Harvard community tackles race and sexuality

It's hard to imagine two topics more polarizing in America than race and sexuality, and when three Harvard University student groups convened a Feb. 20 forum on homophobia within the black community it was conceivable that the discussion could have erupted into a catastrophic argument. What happened was just the opposite. For two hours Cambridge Mayor Denise Simmons, former mayor and current City Councilor Kenneth Reeves, and a diverse group of about 70 Harvard students and community members gathered in the common room of the Lowell House dormitory and engaged in a freewheeling discussion about homosexuality and the black community, a discussion frequently punctuated by laughter. The forum, co-sponsored by the Harvard College LGBT Political Coalition, the Harvard Black Men's Forum, and the Association of Black Harvard Women, revealed a broad range of perspectives on how black LGBT people have been received within their families, the church, Harvard, Cambridge, and the broader community.

Simmons, who last month was sworn in as the country's first black lesbian mayor, kicked off the discussion by talking about one of the most overt experiences she has had with homophobia within the black community since entering politics. In 2004 as the Cambridge City Council was preparing for the festivities of May 17, when same-sex couples would finally be allowed to marry, she and Reeves, who is also gay, were deeply involved in working to ensure that Cambridge was the first city to offer marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She said out of the blue they both received an angry letter from local black church leaders attacking them for hosting the celebration.

"It was one of the saddest moments for me in political life because I expected so much more," said Simmons. "When there were other things that were so pressing, when we were doing the study on black males, they were conspicuously absent. When we talked about family involvement they were conspicuously absent. And on the one issue that we thought we knew was not that important was the one time they all gathered together en mass to make a statement."

Yet beyond that incident Simmons said she has experienced very little homophobia from the black community in Cambridge, where she has lived her whole life. In her experience the community has generally been focused on broader social issues and has paid little attention to issues of sexuality.

"It's the social issues, education and jobs and housing and homelessness, that are really important, so I don't feel homophobia on a day to day basis. I don't cringe at it," said Simmons. "I feel as though we can easily live our lives in this city, being black, being gay and being open about it. And it's always been that way and that's a great thing."

Reeves said his experience in Cambridge has not been as uniformly positive as Simmons'. He said the most overt example of homophobia he faced came not from the black community but from the press. He spoke about the dispute between himself and the Cambridge Chronicle, which over the summer of 2007 published a series of stories accusing Reeves, at that time serving as mayor, of misusing city travel funds. Reeves denied all wrongdoing at the time. He believes the negative media coverage was motivated by homophobia. He made this accusation as a Chronicle reporter sat just a few feet in front of him covering the event.

"I do believe homophobia was in that because it was inexplicable why a paper would create a character that didn't exist from a factual basis unless it brought that with them," said Reeves.

When asked by an audience member what impact he thought homophobia had on the black community, Reeves first answered, "I came to say incendiary things," prompting laughs from the crowd. He went on to say that the black community couldn't survive without its gay and lesbian members.

"You know, I don't worry much about homophobia in the black community because I know this. Within our intelligentsia amongst black people you have more gay men and women. The black community can't do without us," said Reeves. "I don't think it is a coincidence that the two elected leaders of this community, black, are gay and lesbian. I think we have information and talents that cannot be left behind."

Reeves tested his theory firsthand when he and about 100 other gay black men traveled to Washington, D.C., to participate in the 1995 Million Man March. He said given organizer Louis Farrakhan's reputation for homophobia some friends were worried about their safety, and two white police officers gave him a bulletproof vest to wear to the march. But on the day of the event Reeves said the openly gay contingent met no resistance.

"I went to D.C. in the midst of the Million Man March where I could have been murdered or not, and I was not only not murdered - I'm not going to swear we were embraced - but we got either silence or compliance. We had no trouble whatsoever," said Reeves. "So for me this is the litmus test about whether or not my community, given choices, would prefer to do without me. And I thank God for that example because I didn't know what the answer to that question is. Now I do know."

Reeves said that growing up in the black community in Detroit he was labeled as gay early on, but he always felt embraced.

"When I turned ten I got my mother to give me a big birthday party, and part of it, I was always a little bit theatrical, too, I remember I put on one of the best drag shows. But when you think of it, here you have a West Indian mother who stands up for her son's right to entertain his friends the way he did. And it was no big deal. When I got finished I put my suit back on and we continued with the party," said Reeves.

A frequent topic of conversation was dealing with sexuality within the black church. Durrell Robinson, a black gay Harvard senior, said he believes that people who blame homophobia within the black community on the church are making excuses.

"I hear that excuse, I mean that explanation, a lot, and I think a lot of people in the black community, a lot of people who are gay, take issue with it because if you're Christian you also know that the Bible says very explicitly that you shouldn't worship other gods or you should accept the tenets of Jesus Christ and his disciples, but black people don't feel the same way towards Jews, black people don't feel the same way towards other religions that they feel towards gay people," said Robinson. "So as much as we all want to say, 'I don't have anything against gay people, but it's here in the Bible, and if it weren't for the Bible I would feel okay,' the truth is there are a lot of other things in the Bible that we look the other way on. So I still feel like there's something underneath there, there's something else we need to tease out that is actually driving the way we feel towards gay people in the black community that isn't really in any way linked to the strong church influence in our community."

Simmons, who was raised Catholic, said that she has left the church and has not yet found a new spiritual home. The decision to leave her church, she said, was a question of picking her battles.

"If you're going to stay in the church you have to stand up and not be quiet. But you also have to pick your battles. There's no church that I want to fight this issue on, so I right now don't belong to a church in particular," said Simmons.

Reeves said he was raised in the Episcopal Church, but when he came to Harvard as an undergraduate he joined a local African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, where he remained a member for 36 years. But once the same-sex marriage debate ramped up in Massachusetts he found himself worrying every Sunday that his pastor would unleash anti-gay rhetoric from the pulpit.

"And then I realized I was paying for this oppression on a weekly basis, paying a lot," said Reeves, prompting laughs from the audience. "So I got in the mirror and I said, we can do better. So I went back to the Episcopal Church, and now I belong to a white Episcopal church where I pay a lot, but I don't worry that anybody's going to stand up in the pulpit and denounce me. And I think my mental health is so much better."

Another topic that sparked some lively dialogue was the role of allies and whether the burden to create a tolerant community rested with gay and lesbian people or with straight people. A Harvard sophomore named Blessing, who asked not to use her last name because she was not out to her entire family, said that she has often felt excluded from Harvard's black community because she is a lesbian, and she feels that straight members of the black community must work to create a welcoming environment.

"I have had my life threatened before because I'm gay. When you're faced with stuff like that, when it's a personal fear, not just, 'Oh, you're not going to be my friend,' when it's a personal fear like that and you're in a community that does not take steps to make you feel safe or okay with that - I put as much out there of myself as I can, and it's a part of the community that I want to be part of ... but what I'm saying is I know a lot of people here at Harvard. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty reality of it they are okay with their homosexuality, but the heterosexual black community is not at all," said Blessing, a black woman.

The Rev. Carol Johnson, a Harvard Divinity School alum who lives in Watertown and is a friend of Simmons, said that when black gay and lesbian people stay silent in their communities for fear of homophobia they lose the chance to forge deeper connections with their community. She described attending a black clergy convention in Harlem in the '90s while still a student at Harvard and being invited to speak on a panel about homophobia in the black church.

"I actually talked about being a lesbian person in the black community and what it meant to be severed from my religious roots, my church, my family, my home, or the possibility of that happening," said Johnson, who is black. "When this was over people came from all over that auditorium to speak with me, [saying] 'I think my son might be, I think my daughter might be, I had a sister who was, my uncle was this, my teacher was that,' and whatever. We have so many stories, but our silences, the assumption that all we will meet is homophobia, is the thing that keeps us from sharing with one another and therefore knowing what our real lives and our real stories are about."

Robinson said he came out to his family at age 14, and through his coming out he helped expand his family's understanding and acceptance of gay people. But he also said it was important for his friends and family to take the initiative and let him know that they supported him.

"If I'm hanging out with my friends, the only reason why I know it's okay for me to make a gay joke or bring my boyfriend along on a date is because if somebody came to me and picked on me, especially if it was with my brothers, I already know I wouldn't ever have to defend myself because they're there. And it's not that I have to take it upon myself. It's because they took it upon their selves," said Robinson. "They went ahead and made the initiative to let me know that they love me enough to have my back."

But some members of the audience wondered how far straight allies have to go to make gay people feel comfortable, particularly in a politically correct environment like Harvard. Kristen Jones, vice president of the Association of Black Harvard Women, provoked knowing laughs from many in the crowd when she explained that she had never heard the term "heteronormative" before coming to Harvard, "and I got here and started hearing it a lot."

"But a lot of straight people I know pushed back against that, not in public forums because they didn't want to offend anyone who was homosexual, but when we got back into our own groups of straight friends we would push back against that idea. Because to us it was like, what does that mean? Does that mean every time I ever say anything, I have to say, 'Or, if you're gay it's like this?' If I'm like, 'I was with my boyfriend, but if you don't have a boyfriend and have a girlfriend,'" said Jones, at which point the room fell into laughter. She continued, asking, "How do you know how to be inclusive without being paranoid?"

Simmons responded that it was less important to speak in exclusively gay-inclusive terms than it was to stand up to intolerance.

"If you hear something that's said that is homophobic or just downright wrong, that you say something against it as opposed to trying to have a sentence that is so long that brings everybody in that you can never get to your point," said Simmons. "If someone says, 'He's a sissy,' or, 'She's too butch,' correct that, as opposed to trying to elongate your sentences to be all inclusive."