Their Own Received Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches

for the Western world. Practically every social institution and religious denomination has engaged the issue of homosexuality and, in some cases, reassessed unfounded notions about lesbian and gay people. Many people, both within and outside church communities, have struggled to accept lesbians and gays as moral and equal human beings within a predominantly heterosexual society. It is striking, however, that African Americans have often been absent from this discussion. Typically, African Americans have entered the dialogue on homosexuality grudgingly or in reactionary ways, as was true in recent Civil Rights debates, including those on gays in the military and the legalization of same-sex marriage. At other times, African Americans are simply silent about homosexuality. For example, in the 1994 summer edition of the Journal of Pastoral Theology, a leading African American Pastoral Theologian did not even mention African American homosexuality in an article on African American