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Viewpoints clash, resolve at HTJ town hall

by Jessica Carreras

DETROIT –
Conversations about sexuality, gay relationships and what the "ultimate gay male" really is ruled the third annual Young Brothers United Town Hall Discussion on July 22, held as part of Hotter Than July at the St. Regis Hotel in Detroit.
For two hours, a full room of impassioned individuals – including prominent panelists from the black LGBT and allied community – dug deep into issues of race, sexual orientation, relationships, HIV and politics. What emerged were honest opinions from people representing a range of ages, backgrounds and sexual orientations that sometimes clashed but ultimately built upon one another to reach the conclusion that black LGBT people can do more and be more than they ever thought possible.
The discussion jumped right into controversial territory with the question "What does being gay mean to you?"
"To me, gay is more of a lifestyle than something that I am," said panelist Caleb Howard of Young Brothers United. "I live my life as a gay man and that's it – it's just a lifestyle."
Johnny Jenkins, LGBT program officer at the Arcus Foundation, disagreed, along with several other panelists. "I don't like to claim that my life is associated with some type of fad. I believe that being gay is who I am, who I'm attracted to. It's something that I've gone through phases to accept – I didn't just come out at birth, accept that I was gay and was happy with it."
Jenkins went on to suggest that the more nonchalant attitudes about sexuality of today's gay youth were fostered by the battles fought by gay men in the '80s and '90s. "I came out in a period when there were a lot of black gay men dying just about every two weeks, and they didn't have a choice to accept whether they were gay or not. They were just trying to live their lives and be happy for whatever amount of time they had to live," Jenkins continued. "It took me 10 years to get to the point where I accepted my sexuality and my identity as a black gay man. Right now, I feel … I need to continue advocating so that others feel comfortable enough like these younger brothers here – that they can be comfortable and not have to fight the same battles that I thought."
Kathie Griffin of the Michigan AIDS Coalition put it simply: "I just want us to focus not so much on just being gay. There's so many other aspects of our life that shape us, being gay is not the priority."
A large part of the Thursday evening discussion centered around gay relationships: Can they last? Who can young gay and lesbian couples look to for guidance, and to emulate?
For some, the largest problem voiced is that stable long-term gay relationships simply are not visible enough, either in life or in classrooms and textbooks.
"There is no healthy education curriculum for the LGBT community – period. There's no space in the health education curriculum in K-12, there's no real commitment in higher education other than for white LGBT communities," asserted Sharon Lettman, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. "When I think about what we have to do as adults, as experienced people, as policymakers, as teachers, as educators, it's to demand a place in our communities – our black communities – that builds a healthy space for black LGBTs."
But Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh, who sat as a panelist, insisted that healthy gay relationships for youth to look up to are out there – they're just hard to see if all one's friends are youth as well. "If everybody around you is 19 or 20 and they're not thinking about settling down with one person, that's going to be your point of reference," he said. "I hate when older people say, 'You just need to live a little,' but you really do."
Other audience members and panelists agreed, however, that those healthy, long-term relationships – both gay and straight – were not visible enough in the black community.
"If in your childhood, all you saw was broken and fragmented people loving each other with their fists or loving each other with curse words every day, that's something you're going to emulate when you're an adult," commented one audience member. "They always say that young girls find men, when they grow up to be women, that emulate their fathers. It's the exact same thing in reverse for gay people."
Lettman agreed. "Relationships are not gay or straight – they're relationships," she added. "It's about maturity and it's about understanding who you are inside first, who you want to be, how you want to be treated."
And, the panelists said, the key to healthy relationships between friends, lovers, families and communities, was to first stop apologizing for being gay.
"We must … stop allowing ourselves to be the scapegoat as the LGBT community," Lettman said, "because it's the black community – from slavery to today – that has caused us to misidentify, misrepresent, have low expectations about what relationships are – whether it's LGBT, straight or others."
Once the black LGBT community had pride in itself – especially in metro Detroit, the panelists concluded, it could do amazing things.
"Any of you all can be the mayor of this city, the governor of this state and the next Obama coming from the black gay community of Detroit," Jenkins said. "We can think big, y'all. That's how Hotter Than July became what it is today and that's why this community is so fabulous beyond compare, but we don't give ourselves enough credit."

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