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Gender issues in today's society
An essay on homophobia
An essay on homophobia
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---I can love the sinner, but hate the sin.
---Homosexuality is an abomination.
---To be gay goes against nature.
---If we were supposed to be homosexual, God would have created Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve.
---I don’t mind gay people, but why do they have to be so vocal and pushy about their rights?
---Homosexuality is a White thing.
---Africa did not have homosexuals before Europeans went there.
---Homosexuality is detrimental to the Black family.
~Kelly Brown Douglas
As a Black male born in the early 80s, raised in the church, and being now an adult in the twenty-first century, I have had firsthand experiences of many of the plights worthy of exploration for this project. Having been introduced to God in the Black Baptist tradition,
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These socializations have caused many to stigmatize people before they are even given a chance to determine who they want to be. Normally at a birth, when it is announced that the child will be a boy, he is associate with the color blue, or if it is a girl she is associate with the color pink. These social constructions of what it means to be a man or woman are determined by others before we are even born, or at least when the gender is announced. Anything that goes beyond these prescribed notions of what it means to be a man or woman, challenges our understanding of God, what we believe in the bible, and even …show more content…
Black lesbians add another layer of difference from the cultural standard by virtue of their gender.” The problem for Boykin is that the gay community fears they will be misunderstood as being a double minority: both black and gay. What Boykin is arguing is that gay identity is problematic. Until the Black church understands sexuality, they will never grapple with or address challenges around
The second edition of “African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness,” covers the religious experiences of African Americans—from the late eighteenth century until the early 1980s. My paper is written in a chronological order to reflect on the progress blacks have made during the years—by expounding on the earliest religion of Africans to black religion of today. Race Relation and Religion plays a major role in today’s society—history is present in all that we do and it is to history that African-Americans have its identity and aspiration.
The “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” is a text directed to all of America in 1963, written by Martin Luther King Jr., during his stay in one of the of Birmingham’s prisons. His intention of writing an open letter was to tell the world the injustice “the white people” had done not only to him, but to all Afro-Americans. The main stimulus was a statement made by a Clergymen naming the actions and the activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as unwise and untimely. However, the purpose of this letter is to show that those actions are totally wise and timely.
Cleophus J. LaRue in I Believe I’ll Testify makes it clear that great preaching comes from somewhere, it also must go somewhere, so preachers need to use the most artful language to send the Word on its journey. There is always purpose in life in black preaching says LaRue. Some of the greatest preaching in America happens on Sundays. The articulation and cadence of the black preacher often arise and causes people to feel something deep down inside their souls. The heart of black preaching has been deeply entrenched in our society and is a staple in the life blood of the traditional black family and community. Many a congregation has been stirred to conviction, repentance, and action by the powerful voice of the African american preacher. In I Believe I’ll Testify, LaRue seeks to explain the designing characteristics that exist in black preaching and how it has become a tooled force in the twenty-first century African American community. Using stories and antidotes and his own experiences, LaRue describes what actually makes for good preaching and gives insightful advice in the art of preaching that many seminarians do not learn from seminary. This book is an informative and well written book and could benefit pastors, former pastors, and anyone interested in the art of good black preaching.
Maffly-Kipp, L. (2001). The Church in the Southern Black Community: Introduction. The Church in the Southern Black Community: Introduction. Retrieved March 17, 2014, from http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/intro.html
For centuries religion has played a huge role in the black community. From slavery to freedom, religion has help black folk deal with their anger, pain, oppression, sadness, fear, and dread. Recognizing the said importance of religion in the black community, Black poets and writers like Phillis Wheatley and Richard Wright, use religion as an important motif in their literature. Wheatley uses religion as a way to convince her mostly white audience of how religious conversion validates the humanity of herself and others. Wright on the other hand, uses religion in order to demonstrate how religion, as uplifting as it is can fail the black community. Thinking through, both Wheatley and Wright’s writings it becomes apparent that religion is so complex,
James H. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Cone probably is best known for his book, A Black Theology of Liberation, though he has authored several other books. Dr. Cone wrote that the lack of relevant and “risky” theology suggests that theologians are not able to free themselves from being oppressive structures of society and suggested an alternative. He believes it is evident that the main difficulty most whites have with Black Power and its compatible relationship to the Christian gospel stemmed from their own inability to translate non-traditional theology into the history of black people. The black man’s response to God’s act in Christ must be different from the whites because his life experiences are different, Dr. Cone believes. In the “black experience,” the author suggested that a powerful message of biblical theology is liberation from oppression.
Author of “The Negro Family”, E. Franklin Frazier believed that the centrality of the bible, structure of Black worship, and notion of God that evolved from the invisible institution to the Black Church was confirmation of the power of white influence . These tactics and different developments were merely adaptive methods used by slaves in order to worship freely in a confined space. Frazier’s beliefs were undermined by author Gayraud S. Wilmore’s description of Vodun in his book Black Religion and Black Radicalism. Frazier’s contention that black religion was evidence of white influence assumes a blank and passive slate. While Vodun in West Africa did have organization that was probably “infiltrated by Roman Catholicism” the goal of New World Africans was to adapt and understand their lives (Wilmore 43). Although white influence was forced upon New World Africans, slaves did not accept this influence but rather interpreted it to create a new, place-based Vodun religion. Vodun adapted to New World conditions, functioned as a coping mechanism, and possessed evolutionary qualities.
... This would be no small feat since Christians had for generations practiced and defended not just slavery, but the hatred and demise of anything black or African. Cone's mission was to bring blackness and Christianity together.” # In 1969, Cone published Black Theology and Black Power. In this book, Cone brought attention to racism in theology and proposes a theology addressing black issues, this theology would provide liberation and empowerment of blacks and “create a new value structures so that our understanding of blackness will not depend upon European misconceptions.”
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Print. The. 2003 Roberts, Deotis J. Black Theology in Dialogue. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Print.
Thomas, Deborah A. "Modern Blackness: "What We Are and What We Hope to Be"." Small
Homosexuality is not a new trend, sexual orientation, or identity, in fact homosexuality is believed to date back over 5,000 years ago (Adams, 2011). Same sex couples have existed for thousands of years and research will show how the social and political stigmas that are known today, have stemmed from religious point of views and political opinions.
C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 352. Lindsay A. Arscott, "Black Theology," Evangelical Review of Theology 10 (April-June 1986):137. James H. Cone, "Black Theology in American Religion," Theology Today 43 (April 1986):13. James H. Cone, "Black Theology and Black Liberation," in Black Theology: The South African Voice, ed. Basil Moore (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1973), 92, 96.
In reality, gender is not based on one’s genetic make-up or their reproductive organs. Expanding on this, an individual does not have any control over their assigned gender, but everyone has a gender identity, which is one’s internal sense of being male or female. From a sociocultural perspective, gender roles have the greatest influence on gender as a social construction. Gender roles are the attitudes, behaviors, rights, and responsibilities that particular cultural groups associate with each sex. In regards to gender, the social construction theory acknowledges the connection the topic has with power and meaning, and states that social interaction, or “language” controls how these things are portrayed to individuals. Similarly, sexuality is socially constructed in a sense that, one’s sexual orientation depends on what they are taught to be “socially acceptable”. For example, a person who is raised by homophobic parents would most likely be taught that every aspect of homosexuality is wrong, and therefore they would be influenced to be heterosexual. While many would like to believe that people are born with their sexual orientation, that is far from the truth. All in all, when looking at the big picture, it is clear that race, gender,
Sexual orientation is the preferred term used when referring to an individual's physical and or emotional attraction to the same and or opposite sex. Heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual and pansexual are all sexual orientations. An individual's gender identity and expression is distinct from their sexual orientation. Throughout life as the individual explores the world around them, they are shaped by the unique experiences and influences that are imparted upon them. All people experience life subjectively therefore there is no monolithic way of viewing or defining one’s sexual identity, however, there are particular experiences that may shape and develop specific characteristics or tendencies that a group of people may share. Andrew Sullivan addresses this very issue in his 1995 book, Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality. In the prologue, titled “What is a Homosexual?” Sullivan ponders what exactly composes a homosexual life and why certain environmental factors are fundamental and exclusive to the homosexual experience. He sees self-control/subjugation as a crucial part of all human experience, however, he considers the homosexual (more broadly, the LGBTQ) experience to be unique in that early on they learn to make sexual/emotional distinctions out of a need for survival. They learn to function within the parameter of certain social rules in order to blend and eventually this becomes a sort of second nature that is hard to break.
I think for most gay sons, it's difficult (if not impossible) to talk with our fathers about our lives. We make our world queerly ironic when we don't tell the people we love how we perceive our world. The realms of politics, religion, and sex are domains of power, myth, and embarrassing intimacy -- worlds that are difficult to share with our (straight) fathers who have lived very different lives than their gay sons.