Gay Pastor Fights Racism, Homophobia
AB: Do you think this speech is going to change anything?
HG: Obama has had some really good responses and reviews, but I think that people – I think that most people are still so uncomfortable with race. They just want it to go away. It’s kind of like how they want gays ands lesbians to go away. The average person doesn’t want to work at hard issues. They find it too painful, it makes them too uncomfortable. They don’t want to own their participation in that oppression and change their way of living. My hope is that the speech will bring people in to have a conversation, but the way we respond in this country to issues about race tends to be reactive. There will be some racial incident like the Rodney King beating or the Jena 6 and then people are forced to deal with it and there’s a lot of emotion, but then they just move on. They don’t want to sit down and talk about how we can live a different way. But, I’m hopeful.
AB: We still have a long way to go.
HG: Yes, we do. I think many times whites don’t understand the depths of racism that exist in this country, because they don’t experience it. I was talking to one of my parishioners who was shocked to know that I get these reactions by white women and men all the time. And I’m always dressed professionally in a suit and tie, but I’m lumped with every thuggish black man on the street. A white man dressed like me would never get that reaction. There a lot of people who still feel like any black man – they don’t even look at you – they just lump all black men together as thieves. That is racism. And it’s that level of racism – not people like the Klan, we’re not talking about that racism. A lot of people don’t really look at the nuances of race and the degrees of racism and I really think that’s what Barack was dealing with.
AB: What about the relationship between gays and religion, specifically with regard to black churches. As we said to me before, black preachers made very public denouncements of gays during the 2004 election. Bitterness still remains. Even reading the comments on Queerty, people come out with some broad, pretty distasteful generalizations of black religious figures and the monolithic black church. Do you find that a lot within gay communities or the people with whom you associate?
HG: Yeah, there is that attitude. And generally that is true, because most African-Americans align themselves with the more homophobic Christian denominations – Evangelical, Pentecostal, Baptist and Methodist. That’s where most black people are and we tend not to be in an Episcopal church. The blacks in the Episcopal church are much more open and accepting than your average African-American church goer. I think there is homophobia – we can’t just chalk that up to racism.
AB: How can we reverse that thinking?
HG: We reverse that through education – educating African-American heterosexuals on the issue of homosexuality and sexuality in general and challenging a lot of the traditional scriptural usages that place homosexuality as sin, so it’s actually getting them to think about scripture different, getting them to see gays and lesbians differently and getting them to see the history of oppression that has been condemned by African-Americans. We have to get them to see denigrating gays and lesbians as akin to the racial oppression they opposed.
AB: Do you think there can be actual progress toward equality in the United States without the church’s involvement?
HG: I think history would support just the opposite: the church has not led. That said, I think that in every movement, in every liberation, you have had a significant number of people out of the Christian church and a few denominations who have stood against oppression. I’m thinking of the Quakers with slavery and of the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church standing against gay oppression, but I think the church as a whole has not followed the gospel, which calls us to oppose oppression and to deliver people who are oppressed. It’s a real irony that the church, which should be an agent of positive change, participates in the oppression of social groups.
Where is his church, what is his religion ? Don’t you think it is important to tell readers about important details ? The photos look phony, like stock b&w vintage 1930 photos in the south. Did Queerty travel to the south to interview him ? Or is it just someone that is attractive living in New York (Chelsea), working as an assistant to a ministry.
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That’s the trouble with you, the gay media. Your reports are just Hype. If this was really a black preacher spreading his message in the cotton fields of the south as you have pictured, big hats and print dresses, CNN would be all over the story like flies on shit. You guys are phony, no authenticity.
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The only good thing about your site is David Hauslaib, but he doesn’t speak out enough. Would like to see more of him on Youtube with his political messages. You little New York hacks running this blog are pathetic. Nipping at the heels of great people.
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Let’s get to things that Obama has said about race..
Perhaps Obama can answer in his own words: From ‘Dreams of My Father’,
“I CEASED TO ADVERTISE MY MOTHER’S RACE AT THE AGE OF 12 OR 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites”
From Dreams of My Father, ” I FOUND A SOLACE IN NURSING A PERVASIVE SENSE OF GRIEVANCE AND ANIMOSITY AGAINST MY MOTHER’S RACE”.
From ‘Dreams of my Father’, “The emotion between the races could never be pure….. the THE OTHER RACE (WHITE) WOULD ALWAYS REMAIN JUST THAT: MENACING, ALIEN AND APART”
From Dreams Of My Father, “never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. IT WAS INTO MY FATHER’S IMAGE , THE BLACK MAN, THE SON OF AFRICA, THAT I’D PACKED ALL THE ATTRIBUTES I SOUGHT IN MYSELF.
From Dreams Of My Father:
“THAT HATE HADN’T GONE AWAY,” he wrote, BLAMING WHITE PEOPLE,- SOME CRUEL, SOME IGNORANT, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”
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What a courageous and wise man.