My wife and I recently marked our 20th Wedding Anniversary, only days after same-sex marriage was legalized in our home state of New York. When we married 20 years ago, many in our generation were enamoured with re-connecting with our West African heritage. As Kente cloth became the rage on 125th Street and other centers of urban blackness, and leather Africa medallions with red, black, and green replaced the trunk jewelry of the mid-1980s, more than a few of us chose to mark our matrimonial rituals with symbolic gestures like jumping the broom.
"Jumping the Broom," which mainstream Americans were introduced to after the groundbreaking mini-series Roots was broadcast in January of 1977, highlights the enduring faith that enslaved Africans had in the power of family and commitment. Denied access to legal marriage, jumping the broom was a symbolic act of defiance; indeed even after blacks could legally marry, the act of marriage, with or without the broom, was an act of resistance within a society that denied blacks their full humanity.
The belief that blacks held in marriage and life-time partnership was part of the mantra of "making a way out of now way" -- a mantra that Black communities shared with the world during the watershed moments of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
That symbolism was not lost on my wife and I at the time of our marriage; yes, it was a chance to unite in the eyes of the law and within the tenets of our Christian beliefs and our parents' values --they were collectively married 86 years -- but it was more than anything an act of faith. That symbolism is not lost on thousands of New Yorkers who are now to also share in such acts of faith -- also in the eyes of the -- law -- thanks to the legalization of same-sex marriages in New York State.
There are those, of course, who claim that same-sex marriage is a sign of the continued demise of the black family. Christopher Arps of the Project 21 Black Leadership Network and founder of Move-on-Up.org, asks for example, "with the black family in freefall, why define and diminish the value of marriage?" Arps suggest that homosexuality is an abomination, citing the requisite example of Christian doctrine, ignoring that that same Christian doctrine was invoked to justify the enslavement of blacks in the first place.
Even as so many will cite that 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers, a closer view of those numbers suggest that very often there are two parents present in the household and even when that isn't the case, both parents continue to see themselves as co-parents. The genius of black survival in this country, whether during chattel slavery or the economic crisis of today, has been their willingness, time and time again, to re-interpret doctrine -- whether legal or biblical -- in ways that best served their humanity, and ultimately the humanity of the nation.
Jumping the Broom was one of the best examples of blacks to buck the status quo in the pursuit of what was right -- to make a way out of no way. In legalizing same-sex marriage, New York State has also done the right thing and will allow many more to jump the broom into full equality.
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And just because a group is a minority doesn't mean that other minority groups should cosign anything the other group puts forth. Minority issues, like any other, should be based on merit and shared ideas, not simply the fact that both groups are of a minority.
All we want to do is live an honest true life and we keep saying that we were born this way as I am more than certain that I was but no you keep insisting that we choose to be gay.
WHY would we choose this? Why would we choose to be beaten, discriminated against, and told repeatedly that we are lesser because of whom we love.
Now I will say I will fight to the death for your right to believe as you want because that is your choice but I must remind you that the same book that you are using to clobber us with is the very same book used to justify the shackles and chains laid upon your ancestors.
Slavery and the civil rights movement should have never been and never been neccesary but sadly it was and is part of our collective history, but the notion that you put forth that our merit dictates our civil rights is ludicrious, What did we not suffer enough? One would think that someone who fought for equality would advocate equality for all regardless if you agree with our lives or not. You are not truly free until everyone can enjoy what you were only recently given.
Lastly please if you will tell me what is immoral about my husband and I's marriage? We go to work , we pay taxes, we are raising children, we worry about where money is going to come from to pay for braces. I get up in the morning and cook breakfast, and I would like to get through the day and back to the safest place I know and thats in the arms of the one who loves me with all his might. You would take love away from me because you think I'm immoral?
All I want is to lay my head down at night and not worry that should I not wake in the morning that my husband and my children won't have to suffer further and struggle to survive and hold on to the things that are ours without further humilition from people like you who would strip them, us, of our rights and dignity