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Bio-Sketch
Irene Monroe is a
religion columnist, public theologian, and
motivational speaker. As a motivational speaker
Monroe gave the 2000 inaugural invocation
“Cambridge 2000: A New Vision of Social Justice”
at Cambridge City Hall celebrating Cambridge’s
newly elected City Council. Participating along
with the City of Cambridge celebrating marriage
equality at City Hall, on May 16, 2004 Monroe
gave the invocation “On the Eve of the Freedom
to Marry.” Monroe have also keynoted at A WORLD
OF A DIFFERENCE Institute’s 5th Annual Congress
sponsored by the Anti-Defamation league in
Boston.
Irene Monroe Bio
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More than 100 African-American LGBTQ clergy,
religious activists and our allies came to hear sermons and
speeches on how to develop specific strategies to challenge the
systemic homophobia in black churches, from its pulpits to its
pews. Most notably, the Rev. Al Sharpton delivered the event's
keynote address.
"Martin Luther King said there are two
types of leadership. There are those who are thermometers, who
measure the temperature in the room, and those who are
thermostats, who change the temperature. I come to tell you to
be thermostats. Turn up the heat in the Black Church. Make these
people sweat," said Sharpton, a former Democratic
presidential candidate.
The Black Church wont reform
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With suppressed information deriving
from Gnostic gospels and apocryphal texts finally
emerging from out of the closet, ecclesiastical
authorities wrestle to keep the millennia-long lid on
tight about the historical Jesus.
However, the debate about Jesus'
sexuality takes him from his mother's womb to his tomb.
The Christian depiction of Jesus as that of a life-long
virgin who had no sexual desire and who never engaged in
sexual intercourse raises anyone's suspicion, because by
today's sexual standards, Jesus' homosocial environment
of 12 men suggests, according to the law of averages,
that at least one out of the bunch was gay.
And given the nature of compulsory
heterosexuality playing in Jewish marital laws during
Jesus' time, Jesus might have been forced to be on the
"down low."
Churchs code keeps Jesus on the down low
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To get African-American male ministers, in particular, to think
outside of their narrowly constructed boxes about race is an
arduous task. And much of the reason is because of the
persistent nature of racism in the lives of black people and the
little gains accomplished supposedly on behalf of racial
equality.
Many African Americans see that civil rights gains have come
faster for queer people. From the Stonewall Riots of 1969 to May
17, 2004, the LGBTQ movement has made some tremendous gains into
mainstream society, a reality that has not been afforded to
African Americans.
And while the freedom to marry has been an arduous struggle and
a right long overdue for LBGTQ people, the debate did not begin
with queer people.
The marriage debate here in the U.S. began when African-American
slaves were forbidden to marry, so they “jumped over the
broom” – an African-American tradition – in front of their
slave masters to consecrate their nuptials until the end of the
Civil War in 1865.
Black Ministers and Queer Community
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