Hold Tight Gently (16 page)

The political scientist Cathy Cohen has provided an unusually subtle analysis of the differences in how AIDS impacted white gay male and poor black communities. “In most communities of color,” she points out, “AIDS interacts with other crises, such as the lack of health care and education, homelessness, drug addiction, poverty, racism, sexism, and numerous other ills.” Some white gay men, Cohen fully acknowledges, have to deal with similar issues, perhaps poverty and lack of health care especially. Yet at the least one can say that such concerns are on the whole of greater magnitude in communities of color, just as (to quote Cohen) “the general resources afforded to each community for political struggles are also in no way equal.” This is not to say that African Americans are utterly powerless, but rather to emphasize that in the white world many more people of economic and political privilege exist capable of contributing individual resources to the AIDS struggle.

This was true not only on the individual level, but also in regard to how governmental agencies—preeminently the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC)—perceived the nature of the crisis. Put most simply, the CDC, at least initially, treated AIDS as a disease of gay white men, and, as counterpoint, minimized its impact on women, poor people, children, sex workers and their partners, and IV drug users (where, we now know, AIDS appeared at least as early as the 1970s). The poor and marginalized, to the extent they had access to medical treatment at all, had to rely—much like today—essentially on Medicaid mills and the emergency rooms of hospitals for their care. Until the women in ACT UP (founded in 1987), many of them lesbian, pressured the CDC to revise its definition of AIDS to include pelvic inflammatory disease and other markers, women were not officially classified as “having AIDS” and were thus denied access to federal disability benefits.

For black gays in D.C., an artistic community had decidedly emerged, but no political organizations had taken deep enough root to serve as cohesive rallying points for dealing with the emerging epidemic. Sexual behavior and medical services alike continued to be the preserve of the individual. Besides, many blacks (even some who were gay) commonly dismissed AIDS in the early eighties as a white affliction—in parallel to the way the black church dismissed homosexuality itself, arguing (falsely) that it had been unknown in precolonial Africa. As a result, in the early years of the epidemic, the sole acknowledgments in the African American D.C. community of the new health threat were a forum at the African American bar Nob Hill and the September 1983 AIDS discussion held at the Clubhouse dance club, which was managed by Rainey Cheeks, who later found Us Helping Us.

In 1984, Reginald G. Blaxton, a young ordained black pastor, became a special assistant for religious affairs to Washington’s mayor. Soon after Blaxton started work, Jim Graham, administrator of the Whitman-Walker clinic, approached him for help in identifying local black clergy who might join an advisory panel designed to stimulate the religious community’s involvement in the AIDS crisis. The idea was certainly appropriate, given that D.C. was the oldest majority-black city in the country, with no fewer than eight hundred congregations, and that it contained some of the black community’s most prestigious churches—including the National Cathedral of African Methodism and the Metropolitan AME Church. The Howard University School
of Divinity also lay within the city limits, rivaled only by Atlanta University in the number and quality of black theological leaders it produced.

It was already clear in 1984–85 that white church leaders would lead the howling pack in denouncing gay sinners who’d contracted AIDS. There was some expectation that the black church and black people in general, given their own history of suffering, would respond less venomously. In fact no black church person would ever match the Jerry Falwells of the land for sheer rhetorical viciousness. Considerable anecdotal evidence further suggests that many black churches (and families), however profound their homophobia, never “threw away” their gay members with comparable ease; for some a silent compact existed instead: the doors to church and home would remain open so long as the closet door remained shut.

This comparatively softer edge may have reflected the black community’s awareness of the alarming fact that the rate of infection among African Americans was much higher than their 12 percent of the population: of the roughly thirteen thousand Americans who had died from AIDS by the end of 1985, some 3,500 were African Americans. Yet formally, the black church in the early days of the epidemic was less forgiving than were black families. To Reginald Braxton, it had already become clear that the religious community’s response to those afflicted with AIDS was “a harsh public piety unmixed with compassion.” Braxton gave Jim Graham of the Whitman-Walker clinic the names of fifteen black clergymen in Washington who might join its advisory panel on AIDS. Fourteen of the fifteen refused any involvement to any degree with the work of the clinic. The one pastor who did agree to assist deserves noting: the Reverend J. Terry Wingate, pastor of the Purity Baptist Church in Northeast Washington.

A few years later, when public health authorities were pushing for more AIDS education in schools, including making condoms available, the Reverend Willie Wilson, black pastor of Union Temple in D.C., publicly denounced the suggestion: “This policy teaches the wrong values in a society already crippled and dying from a lack of morals and values.” When D.C. officials suggested that condoms be made available in prisons, the Reverend D. Lee Owens, black pastor of the Greater Mount Zion Missionary Church, argued vehemently against
the proposal: “Perhaps the fear of AIDS is just what is needed to scare these men straight.” White religious figures, of course, were no less—and arguably more—unforgiving in their attitudes.

In reaction to the stark homophobia of the black church, Dr. James S. Tinney, the white Pentecostal church historian and theologian—who was himself gay and would die of AIDS in 1988—decided as early as 1982 to found Faith Temple in D.C., a predominantly black lesbian/gay institution. A few months earlier, another black gay church had been started in New York City but had soon lost its struggle to survive. Determined not to be dismissed as a mere cult, Faith Temple announced it “would not use the term ‘Christian’ loosely enough to include anything outside the essential, fundamental, orthodox beliefs that had identified most Christians through the ages.”
⁸

The black church’s predominantly hostile attitude toward homosexuality has too often been equated with that of the black world in general. Though the evidence is somewhat contradictory and limited, at some periods in regard to some issues, it can in fact be argued that blacks on the whole are somewhat
less
homophobic than whites. A
New York Times
poll in 1993, for example, found that 53 percent of blacks supported equal rights for gay people but only 40 percent of whites did—and a Gallup poll that same year found that 61 percent of blacks favored lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military, while only 42 percent of whites approved. The African American writer Cheryl Clarke has persuasively argued that the issue hasn’t really been well studied but that “the poor and working-class black community, historically more radical and realistic than the reformist and conservative black middle class and the atavistic, ‘blacker than thou’ (bourgeois) nationalists, has often tolerated an individual’s lifestyle prerogatives even when that lifestyle was disparaged by the prevailing culture.”

The black writer and TV commentator Keith Boykin, further, has pointed out that with “a few high-profile exceptions,” a significant number of black leaders—including Jesse Jackson, Joseph Lowery, Coretta Scott King, Julian Bond, and David Dinkins—have been strong and public supporters of civil rights protections for gay people. In the House of Representatives, moreover, the Congressional Black Caucus has led the fight against gay discrimination. In 1998 the Black Radical Congress adopted Principles of Unity that included the statement “Gender and sexuality can no longer be viewed solely as personal issues
but must be a basic part of our analyses, politics and struggles.” Fighting heterosexism is coming to be seen as a deeper problem than fighting homosexuality.

But back in the early eighties, support from the black leadership was much harder to come by. Gil Gerald, who headed the NCBLG, has provided a telling account of the group’s effort to join the planned march celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington. The NCBLG’s board of directors voted unanimously to endorse the 1983 march—at the time, the only national gay or lesbian organization to do so. The established black leadership initially greeted the endorsement with dismay, not delight. D.C. congressional delegate Walter Fauntroy, who chaired the administrative committee of the march, scornfully compared lesbian and gay rights to “penguin rights”—though later, under pressure, he denied having made the remark.

Gil Gerald decided to contact the march coordinator, Donna Brazile, directly about getting the NCBLG listed among the endorsing organizations and to suggest as well that a gay or lesbian speaker—probably the well-known writer and activist Audre Lorde—be added to the roster. Initially Brazile was reassuring, but she then began ignoring Gerald’s phone messages. Unable to get a response from Brazile, a frustrated and angry Gerald left word with her office that he saw no alternative but to “declare war.” He consulted with Ginny Apuzzo, the progressive executive director of the National Gay Task Force, and the two decided to apply pressure on individual members of the march’s steering committee.

Apuzzo ultimately did manage to get the cooperation of Judy Goldsmith, then president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), with the result that NOW let it be known that it might pull out of the march if an agreement wasn’t reached with the gay and lesbian community. By then a half dozen national gay organizations had joined in the campaign for inclusion and both the
Washington Post
and the
Washington Times
carried stories about the ongoing struggle. Donna Brazile finally picked up the phone and asked Gerald if he’d be available for a conference call with the march leaders. Backed by Apuzzo and Ray Melrose, Gerald’s closest confidant, he agreed. But he felt it was “ironic that I, a beneficiary of their struggles with racism in the 50s and 60s, should now be attempting to teach them something about oppression and civil rights.”

Among the march leaders participating in the call that day were Walter Fauntroy, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Joseph Lowery, Benjamin Hooks, Donna Brazile—and both Ginny Apuzzo and Judy Goldsmith. Gerald’s voice cracked when he tried to convey his “feelings about the devastation that AIDS was already having on the Black Gay community,” and to convey as well the poignant need of the community for affirmation. The two-hour conference call was successful in the sense that agreement was reached to have a gay or lesbian speaker during that part of the program called a “Litany of Commitment”—but not during the time allotted for major addresses. It was further agreed that
individually, not as a group
, the black leaders would announce their support for the pending—and even now still pending—National Gay Rights bill in Congress.

After the conference call Gerald contacted a number of gay leaders—Essex was not yet well enough known to be among them—for their opinions, including Melvin Boozer, Ray Melrose, Dr. James Tinney, Billy Jones, Barbara Smith, and Audre Lorde, and got mixed reactions. Some felt additional pressure should be applied, others were satisfied with what had been accomplished, even though it wasn’t ideal. At the press conference preceding the march, Joseph Lowery introduced the scheduled speakers and made the unauthorized, matter-of-fact—and memorable—comment that “twenty years ago we marched, and one year later, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. It is now time to amend that act to extend its protections to Lesbians and Gay Men.” Audre Lorde was listed in the official program as representing the gay and lesbian community, and from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, twenty years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, she spoke these resonant words:

We marched in 1963 with Dr. Martin Luther King, and dared to dream that freedom would include us, because not one of us is free to choose the terms of our living until all of us are free to choose the terms of our living. . . . We know we do not have to become copies of each other in order to work together. We know that when we join hands across the table of our difference, our diversity gives us great power. When we can arm ourselves with the strength and vision from all of our diverse communities then we will in truth all be free at last.

Back in 1982, Mike and Rich Berkowitz had helped form a small support group called Gay Men with AIDS, where those who were ill could share personal experiences and coping mechanisms with one another. They became aware, the following year, of the New York AIDS Network—formed by Harold (Hal) Kooden, Ginny Apuzzo, and Dr. Roger Enlow of the Office of Gay and Lesbian Health—with a different agenda: to serve as a political forum for sharing information and ideas. At one of the Network’s meetings, discussion turned to an upcoming national AIDS gathering called for May 1983 in Denver. Bobbi Campbell and others in San Francisco urged major service organizations like GMHC to sponsor one or more people actually diagnosed with the disease as delegates.

The idea enthralled Mike. He may have been a self-described “bottom” but had never confused that with being temperamentally passive. “I knew,” he once said, “I was going to live or die by my wits and by my knowledge.” He believed deeply in self-empowerment in all areas and had already expressed anger at GMHC for failing to give those with AIDS a direct voice in its deliberations even as it provided them with immensely important services. As Mike saw it, GMHC had been treating them as “clients” and themselves as ladies bountiful, dispensing charity to the afflicted. Among other criticisms, he thought GMHC showed a racist disregard for less educated, poor black and Hispanic youth, “who cannot reasonably be expected to read between the lines of the white persons’ [vague] double-speak.”