I ran into the kid who used to call me gay and try to bully me ( till I kicked his ass, which only made it worse) in a gay bar . I didn’t recognize him, at first, because he was in drag and working on his transition to female. He recognized me right away and came over to say hi. I’m posting this because it got me thinking. We spent years beating each other down after school. One of us fighting to hide a secret and one of us desperately fighting to defend his place in the world. So much time wasted that could have been used supporting each other. Sounds like the butch fem hate debates I see in our community now. So afraid of being called gay that we need to point out that that fag over there is gayer than I am. Just like we used to and still do point out that the nigger over there is darker and as such blacker than I am so I deserve a break.

I like being gay I always did, well as soon as I figured out I was gay anyway. I like the word, Gay; it means to be happy and carefree, joyful. My Jamaican grandfather used to use it to refer to himself all the time and he was a truly joyful man.

It connects me to generations of gay men who struggled to make a place for themselves in a world that hated them. A world that found them repulsive and sought to ostracize, degrade and criminalize them. Yet even with the world against them they created a joyful space for themselves and named themselves gay, and did it with style, Miss Honey.

So why all of a sudden does the gay black community want to abandon this name. We fought for it and under it for so long.
Is it that we feel gay is a white thing.
Are we too ashamed to claim it in our community as who we are
Does it challenge our idea that we are black first?
I’m at a loss help me out I missed the memo on this