better way to kick off the ever-closer new year than with these stunning photos of tattooed veteran-turned-insanely good-looking model Alex Minsky, we’d love to hear about it.
The 2016 Alex Minsky Calendar is sure to properly stuff any stocking this holiday season:
Dan Tracer
