BMX-NY Outting > The SHANEEQUA CHRONICLES: The Making of a Black Woman

In a Black Men's Xchange-New York dialogue
about the Bishop Eddie Long scandal Friday night,
participants looked at the story from the following perspectives:

If the allegations against Bishop Long are true, what crime(s) have been committed?
"I don't believe BMXNY is asking that question...That man set up an academy [to attract young boys]...He targeted those boys...without fathers...and financed them...and their mothers...He told them, as part of their spiritual training, they must have sex with him...He bought a house where he isolated them...He said [to his congregation,] 'The price for homosexuality is death'...What he did is evil..."

"We have to be very careful...We [Black men] have to prove ourselves innocent in the face of assumed guilt [as opposed to the 'innocent until proven guilty' standard that is applied for White men]..."

"As an educator for a long time, knowing there is no place in the curriculum, and there is no safe space...[And no] support groups...Homosexuality is still treated as an illness...and safe space...has to be created by interested people..."

{Facilitator asks: "And, who are those 'interested people?'}

"Parents, and teachers, and counselors...and... us..." {Facilitator says: "Yes. It's our responsibility...and it's high time we took it..."}

"There are a large, large, large number of same gender loving boys...and they are boys, because they are 17, 18, and 19...They're very vulnerable because they don't know...having their very first sexual experiences...Older men taking advantage of them...[and] you don't see them because they're in these pockets...cut off..."

"There's another group of young same gender loving youths [who are] even more tragic because they don't make it to college...They're thrown out of their homes by their parents at sixteen and seventeen..."

"One thing we can do is lead by example...Be proud of our sexuality...And, we can do a letter-writing campaign to some same gender loving artists...because you know they're there [hiding]..."

Bishop Eddie Long

Does any part of this situation speak to the absence of Black fathers?
"Two of the boys have said, 'It wasn't brutal [the way Long treated them]'...and that they still loved him...I was molested by an older man at fifteen...It was my rites of passage into the life...An older man [molested me]...People said, 'You must have consented to it'...If it comes out that he's guilty [Bishop Long]...So many other men are guilty..."

"Bishop Long, before he sexualized them, made them financially dependent on him... and, when they refused him, withdrew financial support from them and their families...He targeted them...As a prerequisite to admission [to his academy] he had the boys fill out a psychological profile...He isolated them...One boy said, He made me a slave...What he was doing was not same gender loving...It wasn't loving at all...It wasn't a rite of passage...It was pedophilia...It was slavery..."

Raymond Chase
(19 Year Old SGL Brutha Commits Suicide
On Wednesday, September 29th, 2010)

"Why is a rite of passage always looked on as something positive?...It's not...It wasn't for me...Along with pedophilia and abuse, there are also moral crimes...He has stood up and preached hate to thousands of people...This behavior drives people into the closet...and to suicide...Raymond Chase and two other teens this week alone...And we talk about the [burgeoning HIV] sero-conversion rates among Black teenagers..."

{Facilitator says: We tend to think of rites of passage as positive events because we know that part of what ails us as Africans in America is having had those cultural processes stripped of us...But some rites of passage are traumas...Have you ever heard of a trial by fire?"}

"I was about nineteen or twenty...and he was in his early forties... and he took an interest in me, and was nice to me...He was married...He had had a [commitment] ceremony with another boy...[while he was married]...and he'd fallen out of interest with the other boy...[At one point] his wife approached me and said she'd heard a lot about me...She told me that his relationship with me was inappropriate...I had had an intimate [sexual] relationship with my father...I thought it was consensual, because he hadn't raped me ...[I was fifteen]...But there's still manipulation going on... I thought I was in control...I'm almost twenty-eight now, and it's taken me all this time to see how wrong [what he did to me was...]"

{Facilitator says: "Thank you for sharing that...That took a lot of courage...The fact is, people would be surprised at how much a part of many of our narratives premature sexualizing by molestation is...And that is the point of our taking up this issue...It is our responsibility to voice the traumas that have injured us...[In order] to stop people's conflating homosexuality, which involves biological wiring, with pedophilia, which is a psychological disorder..."}

If potential pedophiles can be protected, how do open homosexuals qualify for the Black Church protection program?
"I've worked in middle schools where the children were the most sexualized group I have ever seen...They were having sex parties because they'd been sexualized...Adults preyed upon the students...We don't know how to value our sexuality [because our sexuality isn't valued] so we don't know how to call it rape...[As a teacher] I have a lot of power in that [class]room...It takes a lot to maintain a moral center...not to lose control in that room...This is the price of power...They [teachers and preachers] are going to follow their will, whether it is dark or light...It erodes Black men's mentoring [of] young Black men...We keep demonizing homosexuals..."

{Facilitator says: {["We keep demonizing homosexuals] Because, in the shame we've internalized about our sexuality, we don't talk with the community about the continuum of sexuality...about sexual diversity, let alone [about] sexual pathologies...So, many in the community tend to conflate pedophilia with homosexuality..."}

"My sisters would say [to my nephews] 'Don't let nobody touch you,' but they still want you to be surrogate fathers to their kids...Sexuality hasn't always been a common [theme] in America['s discourse]...Pedophiles become who they are for a reason...Nothing happens without a reason..."

"I've always been attracted to younger, effeminate men...When I was in my forties, I sought men in their twenties...At the church just recently, I put up two young men in an apartment...I made a pact [with myself] that I would always contribute to their moral and personal growth...That's why this thing with Bishop Long is so offensive to me...There's love here, respect here, growth here...As I've gotten older the [age] line [of my consorts] has gotten higher..."

"As a[n honorable] Black man, you can't get involved with young hustlers [because having been sexualized] is the very thing that hurt them..."

What makes Bishop Long's 'flock' so intent upon his innocence?
"The African American church is a very complex institution because, not only is it a cultural institution, also, people are linked with it...When you've been taught [the bible]...had it pounded into your head...you believe it...It becomes a part of your fabric...[So, when someone comes and challenges the authority of those who've done the indoctrination] It makes you question your faith...People don't like to have their core shaken..."

"[It's because of] Cognitive dissonance...The ability to ignore the pink elephant in the room...To teach a Black child...Showing them pictures of a White Jesus...For a Bishop to stand up in the pulpit talking against homosexuality [while practicing homosexuality in private involves a psychological disconnect...]"

"Religious privilege [is] an extension of White privilege...Double standards...The ability to be ignorant and depend on other people to bring us along...Some of it is just the ignorance that goes along with religious privilege...'We don't have to know the difference [cause we got God]'...The church [rails against homosexuality but] doesn't even touch pedophilia...Have we had bad religion?...Yes..."

"There is a double standard...I don't have to think [about the possibility of his guilt]...Like O.J. Simpson...Black people couldn't [do that, they think]...Denial..."

{Facilitator reads a definition of Denial: "'Denial is an unconscious coping mechanism that gives you time to adjust to distressing situations...But when you stay in denial, it can interfere with tackling life challenges...Denial is a common type of defense mechanism that occurs in reaction to a trauma or perceived threat...'"}

"We got away from our moral compass because we have a hidden sexuality around which we don't have to account for how we have sex...They're easy to mock, those thirty-thousand congregants, about their denial...I can trick anything below the age of twenty-five because I have that power of the privilege of my education...He groomed them because of a lack of fathers..."

"It's dangerous to paint [Long's] congregation with the [broad] brush stroke of denial...Among those thirty-thousand congregants...They are thinking, he [Long] is going to come up against attack...'We expect our father to be tested'...'There is a God, and God will not be mocked'...It's not just that church, it's [all churches]..."

{Facilitator says: "You are right about broad brush strokes...Denial is not all that's going on...There's a historical basis for what's happening here...} "What is it?" {Facilitator says: "It has to do with repressive Victorian sexual values, which America has only begun challenging since the sexual revolution of the sixties...But, the Victorian era, lest we forget, was when enslaved Africans were liberated...[And] While we achieved physical freedom, we're still playing psychological catch-up along several lines...including [around] sexual abuses that were regularly visited upon enslaved African men and boys when we didn't own our bodies...They used us as sexual objects of abuse and of pleasure, just as they did our women...And denial is a coping mechanism that we've engaged for far too long about that stuff...which is why we have to intervene now..."}

"Hebophilia...[Is] An adult's sexual predilection for teen-agers, as opposed to small children...[and is what may have happened with Bishop Long]...I work with youthful sexual offenders...There was one young man who [was a hebophobe, and, in working with him] because space was provided for him to acknowledge and become comfortable with his [homo]sexuality, he was able to find an age-appropriate same gender loving relationship and acknowledge that he had been wrong [in sexualizing young males]...and develop a moral compass..."

What, if any, is our stake, role and/or responsibility as same gender loving, freedom fighting Gatekeepers in this issue?
"Bishop Long's church is part of a movement called, 'Muscular Christianity' in which there are large numbers of down low men...As opposed to T. D. Jakes' church, which is considered 'Soft Christianity'...I attended one of the muscular churches in Georgia where the pastor was known to be a DL homosexual, and [at one point] the pastor looked at me and said before the congregation, 'It's good to see you...But, I don't want you to mess with any of my Sissies!'...And everybody laughed...I said, 'No, I didn't come here to mess with you'...And that shut him up...We need to walk up in there and sit down in that church and challenge Bishop Eddie Long..." [A group consensus forms around the notion.]

"There's a BMX chapter in Atlanta..."

"Especially on the heels of Raymond Chase killing himself [this week]...How many other youths are out there..."

"There is an open and affirming church [in Atlanta]...We can craft a statement from BMX to Eddie Long..."

"We can invite Bishop Eddie Long to come and pray with us..."

{Facilitator says: "Great... Our focus isn't reactionary...We can do a press release, alerting the community that we are coming to help the community heal in the face of this trauma... ..."}

Raymond Chase (A Gatekeeper)
SUNRISE: 1991 To SUNSET: September 29th, 2010