Is being gay a "white thing"?

About a month ago, the Secret Service carried a woman away from Air Force One. This religious nutcase wanted to hand the President a letter objecting to gay marriage. Kind of humorous, but pretty run-of-the-mill looniness. But a quote from her blog caught my eye:

"For the most part [gays] are white males who have sexed themselves out on perverted sex and they are never satisfied."

Now for the most part this misguided quote isn't noteworthy. The tired "gays are perverted hedonists" thing has been done to death . The fact lesbians don't appear on her radar also shows how distorted her view is.

But white males? ~Groan~ This reflects a sentiment I've heard occasionally: being gay is a "white" thing. (Other "white" things: reading, not liking sports, not liking soul food, being generally interested in other cultures, talking "proper", getting good grades, playing video games without "Madden" in the title, camping, skydiving, surfing, all music outside hip hop, rap, R&B, and gospel, and skiing)

(I could also go into how black people's experiences, like everyone's, are too diverse to fit within someone's narrow scope of who we should or shouldn't be, and how it's damaging to mock youngsters for pursuing interests they're passionate about, and maybe, just maybe, embracing an African American male who doesn't fit the hypermasculine image perpetuated in the media would a positive step forward, but I digress.)

Not only is the idea stupid it's lazy. When people say it's a "white" thing, what they really mean is a "white, urban, liberal" thing because they're basing this off images seen on television and in movies. Anyone who puts even a smidgen of thought into it would realize there are many predominantly white communities hostile to gays. This is true not only in America but many parts of Europe.



The movement has gained traction in non-white countries all over the world. Activists in Singapore recently held their first gay rights demonstration. South Africa, that mecca of whiteness, beat the US and most of the rest of the world to legalizing gay marriage.

In the US, DC's black gay community is large enough to hold a separate pride event. And gays are growing up in churches and homes throughout the black community, the community just likes to pretend we don't exist. But we do, and we're becoming more visible by the day.

Even in the most homophobic places in the world the hatred gays endure also serves as a reminder we exist. In Jamaica and parts of Africa gay citizens face physical violence Americans like to think we've moved past, even thoough beatings and killings remain a problem in even supposedly-tolerant places like New York City. In Iraq, killing squads hunt down gay Iraqis (the courageous few who live openly), and yet there are still activists working towards liberation there.

So can we put the "white" bullshit to rest already? LGBT people exist in all walks of life, at every category of class, race, ethnicity, and religion. Those who deny this just have their heads in the sand.