© Breeze Vincinz
While I had my own reservations about picketing a community on an issue in which there was arguably no outreach done to ask for support beforehand, I decided to march in the phenomenally momentous “March for LGBT Equality” down Crenshaw Boulevard last year. The march, organized by Love at Work – The Exchange, was a response to the passing of Proposition 8 which banned marriage between same sex couples in the State of California. After the Proposition passed, there was a flurry of conjecture, accusations and assumptions about how something like this could happen in California of all places, one of the most liberal and quite frankly… “gay” of all the states in the union. One of the first responses was that the African American community was to blame which of course started other flurries of conjecture, accusations and assumptions.
I think one of the most positive things that came from the whole brouhaha was that it gave an opportunity for homosexual and heterosexual Black people to have a good old fashion no holds barred, face to face, technologically-free conversation. Blogs, Twitter and instant messages are fine, but there is a certain intimacy that exists between people sitting face to face with each other and experiencing the beauty (and horror) of live, unedited, unscripted interaction that I find truly amiable.
I’ve noticed that it’s really easy to talk about “them” when you don’t really know who “them” is or when “them” is sitting right next to you. During the town hall meetings that I attended I was fascinated to hear the true voice of what African American heterosexuals had to say unadorned and unedited. The main thing I got out of the meetings is that both Black homosexuals and heterosexuals are guilty of stereotyping the other faction and we really don’t have a lot of experience in interacting with each other on a sober, respectable, daily level. I could sense that it was fairly difficult for a lot of the homophobes to spurt out the evils of homosexuality or the “ultimate homosexual agenda” to convert children when there were actual homosexuals sitting across from them who did not have the remote appearance or decorum of a bunch of extra rejects from Fame or America’s Next Top Model. It was equally just as difficult for me to spurt out my own ideas about the devil obsessed “breeders” more jealous and curious about anal sex than appalled by it when there where actual heterosexuals sitting across from me who basically just wanted to know why were we so angry and how is this going to effect the homicide and HIV infection rates in our community. It was just very refreshing to have an actual conversation where people spoke for themselves and I did not fill in the blanks with my own biased opinions and experiences.
It was definitely the motivating factor for me to participate in the march. While going into it I did feel as if it was a case of “too little too late” in regards to the Proposition 8 issue, but I mainly felt that… time was due. When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1998 I remember having a conversation about having a Black Gay Pride Celebration in Leimert Park with a couple of other brothers in a Discussion group that I used to patronize. The consensus at the time was overwhelmingly pessimistic as the brothers pined on about how it would never happen, how Crenshaw (and Black People as a whole) would never accept open homosexuals, how the gay version of Boyz-N-Da-Hood would never be told…
Fast forward a decade later to me in my Black Gay Pride t-shirt video taping a hundred or so African American homosexuals marching to the Crenshaw Mall chanting, “What do we want! Equality! When do we want it! Now!”
To me it wasn’t necessarily about Proposition 8. It was about visibility, it was about acknowledging our extended presence in a community that is quite frankly… ours. I remember at one point this irate older gentleman screaming at me and friend of mine, “Go home! Take that shit back to Hollywood someplace!” At which point my friend, enraged, screamed from the top of her lungs, “I am home brotha! I grew up across the street over there!”
There were a few little outbursts like that along the march route but all in all it was pretty positive. Afterwards one of my best friends told me that there was a pink “Yes on 8” mini-van that was following us in an effort to counter our efforts. He equated the van to the KKK’s antithetical efforts during the civil rights movement, a sentiment I thought was hilariously misguided. A pink mini-van with a tinny bull horn is pretty insignificant compared to burning crosses, lynches and fire hoses. But days before the march I honestly have to say that I was a little fearful. I was so hopped up on “Righteous Civil Rights” juice that I forgot that not everybody drinks that same drink… and that there was a possibility of some real danger, some real violence. This is South Central Los Angeles after all. It is a beautiful part of town but seriously… N.W.A. wasn’t lying about the gangs, the drugs, the corruption. On the bus ride up to Crenshaw and Vernon I do have to say… I was a little scared. Particularly since I sarcastically figured 15, maybe 16 people would actually show up to proclaim their full on homosexuality in the hood. But the one thing I kept thinking was, and I’m not sure who said it, but courage isn’t the absence of fear… courage is actually being scared completely shitless, and still going through with it. So I just stayed on the bus with images of the numerous drive-by shootings that could occur, some religious nut driving into the crowd or maybe a malitoff cocktail or two thrown at me thinking that what I was doing was righteous enough to accept any reciprocal effort.
Well when I got off the bus I was thrilled to find the park filled to the brim with supporters and as far as the drive-by shootings, deaths by speeding cars and malitoff cocktails… we had some numb nuts in a pink mini van with a tinny bull horn who had seen too many “Men on Film” skits and took them way too seriously. We also got the occasional name calling here and there and once when we passed by this barber shop, everyone in the place sprinted towards the windows to slam the shades shut and lock the front door… which till this day I think is just funny as shit.
What I’m really hoping is that the idea of this march continues. The dialogue, the visibility, the courage… it was for me a very proud moment in the history of the Black LGBT community and despite my reservations about the actual intent of the march, I do have to say that I am extremely proud to have been a part of its outcome. I had a chance to look my people in the eye and tell them that this is who I am. And while not all of them agreed, they let me be; they didn’t pluck my eyes out in retaliation or shoot at me or anything. Maybe shut the shades and lock the door… but that was cool, beats a bullet any day of the week. And I am most certain that the brothers who I had the conversation with back in 1998 about having a Black Gay celebration on Crenshaw who did not make it this far would say the same.
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