Deconstructing Sodom and Gomorrah: a Historical Analysis Of
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Deconstructing Sodom and Gomorrah: A Historical Analysis of the Mythology of Black Homophobia A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Lance E. Poston December 2018 © 2018 Lance E. Poston. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Deconstructing Sodom and Gomorrah: A Historical Analysis of the Mythology of Black Homophobia by LANCE E. POSTON has been approved for the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences by Katherine Jellison Professor of History Joseph Shields Interim Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT POSTON, LANCE E., PH.D., December 2018, History Deconstructing Sodom and Gomorrah: A Historical Analysis of the Mythology of Black Homophobia Director of Dissertation: Katherine Jellison This dissertation challenges the widespread myth that black Americans make up the most homophobic communities in the United States. After outlining the myth and illustrating that many Americans of all backgrounds had subscribed to this belief by the early 1990s, the project challenges the narrative of black homophobia by highlighting black urban neighborhoods in the first half of the twentieth century that permitted and even occasionally celebrated open displays of queerness. By the 1960s, however, the black communities that had hosted overt queerness were no longer recognizable, as the public balls, private parties, and other spaces where same-sex contacts took place were driven underground. This shift resulted from the rise of the black Civil Rights Movement, whose middle-class leadership – often comprised of ministers from the black church – rigorously promoted the respectability of the race. This politics of respectability included the demand by religious and activist leaders that all members of the black community meet the outward expectations of an upstanding, heteronormative citizen. This shift is grounded in the deep history of mainline black Christian denominations as sites of resistance against slavery and white supremacy, institutions that presumed individual respectability was prerequisite for the struggle for full citizenship. Over time, this led to publicly preaching homophobic sermons even while tolerating private queerness in the 4 pews and choirs. This dynamic of Sexual Plausible Deniability, where queerness was tolerated as long as it went unnamed, gave rise to the so-called Down Low phenomenon—referring to black men who have sex with other men without adopting a gay identity—that gained public notoriety during the worst years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The final chapter explores the oral histories of black queer men who describe their experiences after the Civil Rights Movement, illuminating that queer expressions in black spaces continued to exist but the pre-1950s potential for open conversations about queerness was gone. This lack of community dialogue fueled the widespread perception that black communities are the most homophobic sites in the US and exacerbated the HIV crisis in particular. 5 DEDICATION This project is dedicated to my wonderful husband, Seth, who supported me through six years of research and writing. 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project is the culmination of years of research and writing. I began working on Deconstructing Sodom and Gomorrah in 2012 as a full-time Ph.D. candidate, before moving south to take a post as a university administrator in 2015. This professional transition complicated my initial completion timeline and created a seemingly endless list of new competing priorities. I was able to manage those priorities and finish this project with love, support, and investment from Seth Hall, Katherine Jellison, Julie White, Steve Estes, Eli Capilouto, Bill Swinford, Sonja Feist-Price, and Ian Lekus. I am also thankful for the help of archivists at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the Virginia Theological Seminary and for the hospitality and openness of the men who shared their stories with me as part of this work. Thank you all. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....3 Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………5 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………..6 List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………… 8 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..9 Chapter 1: The Paradox of Jackie Robinson and Jason Collins………………………….20 Chapter 2: Before the Civil Rights Movement…………………………………………..41 Chapter 3: Acceptability at All Costs……………………………………………………70 Chapter 4: Chokehold of the Collar…………………………………………………….104 Chapter 5: Midnight Riders and Abominations………………………………………...138 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...182 References………………………………………………………………………………189 8 LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Civil Rights Activists, Greensboro, North Carolina, February 1960..…...…....74 Figure 2: First Black US Senator and US Representatives, 1870-1871………...……...115 Figure 3: Protesting Memphis Sanitation Workers, March 1968……….............……...185 9 INTRODUCTION Painting with broad strokes, are black communities and black institutions the most homophobic spaces in the United States? Or, when compared to their white counterparts, are African American spaces significantly more homophobic overall? This set of questions drove the original conception and subsequent evolution of Deconstructing Sodom and Gomorrah: A Historical Analysis of the Mythology of Black Homophobia. The initial seed for this project was planted while working in 2008 as a volunteer for the first Barack Obama presidential campaign canvassing upstate South Carolina neighborhoods. As I walked from door to door, carrying literature about a junior US Senator from Illinois who had not yet won the Democratic primary, I pondered the instructions that we had been given at the start of our first day of work. Out of all of the orientation information that we had been provided, one tactical suggestion jolted me, replaying in my mind for days afterward. This bit of information, professed by an aging white minister to a group of mostly white college students, was to make our appeal for voter support personal, but also to avoid talking about sexuality or LGBT issues in any way, especially with black voters. The words of this self-avowed, social-justice-oriented white minister who had spent some of his earlier days organizing for black civil rights in the Carolinas were hard for me to process. Although the minister was not implying that all blacks held anti-gay sentiments, he clearly believed that black communities were much more homophobic than the mainline white Protestant communities he had lived and worked in for many decades. I left my volunteer experience on a high for having contributed to what I saw as 10 a possibility for real national political change and a step forward in the history of black Americans. Yet I also left with many questions. How valid were the minister’s comments? After all, he had a reputation as a progressive religious leader in the state and had been a part of several Civil Rights era campaigns. On the other hand, his advice seemed profoundly insensitive. Perhaps his comments were even racist? Why did his warning focus specifically on black communities? As I well knew from personal experience, most white communities in the South were not known for their queer inclusivity. Was it really true that blacks in the US were much more likely to be homophobic than white Americans? Or were these assertions about pervasive homophobia in black communities simply a myth? These questions continued to resurface over the next three years—as I came out as a gay man living in largely white spaces but with many connections to black communities through marriage and the academy—and ultimately, they formed the basis of my dissertation research. When I transitioned to my first professional job as the University of Kentucky’s inaugural Director of LGBT Resources in 2015, I continued to encounter situations where highly educated individuals espoused the belief that black communities have always been and continue to be the most homophobic places in the country. One of these most significant interactions took place when, in 2016, an openly black queer colleague proclaimed that while she appreciated my interest in understanding homophobia in black communities, my overall assertions were off-base. To her, black communities had always been and would continue to be bastions of homophobia unrivaled by any other racialized communities in the US. I was frequently reminded of 11 her comments when working to engage black queer students and employees on campus who rarely interfaced with our advocacy and community building projects. While I do not discount the very real lived experiences that led this colleague to believe that black Americans were more homophobic than other racial groups, or, at least, more homophobic than their white counterparts, a historical analysis of black communities over the past century tells a different story.1 As the dissertation title suggests and this colleague often asserted, religion played a key role in the development of the mythology of black homophobia. Sodom and Gomorrah are the biblical cities that the god of the Old Testament supposedly destroyed after an attempt by men of the city to capture and rape two male-bodied angels who were visiting. The implications of this story have been used for centuries to justify homophobia and anti-queer actions in Christian churches and more broadly in regions steeped in Christian traditions in