Maybe you remember this 1977 hit “I Was Born This Way”? Above, the song in its original version from Carl Bean; in the clubs, a remixed one. The recording from Bean arrived two years after Valentino originally released it. It’s been thirty-three years since the disco song, written by Chris Spierer and Bunny Jones about being A Gay, came out — well ahead of the Village People. Now Carl Bean is Archbishop Carl Bean, a gospel singer-cum preacher and AIDS activist at Unity Fellowship Church, a nationwide church he founded five years after he released this song. And writing with David Bitz, Bean has a new autobiography out chronicling his journey from sexually abused youngster in Baltimore to leading LGBT advocate. Fittingly, it is titled I Was Born This Way.
Bean chats about his book in this interview: “I don’t fear to be honest about who I am. I expect to be called upon to speak about it, challenged ,probably be baited, but I know that it will give a lot of people permission to be honest about who they are. God is love, and love is for everyone.”
Give this man a hug. Or, just purchase his book.
malcanoid
What a brave, lovely man. I hope someone will send a copy of his book to Martin Ssempa in Uganda.
Jesse Helms
Who is this baboon?
james_from_the_great_city_of_cambridge
A beautiful, moving story about a Black man doing heroic things for us. Yet I don’t expect anyone to bother with this story at all because it doesn’t feature a homophobic Black man. What a sad little community we have…
Jesse Helms
@James: Why don’t you hook up with this black man and get your freak on?
KWil
@Jesse Helms: Why don’t you read a manual on effective trolling. your shits getting obvious.
Ogre Magi
Awww, he looks like a big ol’ teddy bear!
Jesse Helms
Black is not beautiful. Someone lied to you Negroes. This man is an ugly Ape and should be in a Zoo. I am the real Jesse posting this comment, not the wanna be Jesse fakes.
Ogre Magi
@Jesse Helms: Jesse Helms I bet you look like a fucking orc!
Jesse Helms
Ogre Magi is this Ape your pappy? Oops I forgot most you Negro men grew up without fathers in the household. This is why so many black men are “savages” and prey and kill on blacks and others. You blame your sorry life’s on the white man, but you are killing one another like animals around the United States. I say good riddance to you. I welcome gentification across the U.S.
Alex
What a wonderful man spreading the good news !!!
Ogre Magi
@Jesse Helms: I wish he was my father he seems like a real cool guy. Here is a video of your daddy Jesse Helms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-QvljuhuR0
Zed Zee
“God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion…Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
Romans 1:26 and 32.