BeBe on the DL?

I was raised Catholic, so I know absolutely nothing about gospel music. My experience of church music is Handel’s Messiah and solemn Christmas songs that are sung at midnight mass – “Lo How a Rose Er Blooming”, “O Come Emmanuel”, etc… very Catholic. But from time to time I watch the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN).  I started watching Christian TV and listening to Christian radio so that I could figure out what the fuck was going down in this country with the Christian Right. There is another reason I absorb Christian media. It’s for the same reason that I watch Comedy Central: for a good laugh. I am currently working on a chapter on religion for my book, so when I saw black people on TBN the other day, I decided to check it out.

BeBe & CeCe Winans are a brother and sister musical duo that are enormously popular. They are the “Donny & Marie” of the gospel world, apparently. TBN broadcast a program where they interviewed their mother, Delores, a talented singer in her own right. They discussed their family history, their relationship with God and the Church, and told amusing family stories. About five minutes into this program, I noticed something. I began to watch BeBe very closely…the way he spoke…the way he gestured…the way he sat with his legs crossed…and fuck me runnin’, but I think that dude is gay as a Gershwin tune!

It made me think back to a few years ago when the news story broke about black men “on the down low.” For those of you who were living under a rock in 2004 and missed this story, it went a little something like this: There are black men in America who describe themselves as “straight”, but who secretly have sex with men. Film at eleven. Hello??!! Um…Luther Vandross?? Little Richard???…although I don’t think there is anything “secret” about Little Richard’s sexuality. A man named J.L. King wrote a book about this “phenomenon” entitled “On the Down Low”. He claimed in his book that the best pick-up place for secret sex with a “straight” guy was: CHURCH. I asked my father once about homosexuality and the black church and he told me that the church that he attended with is family when he grew up had a gay choir director and many other gay parishioners. It was obvious – but no one talked about it.

Now, I don’t really know if BeBe Winans is gay. I haven’t a clue. It is possible that I have lived in Virginia for far too long and my Gaydar is off a bit. But the point is this: the black church is one of the most homophobic communities in America and I think it is really funny that there are so many, well-respected members that are clearly homosexual (or at least bisexual) and are leading double lives. But the entire parish just ignores it. There is a gigantic pink elephant in the room and everyone just praises Jesus every Sunday like nothing’s going on. More importantly, this situation is dangerous for the black community as well. Why? Because secret gay sex among homophobes is rarely done safely. These men assume that they are the only guy their lovers hook up with, don’t use condoms and wind up bringing sexually transmitted diseases home to their wives.

As a white black girl who is not religious, I find this situation to be fascinating and hilarious…but scary as shit. People really need to be honest about who they are and what they do (and who they do it with), because going clipity-clop down the road like a horse with blinders on is risking the lives of a lot of good people.

Saving Black Marriages

James and Tina are an upper middle class couple living somewhere in suburban America. They have two daughters. Their children do well in school, and they are attractive and articulate. But James and Tina have a problem.  They have spent 20 years putting all their time and energy into their children and have completely neglected their marriage. With the realization that their daughters will go off to college soon and they will then be stuck in their two story colonial all alone, one day they both looked at each other and came to the same conclusion: They are complete strangers who have no idea who the fuck they are. This story is par for the course in many marriages, but there is one problem. This couple was interviewed by Soledad O’Brien for CNN’s special “Black in America 2″ , which begs the question: How is this a black problem?

Child-rearing is in vogue. It’s the fashionable thing to do. But, there is a certain kind of child-rearing that occurs among the yuppie uber-classes. It is an obsessive compulsive type of parenthood. To get the title of “good parent” you don’t just have to make sure that your kid can read and lives long enough to graduate high school. Oh, no! You have to devote every waking moment of your life to them. Men and women (mostly women) all over the country have sacrificed themselves on the altar of parenthood at the expense of everything else in their lives. James and Tina freely admitted that they have made their children the focus of their lives. My first question was: “Why are you not totally embarrassed to admit that?!” And my second question was: “Why are you surprised that your marriage is fucked up?” Let me explain something to you, folks. When you make someone the complete and total focus of your life, and that someone then goes off to Brown or Stanford and gets a life of their own, most people find themselves sitting in their living room with their thumb up their ass saying “Well, shit what the fuck do I do now?” or “Who the fuck is this guy I married?”

This is a married couples’ problem, not a black problem. What is it about being black that makes the whole Empty Nest/Married Midlife Crisis syndrome any worse? I don’t get it. I understand the special consideration of race when it comes to things like workplace discrimination and voting rights, but this is a married couple living in the burbs…sorry, Soledad, I like you a lot, but you and CNN are totally full of shit on this one.

The Idea

When I was in high school, I had a friend named Teri. One day I was hanging out at her house with some other friends when she made a curious remark: “You know, I never really thought of you as black. You’re…you know…like me.” Teri is white. I am black…but not really.

The story of a life lived barely black will be told in my book of the same title. I will be previewing excerpts from the book over the next few months…