Lesbian Ghost Hunters & The Black Pride 4
By: Mad Dyke
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Culture, LGBTQ, TV Series, Paranormal

Some of us came out in our twenties, others in our teens, some not until later in life, but occasionally, every now and then, being gay in our society is so goddamn stressful that some people wait until they’ve been dead for 100 years to come out post-mortem to a bunch of gay ghost hunters in Ohio.

There’s apparently been a show about queer ghost hunters on YouTube for, like, five years, and I just found out about it through a New York Post article about a dead lesbian nun. (I don’t even think they air new episodes anymore, sorry.) So, technically this dead nun came out to them in 2018, but I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here for any fun gay news so pls bear with me. According to the trailer for the show (which came out when Obama was still president), this motley queer crew decided to search for spirits “like them” after learning that the ghost hunting world always assumes specters are straight. (We cannot escape compulsory heterosexuality even in death.)

Some of the gay spirits they spoke with included a lesbian nun — “I’m always interested in seeing if I can find lesbian ghosts” one of the hunters, who looks kind of like a brunette lesbian version of Dog the Bounty Hunter, said — a gay prisoner, and a “trio of performers from a 1930s gay bar.” They even flirted with them, too. (It’s hard to meet living single available gays in your area.)

There’s one scene where Brunette Dog is speaking to a dead gay in a 1920s ballroom, where she asks if they had to keep their sexuality a secret. The lil ghost reader meter flicks to “yes.” Then in what sounds like a beautifully thick and perfect Long Island accent (is that how ppl in Ohio sound??), BD says “Wow, that’s tough stuff, I’m sorry.” Just as I’m in the middle of falling in love with this tri-state-area-sounding queen, my girlfriend tells me a story that completely derailed my interest in the dead dyke nun.

Years ago, Brunette Dog (aka Lori Gum, who has since cut her hair and looks like a silver fox) was the Pride festival coordinator in Columbus when the Black Pride 4 protested the event in 2017. The Black Pride 4 was the nickname given to the four activists — Wriply Bennet, Kendall Denton, Ashley Braxton, and DeAndre Antonio Miles-Hercules — who were violently detained after organizing a demonstration to “raise awareness about the violence against and erasure of Black and brown queer and trans people, in particular the lack of space for Black and brown people at pride festivals.”

Their peaceful protest was also held in response to the acquittal of Jeronimo Yanez, the police officer who killed Philando Castile in a suburb of Saint Paul, Minnesota in July 2016. His acquittal came a year after the murder and just a day before the 2017 Columbus Pride parade. During the demonstration, where protestors locked arms with duct tape over their mouths while holding signs, Bennet, Denton, Braxton, and Antonio Miles-Hercules were assaulted by officers as they were taken into custody. As Gum put it, she saw “Black faces pushed in asphalt and police on top of them.”

All they were asking for was seven minutes of silence on behalf of Castile, the countless murders of Black and brown queer and trans people, and the lack of diversity at Pride events. Seven. Fucking. Minutes. During their violent arrests, the (mostly white) crowd “laughed and cheered and recorded and said ignorant things,” Bennet said. “Having a Pride parade that is predominately white and then over-policed by a system of police that have been murdering Black folk in your city, it absolutely excludes Black and brown folk of color, trans folk, LGBTQIA folk from the Pride event and other events following.”

Three of the protestors, Bennet, Denton, and Braxton, ended up getting probation in 2018, despite repeated calls for the charges to be dropped. The fourth protestor, Antonio Miles-Hercules, who was accused of attempting to disarm an officer as they were attacking their friend, initially had a bond of $100,000. “I am still coming to terms with the price tag of my freedom,” they told Teen Vogue at the time, noting that the bond system “continues to capitalize upon Black pain in service of the prison industrial complex.” They eventually reached a plea deal the following year. “My resolve to continue fighting for the liberation of qtpoc [queer and transgender people of color] and to live as freely as possible remains unshaken,” they wrote on Facebook.

A week after the arrests of the Black Pride 4, Gum, our beloved ghost hunter, stepped down from her position as the program coordinator at Stonewall Columbus, the organization that hosts the Columbus Pride event every year. “I think that trust has been damaged permanently with this community,” she said. “Pride started as a protest, so to say that somehow this protest does not belong in Pride is absurd. It is absolutely absurd.” Yeah it sure fucking is. “There’s always been the issue in this community of particularly queer people of color not having a voice in the LGBTQ organizations,” she added. “This conversation has to start with queer people of color, defining the agenda of the conversation.”

While that was four years ago, sadly I feel like we’ve barely moved an inch as a society. Cops are still killing and getting acquitted. White gays still overpower every single LGBTQ space. White people in general are still racist af. I don’t have any conclusions to draw, I’m just sad and embarrassed.

Was this a story about a four-year-old reality TV show that morphed into a story about an iconic protest for Black queer rights? Uh huh. Now I’m gonna go buy a Ouija board and see if their are any dead single soft butches in my area.