In the Bible, for instance, lepers are considered to be sinners. You cannot take everything you read in the Old Testament literally. “But in my opinion, the judgment of the church on the issue of homosexuality is a cultural judgment left over from the Old Testament. I go to mass every Sunday,” says Garcia, who’s now a social worker. Navarro also found solace in the advice of Pedro Garcia, a former priest who was struggling with his own questions about sexual identity. She said, ‘I’ll work on your father.’ He may not love the idea, but he accepts it.” We see ourselves as brothers and sons, and the family’s determined to stick together no matter what. It’s different, I think, than Anglo tradition, which is more oriented to the individual.
“I admit I subscribed to the stereotype that Mexicans have this macho thing where they can’t accept homosexuality,” says Navarro. When he finally summoned up the courage to tell his parents that he was gay, he found them more sympathetic than he had ever imagined–a sympathy he attributes to their heritage. Being gay is more than what’s below your waist.” We’re sending the wrong message to young gays and lesbians who learn to define themselves strictly as sexual beings. And it’s sad that you have to come out at bars. It’s unfortunate that we have to leave our community to come to terms with our identity. “But it’s so repressed, so under the surface. “There’s a gay presence in the Mexican community–there’s a gay bar in Little Village, for instance, where they have great drag shows, and all these macho men wearing boots and sombreros,” he says.
LATIN GAY BAR CHICAGO FREE
“It’s part of the larger fear of not being accepted.”īy the time he was 18, Navarro, who was raised in a large Catholic family, was spending most of his free time at gay bars on the north side. “The fear of violence is in the back of our minds,” says Navarro, citing gays who were showered with stones and bottles when they marched in New York’s 1992 Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Certainly few would have marched in any ethnic-pride parades. Up until now black and Latino gays (as well as most white ethnic gays, for that matter) have shied away from their home communities, in part because of the parochialism of those old neighborhoods. Our second goal is to craft activities that inspire black lesbians and gays in the black community to stand tall and proud.” “One is to provide opportunities for the larger heterosexual black community to see, know, talk, and work with ‘out’ black lesbians and gays.
“We have two goals,” says Karen Hutt, a member of APBLG. The marchers went on to form the Active Proud Black Lesbians & Gays, which is getting involved in south- and west-side politics. Earlier in the summer, a group of black gays and lesbians marched in the Chicago Defender- organized Bud Billiken Day Parade even though the parade’s sponsors initially tried to ban them. Navarro’s group isn’t the only one saying it. That choice is unfair and we’re starting to say it.” For years we have had to choose between a closeted existence or moving to gay ghettos. “This was about more than marching in a parade–it’s about gays being accepted in the communities in which we were raised.