I can't exactly call Kevin a friend but he is someone I admire as a man, as a black man, as a black gay man, as a black gay spiritual man, and as a creative, black, gay, spiritual man among other things. I've known him since he was Deacon Kevin years back in the Unity Fellowship Movement and he never ceases to inspire me.
January 08, 2008
Obamination: An Open Letter to Senator Obama
The Senator’s Unacceptable Stance on Marriage Equality
Written By KEVIN E. TAYLOR
While the title might denote otherwise, this really is
a (brotherly) love letter to Senator Barack Obama.
It’s written in love. It’s intended with love; my love
for the world, for the people in it and my love for
change, which brings growth and fosters understanding.
It’s a love letter for change.
I am an openly Christian, openly gay black man who has
been praying to God my entire life for a love that
would be beyond relationship and the regular. When I
was 13 years old, my mother asked me if I would ever
get married and I told my mother that I would “as soon
as they make it legal.” When the “civil unions”
statute was recently passed in the state of New
Jersey, my now 80 year old mother called me and said
powerfully, “Baby, I think your husband is on the way.
God answers prayers!” I got so happy to realize that
my mother, with her Christian love and maternal
adoration, only wants me to be happy.
Civil unions don’t make me happy. Domestic
partnerships don’t make me happy. They also don’t make
me safe. They don’t make me feel secure. They don’t
give me access to the hospital in the midnight air if
the nurse says no. They don’t give me the hope that I
will be able to get my favorite singer Natalie Cole to
sing Inseparable at a wedding ceremony one day soon.
They surely don’t make me married. They don’t give me
all of the rights and privileges and protections of
any other American.
I really do like you Senator Obama, and I think you
could be a glorious, viable, vicious vessel for
change. I have been struggling between my radical need
for change that you speak and the
“we-can-do-better”ness of Senator Hillary Clinton.
Somehow, maybe because of gender, maybe race, maybe
your words of encouragement and embodiment, I am drawn
to you and your audacious hope.
That is why, from the depths of my soul, your stance
on marriage equality breaks my natural and spiritual
heart.
Looking day after day and week after week into the
eyes of a black man, born of a white woman and a black
man, I was deeply and personally devastated when you
took the old guard, status quo, “What else can we do?”
stance on Marriage Equality. The thing that is most
empowering about a strong leader is that even if they
cannot do all things (only God can), it’s nice, it’s
invigorating, it’s real to have someone say “I WILL DO
EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO MAKE CHANGE!” I understand
the lay of the land. I understand the mentality of
America and the people within it, many of whom stand
or speak against marriage equality and what they think
it represents. I get that. I don’t accept that. I
surely don’t expect it from a man who says “I AM
CHANGE.”
Senator, you said some powerful, masterful,
soul-shifting things when you spoke at the 2004
Democratic Convention. In doing so, you squarely and
quickly placed yourself in the position to be able to
make changes and take chances. You passionately said
to everyone from the world stage that “WE CAN DO
BETTER.” So imagine my disappointment and chagrin when
you kowtowed and walked right into the ookie-doke and
said…“but.” But we can’t make change. But people will
never go for it. But it’s not going to happen anytime
soon. Even if America isn’t ready, I want to believe
that you are ready and willing to stand for change. I
want to believe that you would be willing to fight,
even if the end result isn’t to my liking. At least I
could say “Well, you tried and for that you have my
thanks.” But I cannot.
At the end of the day, you had just come out and said
that you had already made up your mind. You had done
research and analysis and all of those trivial things
that people say when they hunch their shoulders to say
that I don’t know what else to do. For me, there is a
very real reason that this stance is so morally
unacceptable.
As the child of a biracial union, you know better of
the many pains, pangs, and perils of being made to
feel less than. You know what it feels like to have
words hurled at you. You know what it feels like to
have people say that you are not good enough and that
your very existence is against good. In many states in
the union, in many households in America, still people
turn their noses up and their heads down to the
joining of black and white, black and Hispanic or
Asian or anything that blends or bleeds the races.
People still say that it’s not about not liking
certain people, but rather just about their beliefs.
White people. Black people. Many people just say that
it’s what they believe and that’s that. But the truth
is that laws and leery lawmakers had it on the books
in this country for decades, nay centuries, that it
was unacceptable. Until as recent as the early 1970s,
there was a state in this country that made the love
between an African-American (or other colored person)
and a white person against the law. But that love is
real and it has real hopes and real dreams and real
passion that gives birth to real people. One of those
people are you, Mr. Senator.
According to many laws in the land, especially when
you were born, you should not have ever been allowed
to live, seek liberty or pursue happiness. But your
parents fell in love and that love gave birth to a man
who have given birth to an uprising in this country,
an uprising that has people believing again, an
uprising that has Oprah standing up and saying “He Is
The One!” when she is normally reserved and removed
from political conversations. I really do believe in
the possibility of President Obama. I do. I really do.
But you don’t believe in me.
What do you do when you love someone and believe in
someone and hope for someone and that someone says I
don’t stand with you? That someone says I can’t fight
for you?
I wrote this letter.
If you want to, post this on a website where people
banter and debate. If you want to, call me crazy and a
race-trader because I am a black man who is
questioning a black man and that the airing of
laundry—dirty or otherwise—isn’t something that we
should do. But I have got to because you are poised to
change minds and you can start here, given your
singular and unique relationship to the issue of
marriage equality in America. No one else, but a child
born of a mixed marriage, could understand how the
strain and stigma placed on people through laws and
lack of understanding can shape or shift or shame the
life you live.
I am tired of people trying to tell us that waiting is
the only way. I don’t get a gay discount on my taxes.
I don’t get a gay discount on my utilities or any
other obligation that I have as a human being in
America. I don’t expect any such discounts. I also
don’t expect to be discounted.
Senator Barack Hussein Obama, I urge you today to pour
yourself a cup of coffee or tea, whichever is your
preference, and search your heart after you read this
letter. Imagine what it would have been like if your
mother and your father had been terrorized and
stigmatized and damned and discouraged and belittled
in a country by laws and people and hatred that said
that their love was invalid and that they didn’t have
a right to be together. Oh, wait. This is America and
that is how it was in the 1960s and yet they came
together, in love and in commitment, if only for a
while and it was that union and the power of that love
that gave birth to you.
Here you stand, on the cusp of a new day and a season
of change, with the potential and the power to say
that no one—not man or woman, African-American or
Caucasian or Asian or Latino or biracial, Christian or
Jew or Muslim or non-believer—deserves to be treated
or protected with anything less than the fullness of
the law. Your parents stood in adversary. You say that
you stand in audacity. I dare you to do better and
stand firmer.
I know that change isn’t always easy, Mr. Obama, but I
thought that was the reason that you declared that
“hope is audacious.”
I hope you understand and I hope that you are
listening.
Sincerely and Seriously,
Elder Kevin E. Taylor
You can reach Kevin at www.KevinETaylor.com and at the
website of Unity Fellowship Church New Brunswick
www.ufcnb.org
DARE TO BE GREAT IN 2008
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