From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Lee: Skip work to attend Malcolm X
Date: 4 Sep 92 17:16:37 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <stovall.715550501@ficus.cs.ucla.edu> stovall@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Steven Stovall) writes:
>
>I aint down with homophobia...but I sure aint down with homophilia...
>and neither was Malcolm X or El Hajj Malik. You cant be a Muslim (or
>even a Sufi mystic :-) and say that there is no God and no revelation
>and no hereafter, so get busy, everything is permissable.

What does homosexuality have to do with denying the existance of God?
This black, gay, christian would like to know. (Oh well, now I've said
it. I can smell smoke rising from those keyboards now.)

>
>I kind of glossed over the part about early, pre-Detroit Red homosexual
>experiences. To me, the whole issue is that the behavior is *behavior*,
>and if he had early homosexual experiences, he left them behind when
>he became Malcolm X, because he *had* to in order to be a Muslim.

Supressing one's desires and "leaving them beind" are two different
things, and  I don't believe the latter is ever really possible.
I will allow that Malcolm may have "had" to supress some of his
desires in order to be a Muslim, because the religion does not allow
the free expression thereof. In that case, I would pity him, because I
have been there, in a sense, and know the kind of deep and painful
cleaving that can cause in a person.


>He was a great, great man. I just dont think that the assertions of this
>book should be used to validate gay experience in this country, because
>that would be diametrically opposed to Islam and to who Malcolm was at
>the end...a devout Muslim. 

	Having not read the boook, yet, I am at a disadvantage.
However, I have a suspicion that the claims of Malcolm's homsexual
experiences are not being used to validate the experience of those who
openly identify ourselves as gay. It is merely a means of exposing a
side of the man that many have desired not to face, to the point of
hostility at the mere mention. 
	It is funny how simply mentioning that a man had a homosexual
experience or two suddenly makes his admirers nervous that someone is
trying to say that the man was gay (because this is, of course,
interpreted as a negative attack on his character), as if one or two
experiences could label a person gay. Would it make youf eel better if
he were simply bisexual?  Does it really matter in the first place?
Even then, I'm sure some will simply say "OK, so he slip upped with a
coupla faggots there, but he was still a BROTHA!"
	I understand that the opening scene of Lee's movie portrays
Malcom as young Detroit Red, naked and in bed with a white female
prostitute. This caused consternation among quite a few of the
Niggerati. I can't help but wonder what might have happened if the
film were being made by Marlon Riggs or Isaac Julien, and the opening
scene showed our hero naked, in bed, and making love to another man
who happened to be white.



-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american,misc.headlines