Fashion on the Fringe

Greg Turner Takes His Boutique From the Web to N High Street

When looking at the economic landscape in Columbus, or any metropolitan city for that matter, you find few openly gay people of color who own businesses. I’m not sure I can even name 10.

But there are a select few, such as Greg Turner of the newly opened Fringe, who are breaking the mold.

When Turner, a Columbus inner-city native, found himself working at a grocery store with a bachelor’s degree in political science, he began questioning everything he thought he knew about himself. He was in the process coming out and realizing that law school was his parents’ dream and not his own.

He started “living life on the fringe.” Quite literally.

“I was going through a depression era and the idea of ‘living life on the fringe’ came out of that journey, because that’s what I felt like I had to do to be who I truly am,” Turner said.

Turner took his love of fashion and an early dream to start his own business and founded Fringe, originally an e-commerce website that’s become a full-fledged casual fashion boutique located at 1177 N High St in the Short North (fringedlife.com). He stocks a host of alternative fashions, a sort of cross between hipster chic and business casual realness.

“I was really just trying to create a sense of happiness for myself,” Turner said. “Growing up closeted really suppressed my interests in fashion, but after I came out and really starting discovering who I was, it unlocked my creative self.”

The popularity of Fringe’s e-commerce beginnings quickly spiraled into “pop-up shops,” a popular venture during the most recent recession that had artisans creating shopping compounds in empty storefronts. Turner also worked the festival circuit, building a brand through purely grassroots efforts.

Soon he was pulling thousand-dollar days through just pop-ups and festivals.

“The Fringe launch party in 2010 and my first Independents Day Festival were pinnacle moments,” Turner said. “What blew me away was that people actually did buy things, they got my dream and understood what I was trying to create.”

Turner moved Fringe into the Short North location late last year and had a light opening on Oct. 6, mostly featuring graphic tees and accessories. Expansion plans include a denim line and more women’s options. A grander grand opening is in the planning stages.

“My approach to fashion isn’t rigid or hardcore,” he said. “I consider fashion an extension of our inner selves and how you express that on the outside. If you can wear anything confidently and look like you own it, to me that is true fashion.”

Turner took a dream and a little gumption and made his own little place of paradise. He admits to not possessing any sort of traditional fashion or business training, yet he operates one of the city’s few black gay-owned establishments.

“There were definitely a lot of challenges, but I had a lot of support from friends and family,” he said. “Columbus could become a major retail powerhouse if we just stuck together more as a retail community.”

~from Outlook Columbus

Cazwell Talks Life, Hip-Hop and Go-Go Boys

(EDITOR’S NOTE: outlook columnist D.A. Steward interviewed the famous and flashy hip-hop recording artist Cazwell last night on Queer Minded, an LGBT talk show he hosts with Deo Ramharrack on Talktainment Radio. Cazwell dishes on the truth behind his first major hit, “Ice Cream Truck,” reveals secrets about his upcoming album, “Hard 2B Fresh,” whose release date was recently pushed back to summer, and unveils plans for his appearance Saturday night at Axis Nightclub.)

D.A. Steward: How did Cazwell become Cazwell? When did you first know that making sexy gay-centric dance videos was what you wanted to do with your life?
CAZWELL: It certainly wasn’t a strategic plan. I used to be in a group called Moreplay and I started off my career in Boston, during the electro clash era. We called ourselves a fag-dyke rap duo. We were rapping and out and gay before YouTube. We broke up in 2002, and I went solo right away. Shortly after that I was signed to Peace Bisquit. They got me a record deal for an EP with West End Records, one of the most successful disco labels of all time. Because I was signed to them I got access to their catalogues and therefore could use their samples, which I used for “All Over Your Face” and other songs on the “Get Into It” album.

On the “All Over Your Face” video I was working and involved in the West Village scene. I did a regular party called GoGo Idol. So my whole life was centered around go-go boys and sleeping around, so that’s what my video ended up looking like. (Laughs)

When I did “Ice Cream Truck” for the movie “Spork” which was written and directed by my friend J.B. Ghuman Jr., he really wanted an original song that sounded really easy, light and ‘80s, so I did the song seriously in 45 minutes. My whole point of view was, no one’s going to listen to the song, it’s going to be in the movie for like 10 seconds, it’s not even going to be on iTunes, no one’s even going to know it’s me. (Laughs) So let me just give the client what he wants because he’s my friend. I did it real quick, it was catchy, it was cute, it was really different for me. I was working with mostly house music before that. Then my manager was like, “You haven’t dropped a video in a few months, just take over an ice cream truck and have fun with it.” And using go-go boys is the oldest trick in the book for any party, so I didn’t really find it any different for any video.

We shot the whole thing in my apartment. Every background is literally a piece of fabric and I painted my living room walls Mexicana Rose. The whole theme was, we’re just a bunch of boys hanging out in an apartment, kind of like in the movie “Kids.” There’s no air conditioning so we’re just home hanging out in our boxer shorts. But thiswas my life. I literally didn’t have air conditioning. I literally didn’t have enough power in my apartment to run the air conditioning and the refrigerator at the same time. (Laughs) … I found an ice cream truck by luck and we just hung around it and shot everything in one day. No one got paid. We were all just friends in the same scene and worked in the same clubs together.

DS: Have you ever been surprised by your success at all? Because there definitely was a time when what you do just couldn’t be done on the level that you’re doing it.
CAZWELL: There’s so many amazing kids coming up now, like Mykki Blanco and Le1f, that are really putting a stamp on gays that rap and are performing in hip-hop. Thank God for the Internet. I’ve personally always been a singles artist. I’m either getting gigs left and right or… It’s just up and down, you never know. I think every video I drop is going to change everyone’s life and everyone’s going to love me. (Laughs) But it doesn’t always happen that way. For me the point is to stay on the road and don’t stop putting out music.

Deo Ramharrack: What is your inspiration? How do you create such interesting lyrics for these songs? CAZWELL: My friends are really funny. A lot of times I’ll just write down things my friends say. Or I’m always around drag queens that are reading each other and queens that have some type of opinion. But nothing really inspires me like a deadline. (Laughs) Like my manager sending me a beat and saying we need this right now!” (Laughs) My main focus is always make sure I have a single or a video out that I can push.

I actually have a new song that I’m bringing to Columbus called “Guess What.”  Luciana is featured on it. She’s got a song called “I’m Still Hot” and she’s had a lot of No. 1 Billboard hits. And she’s got a great voice. We hooked up and we did this track and we shot a video for it in [Los Angeles]. The whole video is just me and her. There’s not like seven go-go boys or anything. (Laughs) It’s action packed, it’s very different. It’s coming out this spring and will be the first official single off the “Hard 2B Fresh” LP, which I’m hoping will be out this summer.

DR: So how can people audition to be a go-go boy in one of your videos? Do they have to look a certain way, because Dwayne and I are really interested in auditioning. [Dwayne’s note: Dwayne was NOT interested in auditioning.]
CAZWELL: Thank you for asking! Actually, right now, I am looking for guys that look good shirtless, that will do guy-on-guy swing dance. (Laughs) This is seriously my search right now. They’ll be dancing probably in their underwear and swing dancing. … I am kind of obsessed with swing dancing and I’ve never seen guy-on-guy and I want to make that happen.

Whatever the video is, it has to do with the theme, for the most part. There are some videos where I need people who can dance professionally. Sometimes I just need hot guys that can move their ass. And other times I just need models. It just depends. But I’m always open to people who want to send me hot pictures and let me make a decision. (Laughs) … But if that’s your dream, to be in one of my videos, I’m open to making that dream come true. (Laughs)

DS: Tell us more about your latest project Hard 2B Fresh? Are fans going to get the quintessential Cazwell or will they hear something new?
CAZWELL: It’s definitely going to be a new Cazwell, where some people are concerned. … When people diss me on the internet, they typically say I’m untalented and I can just get hot guys together and maybe put together a catchy song, but I’m not a producer or lyrists. So I really wanted to prove to myself that I was. I didn’t really need to prove it to anybody else as much as I wanted to prove it to myself.

[The album is] called “Hard 2B Fresh” because it IS hard to be fresh. To have an album that you actually think every single one of your 13 songs is fresh and inventive and impressive, and a song that impresses me, is difficult. Everyone has fillers on their album but I didn’t want that. I wanted to love every song and be able to defend every song.

Queer Minded is a weekly LGBT talk-radio show airing live every Thursday at 8 p.m. onwww.TalktainmentRadio.com. Join the conversation by calling 1-877-932-9766. (Listen to full archived episodes of Queer Minded here.)

~from Outlook Columbus

‘You Are Not Alone’

Documentary Examines Depression Among Black Gay Men

When Tyler Clementi jumped off New York’s George Washington Bridge in 2010, he quickly became the face of the anti-gay bullying epidemic. But that same year, it was the suicide of Joseph Jefferson, a 26-year-old African-American gay rights activist, that deeply affected award-winning journalist and author Antoine B. Craigwell.

Jefferson’s roommate found him after he’d hung himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was a graduate of the famous Harvey Milk High School and worked at Gay Men of African Descent, devoting much of his time to the fight against HIV/AIDS in the black gay community. Needless to say, his suicide took many by surprise.

“I went to [Jefferson’s] funeral,” Craigwell said. “I couldn’t help but think, ‘What could I have done to prevent this?’ That was my powder-keg moment.”

At the time, Craigwell already had logged many hours working on a book that he still hopes will become the definitive research tool on the issue of black gay men and depression. However, setbacks with securing a publisher led him to translating the project into a full-length documentary.

Craigwell partnered with NAACP Image Award-winning director Stanley Bennett Clay and late last year releasedYou Are Not Alone, a powerful and unprecedented look into the issue of depression in the lives of black gay men. Craigwell interviews dozens of men about their experiences, and Clay packages it in a way that offers hope to those who feel hopeless.

“No one’s talking about the intense stigma and homophobia a black gay man has to deal with that’s getting him to the point where he no longer cares about himself and too often getting to the point where he wants to die,” Craigwell said.

Clay, who’s known mostly for his stage work, said he approached the film the same way he approaches his dramatic writing and directing.

“Here is the spilled milk, now clean it the f*** up!” Clay said. “In Act 1, I show what depression is and what it looks like, and Act 2 is about redemption and finding the resolution. How can we solve this issue? The story had to be uplifting.”

Craigwell and Clay hope to continue to be an uplifting force beyond the film. Through this project, the organization Depressed Black Gay Men was born. DBGM now consists of the book, the documentary and a series of community discussions that Craigwell and the cast/crew host in various cities throughout the country.

“Being a part of this documentary definitely helped me emotionally, I talk candidly on camera about dealing with the sexual abuse done to me by my father, and how I didn’t associate it with abuse as a kid. I just thought that was how my father loved me,” said Lester Greene, one of the many powerful stories featured in the film.

Greene is also responsible for a song on the film’s soundtrack, titled Father and Son.

“Doing the documentary was my own form of therapy. This film is a beacon of light, and I hope it shows people that even though I dealt with all of those hardships, I overcame it, and they can too.”

Nhojj, an OUTMusic Award-winning recording artist who’s responsible for the film’s theme song Hold On… You’re Not Alone, echoes this sentiment.

“That’s where the song came from…my own personal experiences with depression and overcoming it,” he said. “When films like this come along, you realize there are other people who are going through the same thing. It adds relief and helps to look at what’s really causing this.”

Craigwell’s research identifies five key components that lead to depression among black gay men, which are discussed in great detail in the film and his book. He cites denial or negation of self by family, community and/or society; sexual abuse or sexual trauma; the role of the church, and religion demonizing one for who they are; the correlation between HIV/AIDS and depression; and the abandonment felt by older gay black men who are emotionally and sexually rejected.

“This is a film that everyone needs to see,” said Dr. Jeffery Gardere, a clinical psychologist who appears as an expert in the film and is also its co-executive producer. “My hope for the film is that it becomes a staple in every school system in the country, because we have so many young people who are just coming to terms with their sexuality and are committing suicide just for being who they are.”

You Are Not Alone is set to hit the film-festival circuit this year, with appearances already scheduled at Los Angeles’ Pan African Film & Arts Festival (Feb. 7-18) and the Oakland International Black LGBT Film Festival (Feb. 15-17). Craigwell said he wants to have the film released on DVD within the next year as well, but until then he’s willing to host screenings and discussions of the film anywhere he’s welcome.

Everyone interviewed for this article said getting its message to the people was the most important mission ofYou Are Not Alone.

“Depression among black gay men because they are black and gay needs to stop,” Clay said. “When we sat down to watch the first rough cut of the film with the editor, we all cried. All I could think was, ‘Wow, this is going to help a lot of people.’”

For more information on the film You Are Not Alone and the organization Depressed Black Gay Men visit yana-thefilm.com and dbgm.org.

D.A. Steward writes The Other Side every month for outlook. He also hosts Queer Minded, an online radio show that airs live every Thursday at 8p at talktainmentradio.com.

~from Outlook Columbus

Living Single: Those Relationship and Kid Questions Don’t Discriminate

Dan Savage’s popular sex-advice column, “Savage Love,” recently featured the story of a straight man experiencing intense badgering from family and friends for his contentment with being single and living alone.

This, of course, got me to thinking about my own similar situation. At the apparently old age of 27, family and friends are constantly asking me when I’m going to settle down. As if this state of being is as easily made as deciding on dessert for dinner.

But then I got to thinking about a source from my column last month on religion and The Black Church, who made the statement: “It is a sociological reality that oppressed groups are typically conservative.”

That’s definitely true. Any group of people who are outcast from society spend much of their civil rights fight making it known they deserve the same conservative lifestyle as everyone else, trying to “get to normal” as it were. So it makes sense that a straight Dan Savage reader would be living a similar experience.

This conservative idea of settling down, having children and taking up shop in the suburbs is socially nondiscriminatory.

When I first came out, my very large family mostly ignored the revelation and following backlash. Many said they already suspected it, and others just spewed some offensive Bible scripture at me and went on their way.

But now, nearly 10 years later, I can’t spend a holiday without getting the question, “When are you going to settle down and adopt some children?” at least a dozen times. And I also face the equal torture of my friends, most of whom are now married with children, mentioning, “You know, there’s this guy I work with, and I think you two will really hit it off.”

I guess I’m only surprised because I expected to skip this new modern-day form of arranged marriages because of my naturally alternative black and gay disposition. No such luck.

My own mother, who in childhood would force-feed me the Book of Leviticus like her life depended on it, has transformed her “subtle” hints from, “You just haven’t met the right girl. Don’t you think [insert random female member of her church here] is pretty?” to “Is [insert name of boy I’ve been on two dates with here] joining us for Christmas?”

Next year I’m already slated to attend two weddings. In one I hold the cheeky title “Man of Honor” (being a girl’s decade-long gay best friend comes with certain corny side effects). But of course the first question is always, “Will you be bringing a date?” Another conservative disposition I never thought I’d come up against: the sad single girl at the wedding, featured in every subpar romantic comedy ever made.

In the aforementioned advice column, Savage references Eric Klinenberg, a New York University professor of sociology who recently authored some fascinating findings in Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.

There’s a social commentary that’s emerged over the past few years that the rise of social media has made our society lonelier and more disconnected from each other than ever before. The prevailing understanding is that we’re spending more time with each other on Facebook and Twitter than in actual human-to-human interaction, and in turn it’s stifling our collective ability to relate to one another.

But Klinenberg says this isn’t true. According to Going Solo, we’ve simply become better at and more content with autonomy. According to Klinenberg’s research, 22 percent of American adults were single in 1950. Now that number is almost 50 percent, and one-person households represent 28 percent of all households.

Klinenberg also says the Pew Research Center is reporting the average age of first marriage is the highest ever recorded, rising five years in the past half-century.

“For young professionals, it’s a sign of success and a mark of distinction, a way to gain freedom and experience the anonymity that can make city life so exhilarating. For someone who’s recently divorced, it’s a way to reassert control over your life and maybe become less lonely. A bad marriage can make a person feel more isolated than being single,” Klinenberg told The New York Times early last year.

Apparently the single life is now the norm. It’s funny how things change.

Straight Lonely Dude and I are cut from the same cloth, despite the fact that there are groups of people who think I’m a threat to traditional values. We all have more in common than just the blood running through our veins, and tapping into this fact can lead to social reform.

My conservative Pentecostal mother may not know it, but her badgering me to find a husband is actually supportive of the gay rights movement.

D.A. Steward writes The Other Side every month for outlook. He also hosts Queer Minded, an online radio show that airs live every Thursday at 8p at talktainmentradio.com. You can find more on all his projects at http://www.dwaynesteward.com.

~from Outlook Columbus

Restoring ‘The Black Church’

Pentecostal pastors preach “revolutionary” message of unconditional love

It is often said that good writers write what they know, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s church.

I’ve mentioned my religious upbringing in this column before, that I was raised by a Pentecostal minister and a mother who was not only my grade school’s librarian but also my Sunday School teacher. My childhood identity consisted of school, family and religion, and like many black gay youth, the hate-filled intolerance of homosexuality within the black church fueled much of my struggle to come to terms with my sexuality.

The term The Black Church typically refers to traditional Baptist, Pentecostal and A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) denominations, or any derivative thereof (Apostolic, Church of Christ, Southern Baptist, etc.). Most have direct roots in slavery, when African-Americans would conduct their own services in the slave quarters of plantations, filled with much of the hand-clapping, Holy Ghost-filled hands-laying and foot-stomping worship we see in predominantly black churches today. Sunday was the only day of the week slaves felt free from the persecution of their masters. Church was a celebration.

That spirit of celebration still carries on today, but it has since been paired with a fire-and-brimstone message that cast God as an angry zealot always poised to strike down those who defy him. It often ignores the Bible’s messages of God’s unconditional love for all people. And much of this hateful rhetoric has become targeted toward the LGBT community. When President Obama came out in support of marriage equality, African-American religious leaders nationwide openly opposed his views, saying he’d turned his back on The Black Church.

When you’re a preacher’s kid and you’re gay, growing up hearing this message every week isn’t easy. Because of this constant need for my pastor to reiterate that being gay was an abomination that sent you straight to hell, I felt dirty and evil for much of my life.

Thousands of LGBT African-Americans stay hidden in church for fear of rejection. You know what I mean. It’s the choir director who winks at the deacon whose hand lingers when he pats the back of the pastor’s right-hand Armor Bearer who leads a new handsome congregant to the back office for another pre-membership “counseling” session.

Check into any black gay man’s dating record and you’ll find at least one closeted church queen among the mix.

“We can’t even get to the conversation of homosexuality because we haven’t even had the sexuality conversation,” said Bishop O.C. Allen, the openly gay senior pastor of The Vision Church of Atlanta and presiding bishop of the United Progressive Pentecostal Church Fellowship.

Allen was referring to an age-old practice of many African-American churchgoers to sweep certain issues under the rug. “Give it over to God, he’ll take care of all your needs” is a familiar sentiment.

Since opening its doors in 2004, Allen and his 3,500-member Vision Church have become the poster ministry for the possibilities of progressive Pentecostalism and progressive Christianity within the black community.

“The pushback has been profound, especially in the beginning,” Allen said. “But I don’t think black people are more homophobic than any other group of people.”

It’s an interesting conjecture given the social climate, but he goes on to explain: “It is a sociological reality that oppressed groups are typically conservative. … But it’s also about perception. Gay was considered ‘white’ or something outside the scope of the black community. Black people are wrestling with the reality of coming to terms with our own truths. And there are so many disparities against our community. … But I think all of these conversations play a role. There’s not just one reason. And all of these conversations converge on Sunday morning.”

The rise of the open and affirming movement has created a place where LGBT people of faith can finally worship without persecution, but for a long time it was reserved for more progressive denominations like the United Methodist Church. With ministries like The Vision Church that’s not the case anymore.

“Gay and Pentecostal have traditionally been an oxymoron. But when you really think about it, (being open and affirming) is the foundation of Christianity. If you read the Bible, if you read the Christian story, it is about freeing oppressed people. It’s liberation theology at its core.”

And now this progressive Pentecostal movement has even made its way to Central Ohio.

Last year Michael Heard returned to Ohio from Atlanta a changed man. Ten months earlier, he abruptly left Columbus during his tenure as head of Destined for Greatness, a ministry he started but wasn’t ready to lead.

“We were accepting but not affirming,” Heard said. “I wasn’t out. I had a lot of work to do on myself before I’d be able to lead anyone.”

So he left. The lies of trying to hide who he was, a bisexual Pentecostal preacher, had reached a boiling point. When he left, he planned to never return, but during his escape to Atlanta he discovered The Vision Church. It was something Heard had never thought possible. Joining Bishop Allen’s ministry became a choice that changed his life.

Heard brought Allen’s “radical” theology back with him late last year and began laying the groundwork for The Goodlife Church of Columbus.

“All I needed was to see that it was possible,” Heard said. “I just needed to see that pastoring authentically was possible. I would sit in the back of The Vision Church and cry every Sunday. I needed to heal and change all the bad things in my life.”

The Goodlife Church opened its doors in January and has become a revolutionary place of healing for those rejected early on for being who they are. It has grown from three members to nearly 200. It’s operating out of Summit United Methodist Church at 82 E 16th Ave in the University District, with services every Sunday at 1:30p and Friday at 7p.

“I want Goodlife to become not just a place for the LGBT community, but for everyone who wants an authentic place to worship,” Heard said. “Without truth and authenticity there can be no growth.”

When I finally came out to my church as a kid, the hateful response was so strong that I left and rejected my faith altogether. I always associated the bigotry of the church’s members with God and religion in general. So I wanted no part of it. It took me a long time to accept that God loved me because I was gay, not in spite of it.

Truthfully, I enjoyed going to church as a kid. I enjoyed the singing, the worship service and the strong emotional ties between people in the church community. For years, I felt that had been unfairly taken from me because of something I couldn’t control. I thought I’d never be able to get it back.

But now, because of ministries like The Vision Church and The Goodlife Church, that doesn’t have to be my story anymore.

For more information on The Vision Church of Atlanta or the United Progressive Pentecostal Church Fellowship, visit http://www.thevisionchruch.org. For more on The Goodlife Chruch of Columbus or The Goodlife Reality Show visit http://www.mygoodlifenow.org.

D.A. Steward writes The Other Side every month for Outlook. He also hosts Queer Minded, an online radio show that airs every Tuesday and Friday at 10p at talktainmentradio.com. You can find more on all his projects at http://www.dwaynesteward.com.

~from Outlook Columbus

New Leaf Columbus: Past, Present, Future

In 2008 a group of friends and fellow activists came together at the former James Club 88 on Long Street, and over drinks and conversation started a movement.

“We were all LGBT people of color and we were all activists and organizers in some way, but we kept seeing the same faces,” said Erin Upchruch. “We kept asking, ‘Where are we?’ One of our major goals early on was to bring the LGBT people of color community together.”

And bring them together they did.

It was from those early conversations that New Leaf Columbus (www.newleafcolumbus.ning.com) was born, an unprecedented endeavor to bring together black and Latino LGBT individuals.

This year New Leaf celebrates its 4 -year anniversary and it can’t be argued that since its inception there have been dramatic leaps forward for the LGBT people of color community in Columbus, Ohio. The group went from a small online enterprise that mostly catered to African Americans to the definitive word on racial diversity within Central Ohio’s LGBT community, opening doors for a host of spinoff businesses and organizations that serve the needs of Columbus’ growing LGBT people of color population.

This month, in honor of New Leaf’s milestone, I decided to chat with the people who made it possible, to get their views on the organization’s past, present and future.

“New Leaf was ‘born’ in James Club,” said James Blackmon, former owner of James Club 88 who now travels the world performing for Holland America cruise line. “Aaron Riley used to stop by often after work, and we would have conversations about gay and black/gay affairs in Columbus and in the US. One day we were having one of these conversations and I mentioned it would be nice to have a group that dealt with these issues.”

But soon talking was no longer enough. Blackmon, Riley, Upchurch and several others came together and launched what would become known as New Leaf, whose purpose was to “build and uplift Columbus’ LGBTQ people of color.” According to its website “New Leaf Columbus is an interactive, open and inclusive online community that welcomes the participation of our allies,” a mission of inclusion that’s still carried out today.

“We named it New Leaf because we were turning over a ‘new leaf’ in Columbus,” said Upchurch, a longtime social worker and activist who runs the organization Diverse Strategies, responsible for launching the HUE Leadership Summit, an annual seminar geared toward empowering LGBT youth of color. “The LGBT people of color community was dispersed and this was a brand new effort to bring that community together like never before.”

Facebook’s membership had just gone from strictly college students to anyone with a computer, which sparked the interest of the small group of founders.

“The whole social media phase was still in its infancy and we were looking for something similar to Facebook to connect gay people of color and their allies,” said Jacqueline Bryant, Columbus City Schools Communications Manager and former Executive Producer at NBC’s Columbus affiliate WCMH-TV. We launched New Leaf and looked at ways to connect our community as well as various platforms to bring in profits to help sustain the platform.”

New Leaf’s online social network now has more than 300 members, but its online presence has become a small part of its overall impact. The group hosts several events throughout the year that bring together LGBT people of color in mass, offering a safe space to promote and support visibility.

As someone who was born and raised in Central Ohio, I have seen the major impact New Leaf’s general existence has had on our community. As I’ve reported in this column many a time, we’ve seen drastic change in the visibility and mobilization of LGBT people of color in Columbus just over the past couple of years, and much of that is owed to the doors opened by New Leaf.

“The definition of diversity has expanded in Columbus,” said Riley, New Leaf President/CEO who’s a living legend in his own right in the realm of social activism. He’s the former Executive Director of the Columbus AIDS Task Force (now AIDS Resource Center Ohio) and is currently working with the ADAMH Board of Franklin County.

“We’re now seeing new faces at the table,” Upchurch said. “LGBT organizations are now being held accountable for having people of color represented in their leadership. There are businesses like Traxx that can thrive and new efforts like Columbus Urban Pride and open and affirming churches like the Goodlife Church.”

“During the first Community Conversation we hosted in 2010, there were many people who left there empowered,” Riley said. “So many other projects came from that meeting, like Marla Flewellen and the Fellowship Family House,”

Now that a solid foundation for a movement towards real change has been laid, New Leaf has its sights set much higher.

“My question for the next five years is ‘How do we increase our reach?’” Riley said. “When I first started New Leaf I was told that this would be a great organization for the entire state, but I shied away from that idea because we were so new. Now I think it’s time, I think we’re ready to start talking about statewide initiatives.”

“There has been a lot of good done, but we still have a lot to accomplish,” Upchurch said. “I’d like to not only just see one or two people of color in leadership roles at the various LGBT agencies, but I’d like us to be the majority. I’d like to build Columbus Urban Pride and continue to build and support opening and affirming places of faith. But most importantly I’d like us to start doing more with empowering our youth. We need to begin training the next generation of leaders.”

Personally, when it comes to the impact of New Leaf, I think the founders are being modest. Many shied away from giving New Leaf full credit for the visibility we see today, often saying true credit was owed to the community for backing New Leaf as it has. But the truth is New Leaf made it O.K. for a young black gay kid just out of college to believe he could make a difference in a city where he mostly saw white gay influences. Now he’s devoted his life to making that difference. A little empowerment can make all the difference.

It’s like President Obama often says, “It takes one voice to change a room, one room to change a community, and one community to change the direction of our nation.” The LGBT POC community in Columbus is on a precipice of real change. With endeavors like HUE Leadership and United Way’s Project Diversity and Pride Leadership and the AIDS Resource Center Ohio’s Greater Columbus Mpowerment Center, we could become the city that other communities look towards for strategies to build inclusion. And without New Leaf I’m not sure we’d be here.

“I think one of the greatest things New Leaf did when it started was to re-energize the LGBT people of color community and I’d like to see that continue,” Riley said. “New Leaf is not about Aaron’s agenda, I’ve always said I will support whatever the community decides it wants to accomplish. I want it to grow. I don’t want New Leaf to ever stop with me.”

~from Outlook Columbus

Is Racial Preference Racist?

Many have pontificated on the social implications behind racial preference when it comes to dating. [Note: In this article “dating” refers to any interaction involving physical attraction, from hookups to long term relationships.]

The Adonis Effect, that continues to plague our community, is based on the idea that the blond hair, blue-eyed, chiseled physique is the image we should all aspire to. And with the transformation in online-dating over the past decade from creepy to socially normative, labeling one’s preferences has become as important and normal as ever.

As a kid growing up in a very large Afro-centric family it was always made very clear to me that I was to marry a black woman. When I was nine, my father relocated my immediate family from the inner city to the suburbs, and I remember a main concern among my aunts was that I’d “bring home a white girl.” I never understood why dating a white person was such a threat, but I knew early on that this was a problem.

After coming out to my family and dealing with the intense fallout that ensued, I noticed that most of the men that I’d typically find myself dating were white, and the disapproval from my family shifted from my sexuality to my partner selection. I remember in college a distinct conversation with a friend who asked me if I preferred dating white guys or black guys. Another black gay friend and I quickly agreed that we weren’t against dating black men, but when walking into a room white men were whom we first noticed.

I had issues with this revelation throughout much of college. Was it simply that I had grown up in a town that was 90 percent Caucasian? Or was I dealing with some sort of deep-rooted self-hatred?

As a kid, my parents made sure that I was constantly exposed to the history of my culture. Even overcompensating a bit, because they knew how easy it is to lose someone’s racial identity when the primary influence is Aryan. I was raised on the teachings of W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Langston Hughes to name a few. Each week we were required to watch a documentary detailing a period of the Civil Rights struggle.

I knew much about and was proud of my African American heritage, but I didn’t find it attractive? This just didn’t sit well with me. So then, of course, I did the opposite: I started to only date black men. This definitely opened up a new world in my dating life, but then I found myself running into issues of ignoring or denying my attractions based on race, and this just seemed racist.

As I mentioned, I’m not the only one who has obsessed over this question. Every social discipline from the Ph.D. research sociologist to the big-mouthed blogger has studied racial preference in the LGBT community. Grindr and other online profiles are filled with phrases like “no asians,” “whites only,” “Latinos need only apply” and one particularly stinging one I found, “more into vanilla and spice than chocolate and rice.” But is this language racist? Is using race as a factor when choosing someone to date politically incorrect?

I conducted another of my famous “unscientific polls” and asked friends, acquaintances and colleagues to weigh in on the topic, “Is Racial Preference Racist?” I got some surprising and very enlightening answers.

Many took issue with the fact that I was even asking the question, saying of course it wasn’t racist to have a racial preference, but the ultimate intent behind the preference was the main issue. Others said making any decision based on someone’s race was racist. But most made their points somewhere in between.

One response was that racial preference is not racist, but it is discriminatory and prejudice, focusing on the point that “everyone’s a little bit racist,” to steal a quote from my favorite musical.

An older gentleman referenced the Civil Rights Movement, saying he’s dealt with “real” racism during the 60s and simply being more attracted to someone who’s white over someone who’s black or vice versa was insignificant in the grand scheme of racial injustice.

And one commenter said they only date within their race because of simply not wanting to deal with the social implications. Being gay and a mixed race couple would elicit too much discrimination from those around them.

Also when dating people outside their race, someone said they were often “fulfilling some fetishistic desire,” which made them feel like a thing instead of a person.

Scholars often attribute racial preference in dating to a narcissistic society. Selfishness is a natural human instinct of survival, which can often be translated to self love, so it would only make sense that we’d be attracted to a reflection of ourselves. This is why you’ll often see a person romantically paired with someone who looks like them. But we often fight against the rules of innate survival. Many say monogamy goes against the rules of nature, but marriage, even with its flaws, is one of this country’s largest institutions. So, why haven’t we evolved past racial preference?

I talked with a lot of people about this subject, but this comment was the only one that gave me one of Oprah’s famous “Aha! Moments.”

“Having a preference is fine, but no one has met every person in a particular race, so you can’t say I’m not attracted to Asians, because you haven’t met every Asian person in the world to know that. If your preference is Latino, but you wouldn’t turn away someone who’s black if you found you were attracted to them, that’s fine. But if you just wouldn’t date someone in a certain race and you’re hell bent on making sure that doesn’t happen, now that’s racist.”

I’ve come to a point in my life where I really don’t have a racial preference when it was comes to my dating life. I need your personality to be what I’m most attracted to, we can figure out everything else.

As a society, we’re starting to learn that when we put limits on love, we limit the best of ourselves. I definitely agree that giving a certain race preferential treatment in your love life isn’t the most racist of actions, but when you’re actively excluding an entire race from the dating experience, it’s time to reevaluate some things. And if you are using the terms “no blacks,” “blacks only” or any derivative thereof in your online profiles, it’s time you ask yourself, what do I really mean?

~from Outlook Columbus