Name African American LGBT folk that you love, honor and respect

It doesn't have to be someone famous. It can be your Great Aunt or your little kid brother or your best friend since childhood.

My first real, adult long term relationship was with someone who to this day is the smartest man I ever met.

So, I'll start with him, and I'll add Barbara Jordan, Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin.

I don't respect her

Look it up. I admired his 'take no shit' attitude

I feel very uninformed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/19/gayrights.usa

Coming out of the closet when you are a militant black male in a minority community of the 1950s and 1960s would be insanely hard.

evidence of it.

the total evidence for "gayness" is adolescent experiences (common for boys) & being a prostitute, all before he was 20. From 13 to his teen years he lived in foster homes, then on the streets. He went to prison at 20 & joined noi.

I don't think the evidence is strong enough for anyone to say he was "probably gay". People have many & complicated reasons for the things they do.

unlike Barbara Jordan, where everyone who knew both her and her longtime companion now acknowledges that she was a lesbian. The sad thing is, because many of the history books don't acknowledge it, young, black lesbians have a significant role model stolen from them.

Its not unknown.

Also, Luther Vandross.

Next think you'll tell me Liberace was gay.

edited for Liberace joke

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4BolrP6NKw

Can
you
feel
a
brand
new
day

I didn't know that.

Langston Hughes, Me'Shell N'DeGeOCello

and a little-appreciated musical genius

Penny and Vonda and Loraine who helped me come out and talked me through it. Felix, who I loved and left down because I couldn't bear to watch him die of AIDS when I was 18 and too immature to handle it after the first 9 months of suffering. Chico, who was stock room warehouse manager in drag by day and who was a fabulous queen at night (and who hated me because my lesbian ass brought him loads of boxes to input in the warehouse...) Kim, who wasn't gay, but goddamned I wished she was because I was so infatuated with her--and I thank her for tolerating my crush.

Audre Lorde, Bayard Rustin, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes (tho closeted), James Baldwin

I was raised by strong beautiful black LGBT men and women and I would be completely lost without them.

I just think he's great.

Huey Newton was pure courage.

The love of my life, Stephanie. Her sister, Moni, and her partner, Liz. :loveya:

and my friend, Bobbie. And my cousins, H and Ev.

An AA gay businessman I know. He's very successful and a kind and lovely man.

plate.

My student who started dance with me at 8, who is now 27. He eventually became director of my studio. Super talented and the children adore him as a teacher. One of the few people who can put me on the floor laughing and screaming. The prejudice he has met being black and gay.

Tre, I love ya.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier, and principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. Rustin was openly gay <1> and advocated on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career.

A year before his death in 1987, Rustin said: "The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is no longer the black community, it's the gay community. Because it is the community which is most easily mistreated."

and who has changed them, utterly and forever.

I love you, Juiceman, you and your bad piano hands. :yourock:

Love her.