Black Enterprise Covers "Black & Gay In Corporate America" This July
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Click to enlarge.Going where few black magazines dare to go, Black Enterprise's July cover tackles the life of African Americans who also happen to be gays and lesbians, working in corporate America. As we all know, just acknowledging that there are A) gay and lesbian black people and B) that they do regular stuff like have jobs and get married, can still be controversial for black publications. Last year Essence Magazine published their first Lesbian couple in their weddings column and while many readers were pleased or didn't care, there was a very vocal "I'm cancelling Essence" contingent who was full of outrage.
Said the editors at Black Enterprise about their cover:
We’re not going to pretend this was an easy topic for Black Enterprise to consider. Let’s face it—the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is one of which our society whispers, mocks, ignores, and, in extreme cases, vehemently rejects. For Black members of this community, the emotional backlash can be even more intense. Editor-at-Large Carolyn M. Brown and I spent months producing this feature. Due to the topic’s controversial nature, we had some difficulty finding subjects. Even some of those who agreed to participate in our cover story, “Black and Gay in Corporate America,” felt some trepidation about how revealing their sexual orientation would affect relationships with family, friends, and associates outside the workplace.
Between CNN's Don Lemon coming out of the glass closet this spring and now this, it looks like more and more African Americans are taking baby steps and declaring their presence in the mainstream. It's a good thing. Even if it's still hard for many to come out, the fact that BE was able to find individuals willing to talk about their experiences for this story will mean a lot to many African American gays and lesbians who still feel they cannot do the same.
The "Black & Gay in Corporate America" cover will be on newsstands July 19th.
LGBT issues, gay rights, media 
Reader Comments (48)
Kudos to Black Enterprise for covering this. I don't read the magazine, but I'll pick up this issue.
Danielle,
Thank you for this post and including my wedding feature from Essence.com. Homophobia in the black community continues to be a struggle and one that often times has the conservative right using our community like pawns in their quest to move our social progress back into the stone ages. My hope is that with continued dialogue in a variety of forums that we will breakdown the sterotypes of "who is LGBT" and "what they are supposed to look like". As an LGBT person of color I should not have to choose between identites, because I am proudly a member of both communities.
the "i'm cancelling essence crew" also got pissed that essence hired a white woman. LMAO.
@ Danielle / threeLOL
I actually heard about your wedding through a mutual friend of ours, so I was so excited to see it in Essence. I think it's just good to see stories that treat gays and lesbians as people first. That feature was solely focused on your relationship, how you met and the wedding, as it was supposed to be. That's what made it so powerful.
@ swiv
Yeah. Essence had a lot of that drama going last year -- from the fallout over the Reggie Bush cover to the fashion editor fracas. It was bananas.
I think it is a HUGE step for them to do this and it is def a step in the right direction. Too often people get ridiculed and treated unfairly because of sexual orientation. My cousin is getting married at the end of the month to her partner of 4 years and my grandmother refuses to attend the wedding. Not to mention that this is the first wedding of any of her 6 grandchildren! Sad. And I am sure she will clutch her pearls when she sees the magazine on newstands. Quite the disappointment.
Hold up! Wait what? I can't believe it.
people still subscribe to Essence?
LOL.
Cosign on the kudos for BE. They do what they can to lead & educate on issues that actually matter
What? It is not a monolithic group, black people can be unique? My God, people must hear about this!
Are we ever going to come out of the era of finding ways to divide ourselves as Black Americans. How does it affect one's life so much that there are Gay ect. that they would feel the need to cancel a magazine subscription. The farther we go the behinder we get.
What are these mag-a-zines you speak of? We are pretty close to a generation that thinks Essence is a concert. It's nice to see BE working a social issue instead of being a publicity machine. I once bought a nice smoked Thanksgiving turkey from a BE business owner.
I am going to be honest no one cared about Essence hiring a white employee. Everyone in "Black" America is sick and tired of our Civil Rights Leaders selling us out to the GAY RIGHTS AGENDA. People don't have jobs, losing there homes, children are not getting a good education.
Problems we had since Martin Luther King was alive. No one want to keep hearing about who want to SLEEP with their GAY LOVER. We have real issues we are still trying to deal with. Youor sexual choice is not an important issue to most people unless your GAY.
Let's be real, I don't buy these magazine to see GAY pictures being promoted. If that is how your going to change you magazine then I like MANY, MANY People are not going to buy it any more and there goes another Black Media outlet gone down the drain. Do Essence and Black Enterprise even keep up with who there readers really aree and their views. I DONT THINK THEY EVEN KNOW.
@REALLYUPSET.....I feel your pain...I know for myself, as a black woman, nothing upsets me more than seeing other groups of people being given equal protection and due process under the law...that is really upsetting! MLK, I'm sure, would be so upset that people are not sitting in the shadows anymore contemplating suicide and living lives of lies and fear! GET REAL....But I do agree with you on one thing, your post is definitely a cry for help on the dire need for better education.
@ Really Upset
Black gay people do not live in some kind of vacuum. They are a part of the black community and black families. So, if a person gets fired from a job because he is gay--or because he is perceived to be gay--that's a family and a community that also feels the bite. If a black lesbian is denied housing--again that person is actually attached to others--so it is a family that is also being denied a potential resource.
If a black gay person is making strides in corporate America--that is a resource for the entire community. Especially, if that person can turn around and open doors for other people in the community.
Too many people, black and otherwise, get too caught up in "bedroom vision" (what they THINK happens in the bedrooms of gay people) to actual see us as the valuable resources we are/could be. It's your loss.
Is there room in this discussion for people who honestly believe that homosexuality is immoral and don’t think it should be legally sanctioned by either the church or government?
If gays want to succumb to their urges, that’s on them. I don’t particularly care. But I object to gay activists and sympathizers who want the society as a whole to treat their behavior as merely an alternative lifestyle that has the same moral and societal value as heterosexual marriage.
Since gays are American citizens they should not be discriminated against in employment, housing, education, and public accommodations. No one should be allowed to physically threaten, or assault them.
But gays do not have the right to change the definition of marriage. They do not have the right for society at large to accept their “lifestyle” as moral. I don’t agree with Lashawn Barber on too many issues but I wholeheartedly agreed with her when she wrote: “Marriage is a legal union and social institution recognized by the states as serving fundamental purposes: providing structure for family formation and rearing children, and acting as a stabilizing influence that benefits the whole society. Changing the definition to include the union of two men and two women opens the door to legalizing increasingly deviant unions. Marriage will cease to have any meaning at all.”
I know, I'll catch hell for my opinion. And I really don't want to catch the wrath of Danille Belton. (Because me getting in a debate with her is like I brougt a butter knife to a gun fight). But I resent being thought of as some ignorant hate monger simply because I don't agree with the homosexual agenda.
We are talking about humans right? So, what would you see, as you put it, as another example of "an increasingly deviant union"? Homosexuality is NOT a choice, nor is it a mental illness that manifests itself through deviant behavior. Furthermore, no one is attempting to redefine the PURPOSE of marriage! Rather, gay people and others are striving for inclusivity...gay people ALREADY have stable unions, stable careers and children. What people don't have is protection, benefits, etc. I believe everyone is all for upholding the purpose and intent of the institution on marriage as a way to participate fully in society. As with MANY things in our original constitution, which was created by the few, for the masses;certain things have had to be "re-thought" i.e., slavery, women's rights...why not allow the expansion of the "definition" of marriage to include everyone? I'm not sure there is all that much more on the GAY agenda...other than spreading gayness..(oops, cats out of the bag!)
Most Blacks in America are Christians and Christianity states that homosexuality is a sin. So by normalizing gay behavior by promoting it in their magazines Black Enterprise and Essence are alienating most of their readership. I believe that being Gay is like any other sin one must be strong enough to gain self control to overcome, so I don’t think that people should be harassed, but allowed Civil Unions to gain legal rights for any consenting adults. Civil Unions should be like a business partnership for any people who need the legal rights because no one should have to be alone on this horrible planet. However I do not agree with normalizing the behavior and calling it a marriage which is a holy religious union. Over time normalizing unholy behavior and accepting an anything goes mentality breaks down civilization (Sodom and Gomorrah). Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because they had dissolved into anarchy. Over time by normalizing homosexuality women were seen as slaves, that is why Lot , who although was God fearing and sane enough to help the Angels could so easily offer his virgin daughters to a mob, because women were not valued even by their own fathers and the society was not moving forward in a productive manner, with mobs and anarchy in the streets. The traditional nuclear family advocated by God is the backbone of a productive human civilization on Earth. There is a stage in human development in which most children do not like the opposite sex, so by normalizing homosexuality most children initially gravitate to the same sex, at the same stage of development most children are attracted to their parents or siblings so normalizing an anything goes mentality will not work with human sexuality to create a productive society on Earth. God is the supreme and oldest intelligence in the Universe and he created the rules for this planet for important reasons, to create a sustainable human civilization on Earth, homosexuality is counterproductive to this goal, so it was banned. A marriage in my opinion is between an adult man and an adult woman who are not closely related, or overtime you will have fathers and sons marrying, men and sheep or other incestuous or counterproductive relationships. As a Christian I am a firm believer that these are the last days, I think that weak flip flopping leaders who are allowing themselves to be peer pressured by the demon filled or bribed into going against the will of God will be judged accordingly by God for leading his flock astray and will go to hell. It is one thing to sin behind closed doors and go to hell on your own, but to drag others to hell by advocating and normalizing sinful behavior to school children is wrong. Honestly can’t everyone just follow some simple rules for a little while it is not like we have that much time left??? Even if you mess up you just have to repent of the sin and try again, is it REALLY that difficult??? Everyone has been given a propensity towards a sin they have to learn to overcome via prayer meditation and self control, but living in sin and advocating sin is disobedience to the will of God. Most of the people on this planet are defective and live in a non-repentant disobedient and sinful state; I guess that is why only 144,000 will be Raptured. Also even though I believe in God, let's just say that we believers are wrong and nonbelievers are right, then nothing happen to any of us. However if believers are right and non believers are wrong then the nonbelievers are going to hell. Seems like its better to be a believer with all these last day type disasters occurring.
LMAO @ no one cared.
maybe no one YOU KNEW cared. but the cries of indignance were quite real. i'm always amused when folks think their peer group is the representative sample of the whole.
governments should sanction civil unions. churches should sanction marriage.
@Mary,
As a straight black Christian girl who grew up in a Baptist home in the Midwest, your "line of thought" is not only saddening, and scary, its also familiar...And as the sister of a Lesbian who is raising a son with her partner, I know how your point of view tends to be a bit of a downer at family functions...so I can't really argue with your airtight agreement...I just hope you and your distorted bible facts are 100% correct otherwise, you may have to look in the mirror one day and realize that no one wanted to marry a sheep, they just wanted to be treated like everyone else...when does the day come when you realize that?
@amanda
I just wrote you a book on how I don't believe that people should be mistreated and everyone should have equal civil rights and civil unions. Did you read what I wrote? All sin is equal and will be treated equally by God. I and I am sure your family pray for any relatives living in disobedience of the will of God as unrepentant sinners, advocating sin, because they will miss you when they are in heaven without you.
I wish I had a time machine so I could take all of these "Christian" commenters on a field trip back to a slave owners meeting, when they used Bible verses to justify brutally enslaving and dehumanizing blacks.
I don't even understand why they're so vehement about it. Is there a missing eleventh commandment that says " Gays R bad?" Because any evidence provided from bible verses is flimsy at best, although there are many examples of straight-forward directives not to lie, cheat, steal, fornicate, and masturbate, but no one ever shows up on comment boards foaming at the mouth over those things...
Being straight doesn't get you into heaven any more easily than being gay damns you to hell...I feel like there is a bigger issue going on here that is getting overshadowed by allllll the rhetoric....but as my Straight Christian Daddy used to say, you can never have too many people praying for you...so thank you..
P.S. I haven't read your book yet, but I was busy writing my book. It's called "I Commented on a Board at The Black Snob, and Now I'm Going To Hell!" It drops tomorrow.
Shauna, I believe in the literal interpretation of the bible. No where in the bible does it state that slavery or homosexuality is right. In fact the bible clearly states that whole civilizations have been destroyed because they advocated slavery (Egypt) and homosexuality (Sodom and Gomorrah). How many times and examples does God have to provide in the bible to tell you that something is a sin. When you were a child if your Earthly parent told you one time not to do something would you expect them to continue to repeat themselves before you respectfully obeyed? If you did not obey your parent were you spanked? So why does the Heavenly Father have to repeat himself when he clearly had it written in the Bible with very specific examples what the fruits of sin are? As much as I hate to relay the message these are the last days, so everyone needs to get right with God.
@Amanda It is what it is. Tough love hurts, as much as I hate to relay the message these are the last days, so everyone needs to get right with God.
See Shauna I repeated my last statement twice, does repetition help you to understand?LOL
Oh dear. Ignorance in print on display...
Anyways, Gays will eventually be allowed to get married soooo....
Its not a "choice" to be gay, its a choice to be honest. I have never heard any straight folks say that they choose to be straight. Ask yourself, (straight people)has there ever really been a time where you could have been gay? If so, you may not be so straight after all...
@Mary
... side-eye. The bible is tainted by man and man's ignorance, greed, and alterior motives. Religion has been corrupted by man's thirst for power and control. All you can do is take on the general message of love and peace and try to live YOUR life with some honor and integrity and treat all people with love and respect.