A small group of students gathered in the Charles Commons banquet room last night to listen to Sylvia Rhue speak on African-American churches and homosexuality.
Rhue, the director of religious affairs and constituency development for the National Black Justice Coalition, shared stories of her childhood, her work and about her view on the disconnect between religious leaders and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities.
The event was sponsored by the Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance.
Growing up in a traditional Seventh Day Adventist church where both the choir director and the organist were gay, Rhue acknowledged the integral role it played in her eventual pursual of her masters in social work from UCLA and her doctorate in human sexuality as a way to combat homophobic racism.
Rhue began her lecture with a number of quotes from a few notably homophobic reverends. This set the structure for the talk, which consisted of a number of quotes, stories and pre-written statements.
The initial excerpts expressed views such as, "real men are straight men" and that homosexuality is "not natural."
Rhue countered jokingly, saying, "If it's not natural then why do heterosexual women fake orgasm while lesbian women do not?"
Homophobia rarely appeared in black sermons before 1969, when the civil rights movement began to gain momentum. These attacks on the LGBT community came from points of view that relied solely on the bible, believing if God said homosexuality was a sin, then it was a sin. Rhue implied that, after the '60s, pastors needed something else to preach about and homosexuality seemed like the new frontier.
"Challenging homophobia is the unfinished business of the civil rights movement," she said.
"All of my remarks are with love because the church is the strongest institution in the black community which helped us through our weary years," Rhue said of her statements about uninformed homophobic religious leaders.
She explained that too often the church talks about the mechanics of sex and not the heart. According to Rhue, reducing sexuality to a specific sexual act dehumanizes it.
"We cannot think that the devil created sex while God wasn't looking," she said.
Speaking explicitly about sex, Rhue said that those who consider sex as sin are ignorant of the sacredness of sex, an "exquisite excursion" to the orgasm, "the kiss of God."
"These religious figures aren't qualified to argue my reality," she said.
Rhue continued to say that in the African American community there is a schism between those who are knowledgeable about the homosexual lifestyle and gay rights with those who hate the LGBT.
Despite her traditional upbringing, Rhue no longer belongs to the Seventh Day Adventist church, although she engages, or at least attempts to engage, many religious figures in dialogue. In fact, Rhue plans to lead a mission after Mothers' Day to a number of celebrity churches to sit down and talk with its leaders, such as Joel Osteen, a recognizable television preacher.
In an attempt to focus on outreach, Rhue is producing education material, frequently using media such as radio and YouTube to promote awareness, "to get the word out that there is the ability to have a conversation," she said.
Rhue, along with her associates, are creating a training manual for discussion leaders called Higher Ground.
"It's a spiritual and cerebral way to get inside these people and inspire ... We're talking about the legacy we're going to leave," she said.
