How Gay is Your Black?

How Gay is Your Black?

By J.L. Glenn

Both before and after the shackles came off, African Americans have been fighting the battle to learn, love, and even drink water freely. The struggle for freedom through nonviolent protest continues on even today.  However, on this path to freedom, it seems as if some have forgotten what the Civil Rights Movement was all about and what the word equality really means. They have forgotten that discrimination does not just apply to race; it applies to all other human rights as well.

On Monday, March 8, 2010, Time Magazine Online published an article entitled, “Being Gay in Uganda: One Couple’s Story,” written by Glenna Gordon. The article is about one lesbian couple’s struggle to be themselves in Uganda, where the social and political climate is hostile towards its GLBT citizens.  Gordon writes, “Last year a member of Uganda’s Parliament, David Bahati, introduced a bill that, if it becomes law, will further criminalize homosexuality in Uganda. ‘Aggravated homosexuality,’ according to the bill, will become a capital offense and anyone who doesn’t report a known homosexual within 24 hours will be subject to punishment of up to seven years in jail.”

When did it become socially acceptable for us, as a people, to ignore injustice and allow discrimination?  When did it become tolerable for we who were drowned by the firefighter’s hoses, tackled by the bloodhounds, and hung from trees by bigoted men, to stand by and do nothing as others lose their birthright of freedom? At what point, after we gained our freedom, did we decide that it was all right for anyone outside of what we individually deem as “normal” to be subjected to mistreatment? We are all worthy of the same constitutional truths. When did love—the one thing that has brought this world together after war, slavery, genocide and terrorism—become so terribly immoral?  When did love become an insufficient fund?

Discrimination is Discrimination and it’s criminal.  So the question remains: How Gay is Your Black?

Works Cited

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1969667,00.html Monday March 8 2010, Glenna Gordon.

Time magazine in partnership with CNN.

J.L. Glenn is a poet and playwright living in Washington D.C.