The Black community knows plenty about the discrimination and intolerance it receives from without, but says little about the discrimination and intolerance it directs at those within the community who don't fit the orthodoxy.
There’s nothing I dispute in what you’re saying.
I'm just trying to say that I’m reluctant to draw an equivalence between black emancipation and LGBT emancipation, and part of the reason for that is how the two communities are constructed. It just feels wrong to ride the coattails of another community's struggle when the root problems are quite different.
Like I said above, ethnic communities share an outward characteristic that is judged by external forces rather than internal ones. An externally prejudged characteristic likely makes it easier to band together to fight the prejudice because the explicit characteristic will foster solidarity and cohesion. In my response above, that's where Auntie or Mother or Cousin picks up little Jimmy to dry his tears after suffering racism.
There is no such obvious characteristic within the LGBT community. As you say, in some parts of the black community, going low-down is reviled. Partly because of the strength of Churches in those communities. So, we’re back to the reason the OP posted this thread.
One of the obstacles for our (LGBT folks) struggle is to convince people to join the community in the first place. Very often, inclusion means overcoming an internalized stigma. It’s about winning over people who feel shame for what they are, and who do not want to associate with a community that celebrate and laud their shame. That's often not successful, because people retreat into the closet, pretend to be heterosexuals, and loudly argue against their own nature and their own community.
See the whole 'straight acting' thing. One of the defining things about it is the rejection of mannerisms that is considered 'gay'. It comes up with loud moaning about things like pride parades. It comes up in things like GOProud, a sickening little corner of the Republican party which tries to eradicate LGBT culture through assimilation to the worst aspects of homophobic conservative culture. One could say that the Log Cabin republicans are a bit of the same, although I have a soft spot for them. They're very deluded, but without them there wouldn't be marriage equality in the US now. They carried much of the fight in the courts.
When I volunteered, which I still do, it was often about talking people off mental buildings to convince them that the thing they’re so ashamed about, is something they can accept. The first task of our community is then to convince reluctant people, who suffer the poison of the wider community, to join our sub-grouping. To overcome their shame. To make them accept the wild-eyed premise that they needn't be alone. They have people they can talk to about this.
Black people, Jewish people, Muslims are inherent communities with a functioning defence mechanism built in. They already have the numbers that can pick up the members and dry their eyes. We on the other hand come
from those other communities. We’re black or white, Jewish or Christian, rich or poor, rural or urban. There’s nothing outward that separates us from our innate ethnic communities. It’s just that from age 10-12 we discover this
extra characteristic in ourselves.
A characteristic that, crudely, makes people associate us with sex. When little Jim or little Jane at age 11 or 13 discover they’re attracted to the same gender, the assumption people make is that little Jim or little Jane is thinking about who and how to
fuck. That’s creepy. In cultures celebrating the innocence of kids, that’s beyond the pale. Parents aren't prepared for the fact that their little angels become sexual creatures. And so, it’s something they often reject.
While sex is an
effect – the cause is the romantic attraction to the same gender where I’d still be gay if I never had sex – it is the thing that pastors and cardinals and bishops bring up all the time. Leviticus is a ban against sexual practise. Since it’s about sex, there is shame. And since there is shame, each of us is alone and needs to be convinced to join a community based on what we’re ashamed of.
We’re all alone, without a community, until we overcome the first and greatest obstacle. Our own shame, which has been put in each and every one of us by Christians with access to the megaphones and bully pulpits of our culture.
But, I agree with everything you say otherwise.
