Washington City Paper reports:
During a dramatic presentation on how strong men follow the teachings of the church, [Bishop Alfred A. Owens Jr.—pastor of the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church, one of the city’s largest congregations] pointed out that “real men” for the Lord are straight. “It takes a real man to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. I’m not talking about no faggot or no sissy,” said Owens on a church tape recording. “Wait a minute! Let all the real men come on down here and take a bow,” he said, inviting them to the front of the church.
“All the real men—I’m talking about the straight men,” he preached. “You ain’t funny and you ain’t cranky, but you’re straight. Come on down here and walk around and praise God that you are straight. Thank him that you’re straight. All the straight men that’s proud to be a Christian, that’s proud to be a man of God.”
There are a lot of assumptions and stereotypes involved with Owens’ presentation here. For one thing, he denies that gays can be masculine or truly male, a common attitude which is one of the reasons why so many perceive anti-gay animus as stemming in part from misogynistic attitudes. Second, there is the curious idea that only a “real man” can “confess Jesus as Lord and Savior.” Does this exclude women from the Christian community somehow?
He’s certainly trying to exclude gays, despite the fact that there are number of gays in his congregation:
One attendee of the service, who describes himself as a gay, says the house was packed for the Palm Sunday service. He and “about 20” other closeted gay men in the crowd, he says, felt they had no choice but to join Owens’ spontaneous celebration of straightness.
He calls the bishop’s message “offensive” because it suggests “it is impossible to be gay and serve God.” He also objects to Owens’ use of “faggot” and “sissy” to describe gay men. “If I wasn’t delivered,” he says, “I wouldn’t have been delivered on that day.”
The Bishop’s anti-gay rhetoric is no surprise coming from the No. 2 man in the conservative Mount Calvary Holy Church of America Inc. Gay activists say Owens has a history of homophobic sermons, but add that his congregation include numerous gay members.
Notice how men are forced to deny who they are — deny that they are gay — in order to fit in with the congregation. This is precisely what’s wrong with such homophobic and anti-gay language.
A comment states:
Look guys, the Bishop disrespect me as a black gay man. Most importantly, he disrespected the memories of George Washington Carver, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, Benjamin Banneker, Claude Mckay, Billy Strayhorn, Richard Nugent, James Weldon Johnson, and many more famous African American homosexuals. Bishop Owens called us “faggots.” Alain Locke was the first African American Rhodes Scholar and he was a homosexual. What type of a God do people believe in?
Some people are so bigoted that they have no problem with excluding such people from their communities. It doesn’t matter what else they have accomplished — the fact that they are gay is enough to make them inferior. The exact same attitudes were at work among those who were bigoted against blacks in the past. I wonder if this bishop appreciates the irony of his situation?
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