But as American novelist William Faulkner wrote in his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

As we all try to move from America’s ugly racial past, there are still rock solid vestiges of it.

At the entrance of a secluded 1072-acre property in the West Texas town of Paint Creek is a rock painted in block letters with the word “Niggerhead.”

For decades Rick Perry’s hunting camp hosted fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters.

Already in a declining bid for the GOP presidency, former front-runner Gov. Rick Perry and his father once leased a Texas hunting camp known by a racist term.

When Perry ran for re-election in 2010 for the governorship, no one knew of the rock. And as one observer of the rock glibly toldReal Clear Politics, “Honestly, it wouldn’t have hurt him in a Texas primary.”

If Perry, however, doesn’t decline into oblivion in this GOP bid, he’ll face off with President Obama and will also have a lot of explaining to do to African-American voters — Republicans and Democrats.

Can Perry recover from this?

And can talk show host Barbara Walters of The View?

In discussing the offensive racial moniker of Perry’s property, Walters used the n-word, sparking a debate with her co-host Sherri Shepherd.

“I’m saying when you say the word, I don’t like it,” said Shepherd, who said she has used it among African-American family and friends. “When white people say it, it brings up feelings in me.”

I am troubled, however, in this recent kerfuffle concerning the n-word and how many of us African Americans, in particular, go back and forth on its politically correct use.

Let’s do a walk down memory lane:

In December 2006 we blamed Michael Richards, who played the lovable and goofy character Kramer on the TV sit-com Seinfeld forusing the n-word. The racist rant was heard nationwide and shocked not only his fans and audience that night at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood but it also shocked Americans back to an ugly era in U.S. history.

In July 2008 we heard the Rev. Jessie Jackson used the n-word referring to Obama. And Jackson using the word not only reminded us of its history but also how the n-word can slip so approvingly from the mouth of a man who was part of a cadre of African-American leaders burying the n-word once and for all in mock funeral at the 98th annual NAACP’s convention in Detroit in 2007.

And in 2009 Dr. Laura Schlessinger ended her radio show, a week after she broadcast a five-minute-long rant in which she usedthe n-word 11 times.

In January of this year, the kerfuffle concerning the n-word focused on Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known fondly to us as Mark Twain, in his New South Books edition of the 1885 controversial classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

In a combined effort to rekindle interest in this Twain classic and to tamp down the flame and fury the use of the n-word engenders both from society and readers alike, who come across the epithet 219 times in the book, Mark Twain Scholar Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University in Alabama, proposed the idea that the n-word be replaced with the word “slave.”

In 2003, the NAACP convinced Merriam-Webster lexicographers to change the definition of the n-word in the dictionary to no longer mean African Americans but instead to be defined as a racial slur. And, while the battle to change the n-word in the American lexicon was a long and arduous one, our culture’s neo-revisionist use of the n-word makes it even harder to purge the sting of the word from the American psyche.

The notion that it is acceptable for African Americans to refer to each other using the n-word while considering it racist for others outside the community unquestionably sets up a double standard. Also, the notion that one ethnic group has property rights to the term is a reductio ad absurdum argument, since language is a public enterprise.

The n-word is firmly embedded in the lexicon of racist language that was and still is used to disparage African Americans. However, today the meaning of the n-word is all in how one spells it. By dropping the “er” ending and replacing it with either an “a” or “ah” ending, the term morphs into one of endearment. But, many slaveholders pronounced the n-word with the “a” ending, and in the 1920s, many African Americans used the “a” ending as a pejorative term to denote class differences among themselves.

Too many of us keep the n-word alive. It also allows Americans to become unconscious and numb in the use and abuse of the power and currency this racial epithet still wields, thwarting the daily struggle many of us Americans work hard at in trying to ameliorate race relations.

Since too few role models come from the Black church, many of us lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) brothers and sisters of African descent look to black role models, especially males, in the areas of entertainment and sports.

But sadly that list too is short.

Tim Hardaway, a retired NBA All-Star player, has recently stepped forward.

“It’s not right to not let the gays and lesbians have equal rights here,” Hardaway told the crowd at a press conference organized by the “No Recall” group, an El Paso group opposing a recall of El Paso Mayor John Cook and two city representatives for their support to re-establish domestic partner benefits for same-sex and unmarried partners of city employees.

Hardaway, however, is the last person one would expect to speak out on behalf of a LGBTQ social justice issue.

In a 2007 interview on Miami’s sports radio station, “790 The Ticket,” Hardaway was asked how he would interact with a gay teammate. The topic came up because of fellow former NBAer John Amaechi’s announcement, in his book Man in the Middle, that he is gay.

“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people,” Hardaway said. “I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.”

His vitriol, sadly, hurt more than just his post-career endorsements. It hurt the hundreds of young LGBTQ sports enthusiasts and athletes that revered him.

For many of us in the African-American LGBTQ community, however, we were saddened by Hardaway’s remarks, but certainly not surprised. The former CEO of the National Black Justice Coalition H. Alexander Robinson commented on Hardaway’s vitriol, stating, “His callous disregard for the dignity of the lives of gay Americans brings dishonor to himself and the many thousands who look upon him as a role model for young black men and women, many of whom are undoubtedly gay or lesbian.”

I do believe with the right intervention and rehabilitation that vile-spewing homophobes can change. But when their crossover appeal and multi-million careers can or comes to an abrupt halt, their mea culpas appear disingenuous, and their zealous LGBTQ advocacy appears suspect.

For example, Tracy Morgan, comedian and actor on NBC’s 30 Rock, is a recent example of the malady.

During a standup performance in June at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, Morgan’s “intended” jokes about LGBTQ people were instead insulting jabs.

My son “better talk to me like a man and not in a gay voice or I’ll pull out a knife and stab that little n-gger to death,” Morgan told his audience.

Like Hardaway, Morgan has publicly expressed his mea culpas. Morgan’s was to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the nation’s LGBTQ media advocacy and anti-defamation organization — as part and parcel of his forgiveness tour — speaking out in support of LGBTQ equality.

Back in the day, racism was addressed through sports when Jackie Robinson became the first black Major League Baseball player in 1947.

Today’s society awards celebrity status to professional athletes of all races, and the popularity of African-American athletes has reached unprecedented levels; their influences go far beyond the court and field.

So, do these athletes like Hardaway have a responsibility to their fans, especially black ones, and society?

Hardaway’s homophobia is shaped by a particular type of black masculinity that no longer has to break through this country’s color barrier to represent the race and prove athletic prowess or manhood in sports.

The aggressive posturing and repudiation of LGBTQ people allows athletes like Hardaway to feel safe in the locker room by maintaining the myth that all the guys gathered on their team are heterosexual, and sexual attraction among them just does not exist.

“I don’t think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room,” Hardaway said during that Miami interview. “If you have 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that’s upset and can’t concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, it’s going to be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate.”

This myth allows homophobic men like Hardaway to enjoy the homo-social setting of the male locker room that creates male-bonding — and the physical and emotional intimacy that goes on among them displayed as slaps on the buttocks, hugging, and kissing on the cheeks in a homoerotic context — while such behavior outside of the locker would be easily labeled as gay.

In his book, Amaechi states, “The NBA locker room was the most flamboyant place I’ve ever been. Guys flaunted their perfect bodies. They bragged about sexual exploits. They primped in front of the mirror, applying cologne and hair gel by the bucketful. They tried on each other’s $10,000 suits, admired each other’s rings and necklaces. It was an intense camaraderie that felt completely natural to them.”

In August, Sports Illustrated writer Dave Zirin caught up with Amaechi to get his take on Hardaway’s turn around.

“I was in contact with the people he did his ‘emergency rehab’ with after his ‘I hate gay people rant.’ They were underwhelmed to say the least. Back then his contrition seemed more to do with the financial and reputation hit he had taken in the aftermath. However, it seems to me that this is a far more genuine piece of outreach. … I hope this is a story of true redemption rather than a savvy P.R. ploy. Either way, he is at least saying the right words, and that will make a positive difference,” Amaechi told Zirin.

But as we know, a change of words does not necessarily bring a change of heart.

And Tracy Morgan, comedian and actor on NBC’s “30 Rock,” is another glaring example of the malady.

During a standup performance this month at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, Morgan’s “intended” jokes about LGBTQ people were instead insulting jabs:

“Gays need to quit being pussies and not be whining about something as insignificant as bullying.”

“Gay is something that kids learn from the media and programming.”

“I don’t “f*cking care if I piss off some gays, because if they can take a f*cking dick up their ass…they can take a f*cking joke.”

Morgan has publicly expressed his mea culpas to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the nation’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) media advocacy and anti-defamation organization, and he has now — as part and parcel of his forgiveness tour — spoken out in support of LGBTQ equality.

But Morgan, like many of us who have grown up in communities of African descent — here and abroad — cannot escape the cultural, personal, interpersonal, and institutional indoctrinations in which homophobia is constructed in our very makeup of being defined as black.

And the community’s expression of its intolerance of LGBTQ people is easily seen along gender lines. For example, sisters mouth off about us while brothers get both — verbally and physically — violent with us.

My son “better talk to me like a man and not in a gay voice or I’ll pull out a knife and stab that little n-gger to death,” Morgan told his audience at the Ryman Auditorium.

(Just as the LGBTQ community got on Morgan for his homophobic rant, the community should have also called him out on his use of the n-word. Let’s not forget about the racist rant in 2006 by Michael Richards, who played the lovable and goofy character Kramer on the T.V. sit-com “Seinfeld,” for his repetitive use of the n-word in the context of supposed humor that has, many of us feel, cost him his career.)

CNN’s Don Lemon, who just recently came out, gives a window into the male perspective on homosexuality.

“It’s quite different for an African-American male,” Lemon told Joy Behar on her HLN show. “It’s about the worst thing you can be in black culture. You’re taught you have to be a man; you have to be masculine.”

Black GBTQ sexualities within African American culture are perceived to further threaten not only black male heterosexuality, but also the ontology of blackness itself, which is built on the most misogynistic and homophobic strains of Black Nationalism and afrocentricism that were and still are birth, nurtured, and propagated in black churches and communities.

The belief that exposure to LGBTQ people and anti-homophobia workplaces, classrooms, workshops and trainings lessens, if not eradicates, the prejudice is true. But for African American males that is not always the case.

For example, life imitated art for Isaiah Washington, but he, like Morgan, went on his black male homophobic rant nonetheless.

In 2007 Washington’s public apology to the LGBTQ community for the derogatory comments he deliberately and repeatedly made about his costar T. R. Knight’s sexuality was a disingenuous statement to deflect attention away from his desperate effort to save his job.

Washington knows of both the psychological damage and the physical harm the word “faggot” engenders. And he knows it not only from empathizing as an African American where the n-word has been hurled at him, but he also knows of the harm the word “faggot” engenders from being called one.

Washington played the handsome Dr. Preston Burke on the hit drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” but he has taken on many other roles. His most challenging and rewarding role was that of an African-American gay male in the context of the most dangerous environment one can be in — the company of homophobic black men.

In Spike Lee’s 1996 film “Get on the Bus,” Washington and Harry J. Lennix play a black gay couple (Kyle and Randall, respectively) in the midst of a breakup that gets played out in high homophobic drama in the cramped quarters of a group of African-American men taking a cross-country bus trip from Los Angeles to our nation’s capital in order to participate in Minister Louis Farrakhan’s historic Million Man March — a march that explicitly forbade women and gay men to attend.

Playing the role of a black gay Republican Gulf War veteran, Washington imparts to the group the violent acts of homophobia and racism he incurred on an ongoing basis from his fellow comrades, like being purposely shot at by his own platoon because of both his sexual orientation and race.

In October 2006, Washington got into fisticuffs with “Grey’s Anatomy” costar Patrick Dempsey by grabbing him by the throat and outing Knight, saying, “I’m not your little faggot like [T.R. Knight].” Washington plays out a similar scene as Kyle in “Get On the Bus.”

Morgan’s homophobic rant is not about LGBTQ people, but rather it’s about the tightly constructed hyper-masculinity of black manhood.

In my brothers cultivating “images of strong black men,” can the brotherhood also include the diversity of their sexual orientations?

The Breakfast was created by the AIDS Action Committee (AAC) to recognize the role that lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities of color play in ending the AIDS epidemic.

African-Americans and Latinos make up 12 percent of the population in Massachusetts, but account for 50 percent of people living with AIDS in the state. Research from the Centers for Disease Control has found that nearly one-third of young, gay black men in the United States are HIV-positive.

But were it not for this year’s Bayard Rustin Award Winner — our beloved Gary Bailey, an African American gay social worker, educator, and indefatigable mover and shaker in our community — along with a host of others, this Breakfast would not be in existence.

“Our first meeting was held at Club Cafe, which was fairly new then. We were all sitting on chairs lined around the room,” Bailey said. “I remember it very, very well. It was a rainy day and we were all working to make this event happen and it’s just amazing how big it’s become and that it’s over 20 years old.”

Going on its 22nd anniversary, the annual Breakfast is the time of the year the African American LGBTQ communities of Greater Boston come out of its New England winter of hibernation. The event brings together huge gatherings of our allies and community members in corporate worship and fellowship with one another.

Rebecca Haag, President and CEO of AIDS Action Committee stated, “As always, the Bayard Rustin Breakfast is one of my favorite events and provides me with the inspiration I need to make it through the next month and the incredible challenge of the AIDS Walk.”

The Breakfast affords many of us in our black LGBTQ communities a sweet moment — as unabashed people of faith and as unapologetic queers living with HIV/AIDS — in corporate worship and celebration of who we are in an inclusive and welcoming public space.

This year the Breakfast changed venue from the spacious John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston’s Columbia Point to the top floor in Hibernian Hall in Roxbury. Hibernian Hall was once the hub of social activity for Boston’s Irish community that now serves its African American community. Many worried the change of venue to a smaller space with limited seating might alter the usual tone and tenor of the event. But it didn’t. Rather, the change in venue squeezed us emotionally and physically closer to each other in our fight against HIV/AIDS.

And it was symbolically significant and brave that the Breakfast was held in one of Boston’s renowned black enclaves, perhaps signifying more acceptance of its LGBTQ community.

This year’s theme was “Beyond the Numbers: Our People, Our Challenge, Our Journey.” And for many in our community that are HIV-positive, their lives, stories, and voices are spiritual inspirations to us all.

“It has been 30 years since I was diagnosed with HIV and I’m still here. As I look back over these years I see all the good things God has done and feel blessed to have such a thriving life…full of hope that one day we will find a cure for the disease and a vaccine that can prevent new infections,” Joseth Minor-Hill, chair of the Bayard Rustin Community Breakfast Committee wrote as his opening statement.

The Breakfast’s keynote speaker and recipient of the Belynda A. Dunn Award of Recognition was Pernessa Seele, and she gave a rousing homily. Seele is CEO and founder of Balm in Gilead, Inc., a religious-based organization that provides support to people with AIDS and their families, in addition to working for prevention of HIV and AIDS.

Through Balm in Gilead, Seele helped engage nearly 10 million churchgoers on the issue of HIV and AIDS by starting the Harlem Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS, which brought together 50 leaders from Harlem’s Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and traditional faith communities to begin addressing AIDS in the Black community. Seele’s Harlem Week of Prayer inspired the creation of the Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS, which eventually became the National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS, now celebrated globally.

Bailey’s work, like Seele’s, is both national and global. As the new president of the International Federation of Social Workers, a 750,000-member organization with representatives from more than 80 countries, Bailey help create a policy paper on HIV/AIDS to establish global standards on how social workers can help those impacted with and by the virus.

Bayard Rustin was a gay African American leader of the civil rights movement in the early sixties. He was one of the chief architects of the 1963 March on Washington and, from 1964 until his death in 1987, he headed the A. Phillip Randolph Institute for Racial Change. His belief in the inherent dignity of oppressed people and his vision of social change and social justice continues to inspire contemporary activists.

I think Rustin would be proud of Greater Boston’s black LGBTQ communities’ and our allies’ indefatigable work to stem the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We have a tradition of 22 years, in his name, of doing so.

The visibility of Harlem’s LGBTQ communities for the most part was forced to be on the “down low.” But gay Harlem, nonetheless, showcased its inimitable style with rent parties, speakeasies, sex circuses, and buffet flats as places to engage in protected same-gender milieux.

And let’s not forget Harlem’s notorious gay balls. During the 1920s in Harlem, the renowned Savoy Ballroom and the Rockland Palace hosted drag ball extravaganzas with prizes awarded for the best costumes. Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes depicted the balls as “spectacles of color.” George Chauncey, author of “Gay New York,” wrote that during this period “perhaps nowhere were more men willing to venture out in public in drag than in Harlem.”

As expected, however, African American ministers railed against these communities as they continue to do today. Given Harlem churches’ spiritual and sexual stronghold over its churchgoing communities, the church continues, to its detriment, to police the entire community concerning queer sexualities. Any healthy dialogue about God’s love and unquestioning acceptance of LGBTQ people is kept on lockdown, maintaining a “politic of silence” not only about LGBTQ sexualities but also about the various expressions of black sexuality as part and parcel on the continuum of human sexuality.

While most Harlem churches won’t touch LGBTQ issues, various gay-friendly arts venues in Harlem will. And the Harlem Stage is one of them, allowing a safe and uncensored space for black queer expressions.

On April 26 the Harlem Stage premiered the new documentary short film, “Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness,” allowing the largest public dialogue on same-sex marriage by LGBTQ people of color in the country. New York native and award-winning African American gay filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris directs the film, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign.

Harris tackles the continued hot-button issue in both the African American and LGBTQ communities. Civil rights: black vs. gay. Harris dismantles the false dichotomy of this ongoing debate by connecting the Black Civil Rights Movement of 1960s with the same-sex marriage equality movement of today. And he does it by focusing on African American Democratic Massachusetts State Rep. Byron Rushing, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement who, in the past decade, took the campaign for same-sex marriage into African-American communities here in Massachusetts.

Byron Rushing was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1982, and he was an original sponsor of the gay rights bill and the chief sponsor of the law to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public schools. Rushing was also one of the leaders in the constitutional convention to maintain same sex marriage in Massachusetts.

Rushing is one of the legislative pioneers in Massachusetts’s black community to address the topic of LGBTQ rights as a civil rights issue. And Harris’ film, the first of this genre, will keep the topic from slipping into the “down low” culture of black life.

“Like the Civil Rights Movement did 50 years ago, the marriage equality movement is dominating politics in the current national landscape,” Harris said. “I hope the event at Harlem Stage will launch a movement across the country where community members use the film as a way to discuss marriage and other issues of political and social importance, especially as it relates to communities of color.”

With over 200 LGBTQ people of color and allies in attendance at the Harlem Stage, renown gay African American “Washington Post” editorial writer Jonathan Capehart moderated the forum on same-sex marriage with a panel that included entrepreneur and activist Russell Simmons; Cathy Marino-Thomas, board president of Marriage Equality New York; Human Rights Campaign board of directors member David Wilson; myself; and a host of rights advocates, political activists, and religious leaders.

Whereas many African American ministers will continue to hold fast to the erroneous belief that the battle for same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue, there are, however, many African American elected officials like Rushing who know same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue.

For example, during a June 12, 2007 Capitol Hill ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down anti-miscegenation laws — and sponsored by several straight and LGBTQ civil rights organizations across the country — the Legal Defense & Educational Fund of the NAACP released an historic statement that best explains why the LGBTQ struggle for same-sex marriage is indeed a civil rights struggle: “It is undeniable that the experience of African Americans differs in many important ways from that of gay men and lesbians; among other things, the legacy of slavery and segregation is profound. But differences in historical experiences should not preclude the application of constitutional provisions to gay men and lesbians who are denied the right to marry the person of their choice.”

LGBTQ Harlemites have resigned themselves to have dialogues on same-sex marriage — if not in their black churches, then in various public gay-friendly arts venues throughout Harlem.

And in so doing, they will be standing on the shoulders of their brothers and sisters of the Harlem Renaissance.

With this month commemorating the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War, I went combing through Civil War annals to finds our queer brethren — and did!

When shots were fired from Fort Sumter, a fortification near Charleston, S.C., signaling the war’s beginning, its gay Confederate and Union soldiers didn’t have to worry about Clinton’s infamous 1993 “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy, which blatantly discriminates against LGBTQ servicemembers.

Those soldiers, unlike today’s, did not have to bear their souls to disprove that military readiness is a heterosexual calling, nor did they have to prove that their patriotism to the cause was diminished because of their sexual orientation.

Gays served in the American Civil War.

If we go with our present-day queer census, it can be estimated that one Confederate or Union soldier in ten fell in our camp.

Some queer Civil War buffs would argue that none were dishonorably discharged — albeit, there is record of three pairs of Navy sailors court-martialed for “improper and indecent intercourse with each other.” And “unit cohesion,” the big battleground issue in today’s military, believing that the “homosexual gaze” would be the root cause for the disruption — which was totally debunked by a2002 study — was not an issue.

Before DADT, our LGBTQ servicemembers were discharged under “honorable conditions” called “Fraudulent Enlistment.” More than 13,500 military personnel have been discharged under DADT, particularly Black lesbians, who have been discharged at three times the rate at which they serve.

But the question, some would argue, of who were LGBTQ servicemembers and who weren’t in the American Civil War is a disingenuous query since the words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” weren’t part of the American lexicon until thirty years after the war ended.

However, many would also argue that not having an “official” word like “homosexual” back in the day of the Civil War to depict same-sex attraction among soldiers does not negate our use of it to describe them in this present day.

And in combing through Civil War battle records of Confederate and Union soldiers, I find, they were not only slaughtering one another — many were also “loving” one another.

Learning about same-sex love among soldiers wasn’t Thomas P. Lowry’s focus when he sat out to pen “The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War,” the first scholarly study of the sex lives of soldiers in the Civil War.

This physician and medical historian reminds me of Alfred Kinsey in his research on human sexuality. Using archival documents such as court-martial and medical records, newspaper articles, pornographic books and cards, and letters and diaries of the soldiers, Lowry’s focus was to address the problem of prostitution — straight and gay — and why both the Union and Confederate Armies had to work to stop STIs (sexually transmitted infections) from crippling their soldiers, because STDs were costing more in soldier’s health and lives than action on the battlefield.

Chapter 11 of Lowry’s book opens the closet door on gender-bending and same-sex trysts. And Lowry reveals that during the Civil War conventional gender roles and sexual behavior could not be strictly tethered to a heterosexual paradigm. With men outnumbering women, especially at social events like balls, “Drummer Boys” — children as young as 9 and 10 years old — dressed in drag. And in some occasions, the intimacy between soldiers and Drummer boys reached beyond just a public waltz.

For example, Lowry references a ball put on by a Massachusetts regiment stationed in Virginia in 1864 about young drummer boys dressed as women. One man wrote to his wife: “Some of the real women went, but the boy girls were so much better looking that they left. …We had some little Drummer Boys dressed up and I’ll bet you could not tell them from girls if you did not know them. …Some of [the Drummer Boys] looked good enough to lay with and I guess some of them did get laid with. …I know I slept with mine.”

History proves that LGBTQ servicemembers have been proudly and openly putting our lives on the line for their countries since antiquity.

The Greeks favored gay and bisexual young men in their military. Since gay and bisexual men were considered a family unit, the Greeks knew that paired male lovers assigned to the same battalions were a military asset. They would fights courageously, side by side, and would die heroically together in battle. Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), who was king of Macedonia and noted as one of the greatest military conquerors, was probably openly bisexual. When his lover Hephaestion died in battle, Alexander the Great not only mourned openly for his lover, but he staged an extravagant funeral, which took six months to prepare.

Lowry is not the first to write about Confederate and Union soldiers in the Civil War, but he is the first to recognize an LGBT presence in it.

But as lesbian women of African descent, my struggle for justice intersects several fronts. Often times, it’s not only the nationally organized visible and vociferous movements in our country like the gay, or women’s, or black civil rights movements.

Sometimes — like today — my struggle begins in the morning doing battle with the cosmetics and personal care products I use trying to present my best self publicly. I start my morning having to discern if the seemingly innocuous lock and twist gel I’ve been putting in my hair for years and the cocoa butter I’ve been putting on my face to smooth marks and scars and dry skin all my life are not toxic products marketed to black women.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC), a coalition of nonprofit organizations and concerned people like public health, educational, religious, labor, women’s, environmental, and consumer groups, makes it their business securing the corporate, regulatory, and legislative reforms to stop the beauty industry from using toxic chemicals that can cause hormone disruption, reproductive harm, immune system toxicity, and cancer, to name a few.

There exists lead in lipstick, contaminants in bath products, and dibutyl phthalate (DBP), a reproductive and developmental toxin in nail polish. CSC aims to get companies to use safer alternatives and they have had astounding victories.

The CSC consumer campaign began in 2002 with the release of a report, “Not Too Pretty: Phthalates, Beauty Products, and the FDA,” highlighting the deleterious effects of off-the-shelf beauty products with phthalates, a family of industrial chemicals linked to permanent birth defects in the male reproductive system.

Author Stacy Malkan of “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry,” and co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, went knocking on the doors of the world’s largest cosmetics companies to ask these tough questions: “Why do beauty companies market themselves as pink ribbon leaders in the fight against breast cancer, yet use chemicals that may contribute to that very disease? Why do products marketed to women and children contain chemicals and heavy metals linked to reproductive harm?”

Since CSC’s “Not Too Pretty” report they have done several campaigns and informative reports about toxic cosmetics and personal care products women use.

The campaign targeted to black women is titled “Not So Pretty.”

While the intent of the campaign is to reach out to sisters like myself, the title of the campaign is not only a turn-off, but it also dredges up a painful historical and exploitative figure in black women’s lives: The Hottentot Venus.

In May 2002 when the remains of Sarah “Saartjie” Baartman, derogatorily known as the “Hottentot Venus,” were finally repatriated to her homeland of Cape Town, South Africa, a collective sigh of relief could be heard from women of African descent across the globe.

No longer, many of us thought, would black women’s bodies be the spectacle for anthropological curiosities, scientific exploration, or commercial exploitation to satisfy racist agendas or financial greed. From slave to traveling freak show performer, Baartman traveled throughout Europe from 1810 until her death in 1815 as a human exhibition, because of her highly unusual bodily features: large buttocks and elongated labia.

As a human exhibition, Baartman become not only the iconic image to denigrate black women’s beauty — hence, “not so pretty” — but Baartman also became the symbolic vehicle, and commercial accessibility to experiment with any and all part of black women’s bodies.

From “Circus Africanus” to present-day surgical theater and chemical warfare, the assaults on black women’s bodies are unrelenting.

CSC’s “Not So Pretty” report is indeed not so pretty when given the alarming data.

I find out that, as a black woman, I’m disproportionately exposed to toxic chemicals not only in my community, but also in my workplace. I am also informed that products specifically marketed to my population, like skin lighteners to smooth out dark marks and scars, and hair relaxers, hair sprays, hair lotions, shampoos, and even lock and twist gel, all contain a higher toxicity, and some of the most toxic chemicals than those marketed to the general population.

According to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, the early and life-long exposure to hair products — including heavy conditioners that contain placenta and other hormone-disrupting ingredients — may be contributing to the high rates of breast cancer in young African American women.

Black women’s hair continues to be a contentions topic and tangled in politics. And the question many may have to grapple with about their hair is the issue safety.

Is it better being nappy and natural than taking the risk of having silky straight hair with the various “creamy crack” chemical straighteners?

The most toxic hair relaxer on the store shelves today is Skin Deep called Africa’s Best “Organic” relaxer — for kids! It’s an unregulated product raising another problem: toxic treatments being marketed to very young black girls at a time when their bodies are most vulnerable to harm.

This morning, I wanted to feel pretty and worry-free, so I sprayed nothing on my locks and put nothing on my face.

Her media stardom and public ministry make her omnipresent as well as omnipotent. Her converts would argue she is also omniscient, especially with her monthly oracle — “O, The Oprah Magazine”– pontificating the principles of self-help, self-love, and self-giving.

Oprah’s principles empower women the world over and derive from her own personal narrative.

And because she has been so public about her life it appears that no topic is off-limits with the queen of daytime talk. But when it comes to talking about her private sexual life, the public feels, Oprah is neither honest nor open.

The public no longer queries Oprah about her longtime boyfriend, Stedman Graham, of twenty-plus years: they meet in 1986, were engaged in 1992, and now no wedding is in sight.

And it’s rumored the relationship soured, and that Oprah and Stedman no longer reside together — albeit she denies it — but rather he ceremonially shows up as Oprah’s escort for important photo-op moments, like the Dec. 5 Kennedy Center honors. And according to the recent “Star Magazine” article titled “O, Please!: Oprah & Stedman Put on a Show,” the “distance between the two isn’t just geographical.”

But the distance, as the public has witnessed, both geographically as well as emotionally between Oprah and her gal pal, Gayle King, editor-at-large for “O, The Oprah Magazine,” isn’t. And for over two decades now Oprah has denied the rumors that she and Gayle are more than just two sistah-girls being sister-friends.

After 30 years of four-times-a-day phone calls, and frequent sightings of where you see Oprah you also see Gayle, the public continues to question Oprah about their relationship.

“No, I’m not a lesbian, I’m not even kind of a lesbian,” Oprah stated on “A Barbara Walters Special: Oprah, The Next Chapter.”

“The reason why it irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying. That’s number one,” Winfrey told Walters. “Number two…why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”

In a culture that constantly sexualizes the coupling of same-gender and opposite-gender consenting age adults, we ignore our own friendships with our “best friends forever” (BFF).

In all human relationships — sexual or platonic — we long for a relational connectedness to spend as much time as possible with, at least, one person in our lifetime who shares our common interests and highest ideals.

The words “friend” and “freedom” derive from the same Indo-European and Sanskrit etymological roots, meaning “to be fond of” or “to hold dear.” When it comes to a having a friendship with someone, the relationship should never be predicated on gender, age, race, or sexual orientation, but rather it should be built on the deep heart-to-heart sharing, accountability, and sustainability that only a good friend can give you.

Feminist theologian Mary E. Hunt states, “Friendship is a relatively rare topic in patriarchal Christian theology, having long taken a backseat to marriage as the normative adult human relationship. This led to the hegemony of heterosexual marriage as the standard. …Friendship is the most inclusive way to describe a variety of voluntary relationships, including women with women, men with men, women with men, adults with children, humans with animals, persons with the Divine, and humans with the earth.”

Oprah explained to Walters her relationship with BFF Gayle:

“She is…the mother I never had. She is…the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person. I don’t know a better person.”

In our culture of constantly labeling same-gender relationships as gay, it diminishes and distorts the romantic relationships we lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have with our significant others. As a matter of fact, constantly labeling same-gender relationships as gay not only wrongly assumes that the only reason for two people of the same gender getting together is for sex, but it also keeps in place the myth of the hypersexual and predatory homosexual.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Ruth and Naomi narrative is an iconic text used in civil unions and weddings of LGBTQ couples.

It reads:

“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me,” Ruth uttered to her mother-in-law Naomi.

The narrative holds high esteem in my community not because the women are lesbians, but rather because the narrative depicts an unconventional relationship about loyalty and love that crosses the boundaries of age, nationality and religion; thus, by extension embracing a variety of voluntary same-gender coupling — straight or gay.

Oprah is not gay, folks!

And she’s not a closeted dyke either, but rather the world’s beloved daytime talk show diva.

As one of the most renowned and liberal institutions in the world, it’s always hurtful and harmful — both to the campus milieu and the school’s reputation — when racist and sexist acts occur at Harvard University.

Last month, a lengthy email written by a third-year student and an editor on the Harvard Law Review, Stephanie Grace, was printed by the legal blog abovethelaw.com. In that email, Grace wrote that she thought blacks might be genetically inferior to whites: “I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent,” she said. (Grace’s comment came following a private dinner conversation about affirmative action and race.)

As we all know, affirmative action is a hot-button issue. At a basic level, it’s an attempt to take race, gender and ethnicity (to name only a few factors) into consideration to promote a level playing field for all. But the sub-text in all affirmative action debates is the fallacious belief that blacks selected to benefit from it are hopelessly and helplessly genetically inferior — that their DNA is chromosomally deficient, if not defective.

The myth of genetic inferiority of people of African ancestry is centuries old, tracing back to when the first slave boat arrived on our shores in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. The myth of genetic inferiority of people of African ancestry not only legitimatized slavery, but also biblically sanctioned it. It was aided by people like Nobel Laureate William Shockley, who in 1956 voiced his theory of a genetic basis for racial inferiority. As part of his theory on the biology of ethnicity, Shockley stated that people of African ancestry belonged to a lower species of humanity, and deserved sterilization.

The idea of sterilizing blacks — because we supposedly belonged to a “lower species of humanity” — was part and parcel of the American eugenics movement, which started in 1926. Even Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger — an iconic figure for the women’s reproductive rights movement — espoused eugenics theory, backing the 1939 “Negro Project,” which was a precursor to what eugenists wanted to implement on a much larger scale.

As Sanger told the Senate in 1932, “The main objectives of the [proposed] Population Congress is to…apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”

Debates about genetic inferiority is not new, and perhaps will continue, especially in light of ongoing debates about affirmative action. But it’s surprising to find them at an institution of learning like Harvard.

Then again, Harvard is also the place where in January 2005, then-president of the University, Larry Summers, espoused his belief in the genetic inferiority of women. At a conference discussing why women are underrepresented in tenured science and engineering jobs at the best universities and research institutions, Summers stated that one explanation might be the “different availability of aptitude at the high end.” Summers went on to say that his “best guess” was that “there are issues of intrinsic aptitude,” meaning men tend to have a broader range of I.Q. scores than women — what he said was a more important factor to explain the lack of women in such fields than “different socialization and patterns of discrimination.”

As a woman, Grace surely realizes the absurdity of Summers’ argument, an absurdity that’s true of her own as well.

What do Grace’s views mean for her future career? The Harvard Law Review is one of the premierjournals of legal scholarship in the country. Grace is an editor of the journal, and will soon be an attorney. In her practice, will Grace be espousing racist legal theory? She gradutes this week.

Many of the journal’s alumni have gone on to be Supreme Court justices, cabinet secretaries and U.S. government officials. But only one went on to become president of the U.S. — Barack Obama, a man who was admitted thanks to affirmative action.

While Grace might argue that Obama is advantaged in terms of genetic intelligence because he’s biracial — as opposed to black — let’s remember that it was his Kenyan father who graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. in economics, not his white mother.

Not surprisingly, Harvard Law School’s dean, Martha Minow, has denounced Grace’s email, stating that the school is “committed to preventing degradation of any individual or group.” But as long as discrimination along the lines of race, class and gender persist, girded by attitudes of white superiority like Grace’s, society will miss out on the future Barack Obamas of the world.

Wright’s long and arduous struggle to come out has transformed her into an activist who’ll be joining the board of Faith In America, founded by furniture mogul Mitchell Gold.

“So what’s all this got to do with us?,” Gold wrote in an email to board members, which includes me. “On this Tuesday [May 4] she will be coming OUT….and speaking all her truths….how she was so close to suicide, how she now knows she can be gay and a Christian, how God created her and loves her the way she is…..all the things a 14 year old kid living in a home of country western fans might need to hear. All the things voting age fans need to hear.”

Faith in America, a national nonprofit, is a North Carolina-based 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2005 with a mission to educate the public about the harm caused to LGBT Americans when certain church teachings are misused to justify and promote hostile attitudes and actions toward us.

Gold said Wright’s life experiences drew her to the work Faith In America is doing, recognizing LGBT individuals suffer emotional, psychological, and physical harm because of a societal climate that places a religious and moral stamp of approval on prejudice and discrimination toward them.

In a letter to board members, Gold wrote us expressing his delight in having Wright come on the board:

“We discussed Chely joining our board and she wants to more than ever. In fact, in her new CD she has a wonderful insert telling people about 4 organizations she cares about. I’m very proud that 3 of them are through my introductions: Faith In America, Interfaith Alliance, and GLSEN. The other is “reading, writing and rhythm,” a non-profit she started that is dedicated to improving education in public schools.”

In Gold’s book, Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America, it exposes the fear, isolation, depression, and even suicidal feelings young LGBT Americans face from the time they realize they are different until they have a healthy coming out.

Since a child, Wright, who scored a #1 hit with “Single White Female” in 1999, and was named Academy of Country Music new artist of the year, knew she was gay but feared coming out for decades.

Growing up in a conservative Christian and country music environment, Wright told Ms. magazine she thought prayer would fix her.

“Early in my life I went through what I think a lot of gay people go through, thinking that I could change and pray it away.” Wright’s simply prayer was “Dear God, please don’t let me be gay.”

In her memoir, Wright talks about her depression, dating men in an attempt to live a “normal life,” (Wright has been romantically linked to country star Brad Paisley, along with a number of other celebrities in the past), and a suicide attempt in the wake of the break-up with a woman she describes as the “love of my life.”

Wright has been on the country music scene since 1994, and professionally she worried about her career as an out lesbian, stating, “No one like me in country music has ever admitted his or her homosexuality.” While it is true that k.d. lang was an out lesbian in country music, she eventually moved out of the genre into pop, leaving many to speculate she did so because of her sexual orientation.

For years, speculations abounded about Wright’s sexual orientation and have always dogged her.

“You know, people talk about you…They wonder if you’re, you know, gay or something like that… You know, that’s not cool, if you’ve chosen to live that kind of lifestyle. Fans won’t have it. This industry won’t allow it. This is country music. It’s about God and country and family. People don’t approve of that kind of deviant behavior. It’s a sin,” John Rich of country duo Big & Rich stated, advising Wright not to publicly disclose her sexual orientation.

Not only did fans speculate about Wright’s sexual orientation, so too did many who worked with her. In wanting to obtain a first-hand account on Wright I asked my neighbors who once worked in the industry.

“I don’t know much at all about Chely Wright. However, my husband knows a bit. He worked with her at one point. He says that she was always ‘open’ to the people who worked with her – or at least that they knew she was a lesbian – and that he has known for 16 years or so. In his opinion, at that time it hurt her career because many of the people she worked with, musicians playing with her, were ‘devout’ Christians who didn’t like her or the way she lived, and only played with her because it was a paycheck. He said she was the butt of many jokes on tour buses.”

Wright told People.com, “Nothing in my life has been more magical than the moment I decided to come out,” acknowledging her self-acceptance was a hard and lonesome road traveled.

Wright might lose some old friends, but she’ll also make new friends, one of which is Mitchell Gold.

“Last night [May 3] we had a quiet dinner with her and her sister,” Gold wrote to the board members. “She’s nervous but ready. It was about the most perfect evening for her…. she left being so much at peace with herself.”

I look forward to meeting her at our May 21 board meeting.