He is Black

By Rev. Dr. Ignacio Castuera

He is Black, Harvard graduate, delivered a stirring speech to thousands of people in Chicago, handsome, articulate, a real rising star. No, he is not president elect Barack Obama. He is one of the smartest Black Gay activists and we need him badly in the church and in California. His name is Keith Boykin and his latest book Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America should be read, nay, studied by pastors and congregants in the church, especially in Black congregations.

Proposition 8 was passed in California partly because of the way Black women voted on November 4. A whooping 74% of Black women voted to inscribe hate in the California Constitution while at the same voting for the first African descent President of the United States of America. Why do people who have been excluded vote to exclude? Fear, of course, fear of sex, fear that their men are being taken away from them by other men, by women of other ethnic backgrounds, by a mean spirited “justice system” and so on.

I was the pastor of a Black church for five years and remember sadly how erotically the women in that congregation swayed as they sang “Falling in Love with Jesus.” I am not surprised, just saddened, that 74% of women sided with Mormons who until recently excluded all Blacks from their churches, with Knights of Columbus whose racism is a matter of record and with “Focus on the Family” the white family.

We have so much work to do, we must enlist the likes of Keith Boykin to assist us.