by L. Michael Gipson

I was having a conversation on Facebook about the Oscars, doing my usual campy commentary on everything from the innumerable Grey Garden Grecian gowns to the bizarre choreo-miming to the “Best Song” nominees, when someone stopped my kitsch cold with a single post. The poster was an FB friend spouting annoyance because Tom Ford’s directorial debut, A Single Man, was not a major nominee (Colin Firth was a lone nominee in the Best Actor category). The “friend” sighed and lamented that last year’s Oscars must have been the designated year for the gays, and this year there appeared to be none in sight. You see, gay-themed movies like Milk and openly gay screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn (who brilliantly played gay for pay) were big award-winners at the 81^st Annual Awards ceremony. Reading his naive sounding post, I released an exasperated sigh before settling into what can only be described as a mild but fitting rebuke. A humorous correction was delivered, but now I was annoyed.

So, it may not have yet struck you why I would consider this post offensive. When considering hyper-hetero movies like Avatar and The Hurt Locker, it sounds like my friend, who shall remain nameless, had a good point. Only, he didn’t. He was dead wrong. It certainly didn’t immediately occur to my friend, but 2009, and so far 2010, have indeed been the year(s) of the gays, only these gays don’t look like my pleasingly alabaster friend. The last 12 months in particular have been unusually kind to Black LGBT/SGL people, only our race—in some eyes—seems to make our queerness vanish in ways that Donnie McClurkin can only pray for. That my friend was watching the same awards show and failed to see his members of his sexual orientation reflected back to him on the screen was telling, since we were there in spades (no pun intended). More than there, we were being celebrated. Only not the celebration was not by the white gay media and possibly not by the majority gay community, a rather queer turn of events, all things considered.

Precious is based on the book by Sapphire. Sapphire is a Black lesbian poet and storyteller. Her work provided the foundation for Geoffrey S. Fletcher to win the first Academy Awards ever given to a Black screenwriter for a screen adaptation. A Black lesbian’s work provided the impetus for only the second black director in history to be nominated for an Academy Awards, openly gay filmmaker Lee Daniels. Daniels direction and casting decisions meant that Black queer folks were portrayed on screen positively, in non-stereotypical ways for perhaps the first time in an American major motion picture. And yet, neither Sapphire nor Daniels made the covers of any major gay media publications. Maybe these two burgeoning brown icons weren’t gay to Out and The Advocate either (to be fair, neither history maker have made the covers of Black gay publications either, but that’s another post).

Beyond Precious, the flamboyant winner of the 2009 Best Short Documentary, Roger Ross Williams (Music by Prudence), seemed pretty clearly to play on our side of the fence. We won’t begin to talk about show presenters like Queen Latifah and Tyler Perry, for whom speculation is ever present. And, yet my friend, and those who possibly agreed, could not see people of his tribe reflected on that Kodak Theater stage because they didn’t look like him. I often want to see Black LGBT/SGL people represented on LOGO, on film festival screens, and throughout Hollywood, but it never occurs to me to say there are no gays being presented because LGBT people of color are not represented. And yet, for some white gay folks, apparently my folks’ invisibility is common even when we’re in plain sight.

The last year has been highly visible for successful Black LGBT/SGL people for anyone paying attention. Annisse Parker became the first openly gay or lesbian mayor of a major U.S. city. A Black gay artist, Nhojj, topped MTV music with his hit song “Love.” A black openly lesbian comic, Wanda Sykes, helms a late night talk show on Fox and is a bonafide comedic draw nationwide. A Black transgender, RuPaul, helms one of the most successful reality show competitions on cable, with her name above the marquee no less. An openly Black gay man, Keith Boykin, is made a regular on CNN and strongly considering a run for U.S. Congress. Black Entertainment Television (BET) employs not one, but two openly BGMs who write unapologetically about art, music and culture from a Black gay perspective (me and Clay Cane), so does the LA Times (respected critic Ernest Hardy). Precious swept the NAACP Image Awards with all the lead players and the films taking home top honors over Tyler Perry’s flick. The city with the second highest number of Black gay people in the nation, Washington, DC, helped secure same sex marriage rights in their jurisdiction, with a majority Black city council. This year’s Grammy-nominated artist, Tonex, arguably the most talented gospel artist alive, came out of the closet as a bi-sexual man. From web shows like DramaQueenz, successful blogs like Rod 2.0, Jasmyne Cannick, and Living Out Loud with Darien, magazines like Swerv and Bleu, life coaches and media mavens like Herndon Davis, Rev. Kevin E. Taylor, and Nathan Scott, Black LGBT/SGL people are making it happen on every front.

Now it’s my time to join them. To do even more of my part to help make Black LGBT/SGL success and representation more visible, not for those with blinders, but for those who need to see themselves affirmed, validated, and reflected back at them to know what dreams are possible. With the Summer 2010 Red Dirt publication of my first collection of short stories, Collisions: A Collection of Intersections, my demanding tenures on SoulTracks.com (Music Editor), BET/Centric (Soul Sessions Blog Leader), The Dave Brown Radio Show (weekly featured guest), and the new launch of my company, Faithwalk LLC, time is becoming tight. Choices had to be made, and so after nearly two years I must now bid farewell to my Music and Musings readership. Maybe with more of us out there, visibly tearing down oppression’s walls by our talents, by our very beings, we can all be seen and celebrated in the ways our efforts deserve. In the spirit of continuity, consider this blog post, my last, both my goodbye and my hello. You’ll be “seeing” me.