To be gay, Christian and black in Harlem

NEW YORK — As a gay man in Togo, where homosexuality is punishable by up to three years in prison, Rodrigue (who asked that his last name be withheld because of concerns for his family’s safety) felt in danger. Though the law is rarely enforced, violence against gay men is perceived as a viable and available option among the general public. Rodrigue speaks of young men he has known who have been attacked by acquaintances on the street after school. He says that he was never physically threatened in Togo, then he reluctantly adds, “except by my family.”

“My uncle and aunt threatened to kill me, and it got really crazy.”

The turning point for Rodrigue was when his uncle physically attacked him and Rodrigue ran away. His uncle contacted the police, and from that point on, Rodrigue was effectively a wanted man.

Harlem has a history of being home to a vibrant and open community. In the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the neighborhood embraced gay culture in nightclubs (among them the euphemistic Clam House), and numerous LGBT luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Bessie Smith and James Baldwin called it home. Today, gay men and women gather openly in the neighborhood’s restaurants and nightclubs, gyms and bookstores.

Even more storied in Harlem history is the Christian community. Traditionally black churches line the avenues. The friction between black gay men and the religious community in the U.S. is well documented. As Aaron Douglas Weaver wrote in Christian Ethics Today, 70 percent of black voters backed Prop 8 in California in 2008, banning gay marriage in the state until it was overturned by court order. Weaver notes that though the black church has “foundational values of freedom, justice, and equality … perhaps no issue reveals the black church’s complex relationship with these foundational values [more] than gay rights.”

Paradoxically, Weaver notes, theologians have called the church both a “vanguard to social change” and a “stubborn antagonist” of social change.

There are more than 400 places of worship in Harlem. When Rodrigue moved there, the variety of churches — from very conservative to very liberal — felt like a luxury. Still, he was curious how his sexuality and Christianity would coexist here.  

On Easter Sunday in Harlem, not only the variety of churches but the sheer volume of them is breathtaking. Outside First Corinthian First Baptist Church, on 115th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, the line to get in wraps around the block.

“Beware of those who affirm you in private but don’t affirm you in public,” Pastor Mike Walrond advises from the pulpit. He is alluding to Nicodemus and Joseph, private believers who didn’t publicly affirm Jesus until after his death. But the danger of disparate public and private relationships speaks to Rodrigue’s journey — the necessity of leading a clandestine life in Togo, hiding a component of his identity in his home and his church, which in turn led him to overstay his visa for his U.N. fellowship and seek asylum.

Walrond’s biblical interpretation allows for congregants of all colors and sexual orientations. In the Bible, he says, “You find Jesus working and doing ministry with communities that were ostracized and marginalized.” His Jesus is one preaching a “love ethic.” The congregation at First Corinthian is both vast and, according to the pastor, diverse, including African and West Indian immigrants as well as gay members. 

Rodrigue misses his family in Togo, but he says can’t imagine going back. Life in the U.S. has many possibilities and fewer restrictions. Even if he has experienced a new type of discrimination: racism.

Here, Rodrigue is more conscious of his dark skin color, even if it doesn’t have the same high-stakes repercussions as being gay in Togo. “Being in Togo, I was always fearful of someone breaking my face on the street,” he says. “No one is attacking me on the street because I’m black.” Nigerian-born gay rights activist Michael Ighodoro agrees, saying, “Before I came to America, I didn’t know I was black.” 

Rodrigue is understated when it comes to his victimization, even generous. “It’s not always pleasing to be treated differently,” he admits. “I am very good at trying to understand people … racism and discrimination against gay people — they are really close.”

Though his fellow gay West African immigrants have experienced violent instances of homophobia at home and racism here, Rodrigue says, “we don’t really talk about it.”

There has long been a debate among civil rights activists over whether LGBT rights are part of the cause. When President Barack Obama was campaigning in 2008, he spoke at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church and said that black people have often been on the “receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man.” He then invoked King’s vision of an inclusive “beloved community,” saying, “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.”

Walrond also acknowledges the problem. “There are things that are detrimental to our ideals. Racism is woven into the fabric of this country,” he says. Racism and homophobia seem to be competing forms of bigotry, and too often activists do not widen their activism to include other groups’ interests. He cites an “obvious irony” that so many activists do not see gay rights as a civil rights issue, and he believes the civil rights movement is a struggle not just for black Americans’ rights. “It’s dangerous for people to compare their oppression to see whose oppression is worse. When oppressed people begin to compare their oppression, they then don’t engage in critiquing the systemic structures that reinforce the oppression in the first place.”

For gay West African asylum seekers, these different iterations of oppression exist together in the same body.

While West African asylum seekers may have found apparent — even legal — peace in the U.S., it doesn’t necessarily mean they have found internal peace. Rodrigue echoes a common refrain: the difficulty of feeling foreign, the frustration with expressing oneself in an unfamiliar language.

That said, the possibilities for the future are vast. He is taking classes at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, has a healthy social life and is dating a guy he really likes, Jesse, a native New Yorker and recent Harlem transplant. A black man and a white man hand in hand on the streets of Harlem — the embodiment of the union that Manning so fears.

Still, Rodrigue has been able to find a church family that has given him a sense of belonging. He says his current church is “the most progressive church I have ever seen. Half of that church is gay. That is something I have never experienced before. It is amazing that I can be a part of this.” It is a hopeful message for young men who are ostracized by their communities and their countries.

 Where in Harlem is this idyllic church?

“My church?” He laughs. “It’s downtown on 31st Street.”