Early Acceptance of African Americans to Gays

“To compare civil rights with gay rights is to compare my skin with their sin." Dwight McKissic, President of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention’s Pastors’ Conference.

"I'm offended that they're comparing (gay rights) to civil rights. Marriage is not a civil right, and the struggle of gay and lesbian people cannot be compared to the struggle of blacks." Reverend Jeffrey Brown, a Baptist minister from Massachusetts .

Any attempt to parallel the gay marriage movement with the African-American struggle is "offensive," declares Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, the civil rights movement is "not about sex."

These words are most offensive, and we have seen many quotes by African Americans declaring their disgust that equal rights for gays is oftentimes compared to the equal rights of African Americans in the United States.

However, keep in mind these words come from so-called men of the cloth, and that there are many, many African Americans who support equal rights for gays. Gay African Americans are working hard to convince their straight counterparts that the similarities for the struggle for equal rights are strong, though their detractors are holding strong.

However, there was a time when blacks and gays (of both races), looked forward to mixing, dancing, and partying. At the height of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s and 1930s, African Americans in Harlem not only tolerated gays, but accepted and welcomed them into bars and clubs.Of course, many of these African Americans were gay themselves, like eminent poet Langston Huges, as well as many of the top performers of the day who performed in these speakeasies like Gladys Bently, but the majority were straight, albeit progressive.

Further, there's a strong connection between African Americans' early acceptance of gays, and their own continued struggle for equality, and this connection is reflected in a gay black man named Bayard Rustin. Rustin came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, and lived openly gay throughout his life.

Rustin became so politically active on behalf of the push for civil rights for blacks, that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. put him in charge of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington (where King gave his famed "I Have A Dream" speech). The early acceptance of gays by African Americans gave Rustin the strength and acceptance of himself to push for equality.
Now, it is true that on a societal level, we can say that this inter-mingling and support was a paradigm of the time. After all, it took place in New York, and a few other major cities , but it is clearly indicative of a support and acceptance of gays by African Americans.

So, the next time we hear African American leaders denouncing the comparison of gay civil rights to the struggle for the civil rights of blacks, let's recall that there is still strong support for gays among African Americans today, and that support goes back well over 80 years.