Irene Monroe

In the African American community you grow up hearing your parents admonishing you about disclosing family secrets with them saying, ?What goes on in this house, stays in this house!? But many of them have broken the sacred racial code of silence by throwing their kids out of the house.

That was my life after coming out.  I was considered dead and heard the horrible words ?I?m glad your father is not alive to see this.?  The words were meant to be harmful, they were meant to injure my spirit and the words were meant as condemnation.  I also knew I could never return home.

I was fortunate because I was over 21 with a full-time job and the ability to support myself.  A cold chill runs up my spine when I think about what might have happened had I come out at, say 13 or 14, the age when I realized I was very different from my peers.  I can assure you I would not have had a home, I would have been on the streets. 

The Black community does have a dirty little secret for sure.  Some of our folks are quick to accept David?s White girlfriend before they will accept Sharon?s Black girlfriend.  David?s girlfriend will receive full room and board to live all up in mama?s house while his sister finds herself, along with her girlfriend, living on the streets because mama ain?t gonna have none of that ?bulldagger stuff.? 

Yes, I heard about a situation similar to the one described above.

In Monroe?s poignant piece she says:

African American LGBTQ homelessness among youth also culminates from an ongoing cycle of abuse that homophobia exact on their lives that remains unexamined and unaccounted for in the black community. For example, with Biased Agenda-Driven (aptly abbreviated as ?B.A.D.?) science like the seminal text ?The Endangered Black Family: Coping With the Unisexualization and Coming Extinction of the Black Race?, by renown African American husband and wife scholars Nathan and Julia Hare, help shape the community?s attitude. Their use of fear, shame, misinformation, and any other means necessary to eradicate homosexuality from the black community is part and parcel of the type of pseudo-social science and ex-gay ministries that have taken root in the Black community. And these homeless youth are merely a small liability for the greater gain of saving the black heterosexual family.

But the problem of homeless LGBTQ youth in the African American community does not merely fall in the laps of B.A.D. scientists. The continued problem of homelessness is both fueled and ignored by our present administration and the Black Church.

 

You ain?t never lied sistah, you ain?t never lied. 

There is a beautiful phrase that asks, ?if not now when?  If not us who??  These are our children and the science, logic and fear-based teachings against human beings ? our children ? would be laughable if it were not so hurtful and disappointing.  Who can say definitively what God has or has not ordained to be?  Some of our folks are more inclined to clean and care for a car ? that will surely break down and disappoint ? than they are willing to love, with the same amount of unconditional love given to that car, their children.  Some even have the gall to act in this shameful manner . . . in Jesus? name. 

You?ve got to read Rev. Irene Monroe?s piece ?Black Community?s Throw-away Kids? because we definitely need to address and oh yes we do, we need to air this dirty laundry.

Read:  Black Community?s Throw-away Kids

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