Georgia State hosts forum on race, sexuality, and the struggle for civil rights

Is gay the new black?

The title alone raised eyebrows all across campus and compelled several Georgia State students and staff to attend an intense forum on gay civil rights in the Student Center on Sept. 22.

The forum was hosted by Elisé Meyers and Brittany Moody of Intercultural Relations, a department in the University's division of Student Affairs, and was one of several forums that are held each month by the department that focuses on campus diversity.

Meyers began the forum by showing clips from an episode of The Tyra Show, in which Tyra Banks and her guests debated the comparison of gay civil rights to black civil rights. We learned from the clips that the forum's title, 'Is Gay The New Black?', had originally appeared on the front cover of The Advocate, a national gay and lesbian magazine. The magazine cover had received criticism from black Americans when it was first published.

Lamont Sims, president of BlackOUT, the black gay and lesbian organization on campus, officially opened the floor for a debate of our own. Almost immediately, the debate was intense.

Several students felt it was unfair to compare the struggles of black Americans-who for centuries endured slavery, lynching, and socioeconomic oppression-to the current struggles of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans.

"I am going to wake up black no matter what," said one student. "I can't change it. I can't choose not to show it. But being gay-that is a choice. You can choose whether or not to show it."

Another student, however, contended that no one would choose to be the subject of ridicule by mainstream society.

"I don't understand how [someone] could think that people choose to be harassed, beaten up, or disowned by their families," he said.

Eventually, I found myself compelled to speak on behalf of gay and lesbian Americans.

"Equality is not contingent upon choice. Rights are not given to people based on whether they choose to be different from the majority of society."

Others also felt that the choice argument trivialized the negative experiences of gays and lesbians in an often intolerant society. Sims took aim at the title itself, claiming that it ignores the experiences of people who identify as both black and gay.

"The question ['Is gay the new black?'] implies that the black struggle for equality is over, and that racism exists only in the heterosexual community."

The forum ended much sooner than the debate, and while many valid points were expressed, the intensity of the forum up until the end proved that no one argument superseded the other, and that no one had changed their original position on the issue.

To Junior Ravi Batra, volunteering is how both sides can bridge their differences. Batra is a volunteer for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a national gay rights organization. He was invited to the forum by Meyers and Moody to talk about his work at HRC and ways that students could get involved in activism for gay rights.

"Ultimately, we can all agree that homophobia is wrong, that hate crimes based on sexual orientation are a problem in our nation that we must put an end to. Volunteering is how we can do that-whether it's writing letters to our representatives or going to rallies at the Capitol. Action is where the real change is."