I stumbled on this post by Prince Royce Worthington and thought that was important to share it. This is a response to the video of a sermon by Grammy Award-winning gospel singer, Kim Burrell, where she made very hateful and negative comments about the LGBTQ community. I never heard of Kim Burrell before the video surfaced. After having watched it, all I will state is that I’ll never support this woman in any way or form and I would hope that others do the same. There’s no room for such hatred anywhere.
Without further ado, please read the following guest post and I encourage you to share it.
Russell Brooks
In lieu of the Kim Burrell controversy, I’ve decided to get a little personal with this status.
I grew up in a Black Baptist church. Like all children I was forced to go. Like all children with religious zealots for parents I was indoctrinated into the Christian faith. And like all LGBT children I suffered in silence as I was ritualistically emotionally abused by the faith and it’s followers.
Growing up it was a regular occurrence to hear the pastor tailor a sermon that consigned LGBT children, specifically gay men (because more than likely the pastor watches lesbian porn), directly to the mythical place of damnation called Hell. If it wasn’t the main pastor it was the pathetic: assistant pastor, or the deacon, or the guest pastor, whose initial sermon was flopping with the church mothers so they had to ratchet it up by preaching about how: disgusting, nasty, vile, and offensive to god homosexual love is. As the choir director and multiple gay: men, women, questioning children in the choir, and the pews, squirmed in their seats it only seemed to energize the spiteful men to continue espousing their messages of hatred and bigotry…Oh, in the name of Jesus.
I was one of those children in the pews. I had to be there. I was forced to be there, even though I never wanted to me. And each time I sat through one of those sermons a piece of me died. I always thought of myself as a good boy. I was a good student. I kept to myself. I was obedient. I did not cause trouble. I was a seemingly perfect child in every way…except for my “difference.”
My mother compared my being gay to having cancer. It was a sickness that was totally out of my control (and people wonder why I hate her), per her rationale (or lack thereof).
When I listened to the pastor stating that my natural desires were not only heinous and perverse but also unhealthy (stating that homosexual lust equated only to AIDS and subsequent death) it stunted my development as a growing adolescent. I isolated. I pretended not to have any desires. And when I did I tried to transpose them onto the opposite sex, which I had absolutely zero interest in. This led me to an obsession with being absolutely perfect. When I was 13 I had a brief bought with anorexia nervosa, starving myself (because if I couldn’t control my orientation I could certainly control my weight). This led to therapists whom I wouldn’t tell anything because if they found out they would tell my mother. And I was literally scared that my mother and my family would kill me if they found out I was gay (They told me so themselves).
It wasn’t until I was an adult and left religion AND the church behind that I discovered that there was absolutely nothing the matter with me. I could be myself and love the way that I was naturally inclined and everything would be okay.
I was fortunate.
Not every LGBT BLACK child has my happy ending. Many settle for a life of secrecy and lies. Many wind up ostracized and cast onto the streets where they die. Many wind up turning tricks on those same streets and die. Not to mention the numerous other horror stories that are still happening in this era of legalized gay marriage.
Hearkening back to Kim Burrell. I couldn’t careless what your belief is. There is a child in those pews, listening to every single word you are saying. There is a child listening to you, going home, in tears, and praying to your fictional deity to change them into someone they will never become.
Children are listening and you may think your little sermon is cute and will get your black ass into your fantastical nirvana, but what does it say about YOU that you can destroy innocent children and not give a damn?
In my opinion that makes you an absolute monster and you deserve whatever you get. Now, for all you on this, “Oh well America is homophobic, not just black people.”
Fuck some America.
I am specifically referencing the community that I know, love, and grew up in. Black folks need to address our homophobia and the fact that our churches are indirectly slaughtering black LGBT youth wholesale. I refuse to absolve us of culpability because we should all cluster together based on de Jure anti blackness.
The Black Church needs to STOP killing innocent gay and lesbian children. That’s all I got.
Fuck Kim Burrell.
