[BRC-NEWS] New Group Is Uniting Parents of Black Gays Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source - BRC NEWS: BT11360@aol.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/28/123l-052899-idx.html The Washington Post Friday, May 28, 1999; Page B03 Finding Strength in Shared Circumstance New Group Is Uniting Parents of Black Gays By Steven Gray Washington Post Staff Writer William Beale knew it would be tough for his son to grow up as a black man in America. Then he found out that Dwayne Brown, his only son, was gay, and Beale's anxieties soared. Beale, a Baptist, turned to his church, but found little tolerance for gay people. He went to his family, but his pleas for understanding went largely unheard. After Brown died of AIDS in 1994 when he was 31, Beale turned to a group called Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). But the group had few black members. Somewhere, he figured, there were more black parents who shared his circumstance. And he was right. This month, Beale and the parents of seven other gay children launched a support group for black parents of gay children. Thousands of black gays and lesbians will meet in Washington this weekend for Black Pride, an eight-year-old event that organizers say is the biggest of its kind. Members of the new support group will be at Banneker Field across from Howard University at a day-long festival Sunday, looking for other parents with gay children to let them know they are not alone. Founders say the group, a part of PFLAG that Beale informally calls For Those We Love, is the first of its kind in the nation to target African Americans. It's modeled largely after a group started five years ago in San Francisco by Asian Americans who thought their relatives would be more comfortable talking about homosexuality in a culturally specific group. "Because of our culture, and the way we're grounded, some of us don't want to share our feelings with [nonblack] people," Beale said. "Just like there are children in the closet, there are black parents in the closet . . . who would like to come out." Eunice Tate has taken that step, and is happier for it. "My family was too busy . . . to hear me" when her son, Michael, told her in 1991 that he was gay, she said. "And then, my friends didn't understand what I was going through. "I don't feel so isolated now," Tate said during a recent meeting of For Those We Love. Before Michael died of AIDS five years ago, she said, her biggest fear was that "someone would pick on him, beat him up." "I said, 'I'm gonna be here, and fight with you.' Nobody's gonna talk bad about, or beat up, my baby." At PFLAG's office in downtown Washington, Tate told Jacqueline Davison, the mother of two grown children who are gay, that when she hears someone call gay people derisive names, she squints at them and says: "Now you know that's not right. You've got a problem with them?" The two women, both Catholic, laughed. It is these stories, told with pride, that help shatter the fear and share the strength. Keith Boykin, a former head of the Washington-based National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum who has written extensively on being black and gay, said he doesn't think black people are less accepting of gay people than any other group. "In some cases, we may be more accepting," he said. "We create a nurturing space for people, even though they're different, because we've been discriminated against ourselves." Pamela Birchett, program coordinator at the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League on Capitol Hill, said more than half of the young people who frequent the facility are minority, and most of those are black. But many black parents of gay children have hesitated to seek support, she said. "There are a lot of misconceptions and mistrust of support groups, because of their middle-class origins," Birchett said. "Historically, they've boxed black people in." Based on her work with hundreds of gay youths, Birchett, who is black, said she has found that socioeconomic status--perhaps more than race--signals whether a family will seek help from a support group. Still, she senses an increasing openness to support groups. More than 20 years ago, 13-year-old Michael Davison came out to his mother, Jacqueline Davison. She recalls wanting to accept his declaration, but deep down, she believed that "homosexuality just wasn't right." When she was a child, Davison said, her parents had friends who she thought were gay. "But I never heard any kind of prejudice against them," she said. Several years before Michael confided his orientation to his mother, she had sensed that he might be gay and sent him to a therapist. He told her, "Your son is fine . . . just leave him alone and focus on your own problems," she recalled. Like many parents, she was afraid of what others might think. She particularly worried about her sister's reaction. On vacation in Bermuda, Jacqueline told her sister that Michael was gay and was relieved to find her sister was tolerant. By the late 1970s, before Michael went off to Temple University in Philadelphia, Jacqueline and her now ex-husband marched in the District's Gay Pride Parade in support of their son. She went to support groups but didn't feel comfortable. "I remember being very uptight, stiff and suppressed," she said. Years after Michael, now 39, and Davison's daughter, Merle, 35, declared they were gay, Davison attended a meeting of For Those We Love because it helps her cope and because she can help others. Jacqueline Davison, who attended a predominantly white Catholic church as a child, left the church in the late 1960s, but now declares herself "Catholic to the bone." All the same, she has come to reject the church's teachings about homosexuality, in large part because she prefers to extract parts of the Bible and apply them to her own life. "I've had to broaden my concept of what is and isn't a family," she said. "If my children decide to have a permanent union, and have a child, then I'll have to give up my notions of what's a mother and father, too." Since his son's death, William Beale has spoken at engagements across the city and been featured in a video called "All God's Children." While For Those We Love has become his life's work, Beale has received both praise and condemnation for his outspokenness. But he doesn't let the criticism bother him. "I'm supporting a gay person. And more than anything else, I'm supporting a child, my child," Beale said. "That's what a community does." (c) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News/Alerts/Announcements Subscribe: Email "subscribe brc-news" to ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-05.30.99-11:13:37-12891