I’m Gay Cuz God Says I’m Gay

This past fall, Nakia Alford-Saunders prepared to lead a prayer at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in the West Village. More than 100 people had gathered to memorialize a gay activist who was supposed to make it out alive. Six days prior, a 26-year-old graduate of Harvey Milk High School killed himself. Joseph DeCosta Jefferson wasn’t the only black, gay young person to take his life last year.

Many mourners at The Center were inconsolable: women with acrylic nails and children in their laps, twentysomethings in Yankees caps and wrinkled old men no homophobe would ever clock as gay.

Before Jefferson hanged himself, he updated his Facebook page. "I could not bear the burden of living as a gay man of color in a world grown cold and hateful towards those of us who live and love differently than the so-called ‘social mainstream,’" he wrote.

Nakia, a minister in a black, gay East New York church founded by an ex-disco star, listened to speakers at the vigil talk about Jefferson and their community, and she thought about her mission. She knew that preventing this from happening again was part of her life’s work. Wearing black rimmed glasses, a khaki tunic and fine dreadlocks pulled away from her face, she took the stage.

"Mother, Father, heavenly God, we come before you to say thank you," she began. "Thank you for this gathering of your people. Thank you for the faith that we have that we can end this crisis and help those that need to be helped, and look after those young people who just don’t know that you are God."

"Lord, please bless them and continue to guide all of the families and all of the people who need comfort and healing right now. Lord, even me. Please bless the family members that aren’t here and don’t even accept us as who we are. Bless them anyhow, Lord! Let them know that we are who we are and in you, we are," Nakia intoned.

"Amen!" a woman called out. "Lord, please continue to put a hedge around all the people in this space, Lord. Amen."

The crowd clapped, said "Amen" and another speaker came up to figure out what to do next.

At the epicenter of New York’s LGBT community, just blocks from the Stonewall Inn—the bar that launched the modern gay rights movement, where crowds recently celebrated the passage of the Marriage Equality bill in the New York state legislature—Nakia told a suffering crowd that being gay didn’t bar them from God.

New Yorkers across subcultures are currently seeking out the divine—at a stylish, new evangelical church in the East Village, at the Hipster Church in Flushing, in a "radical living" commune in Bedford- Stuyvesant—but a growing number of religious communities in the city say gay people can be more than accepted or tolerated. They can be recognized as holy.

LGBT New Yorkers have an evergrowing number of religious communities to choose from, across multiple faiths.

And people of faith are edging their way into the gay mainstream; this year’s Pride Parade was co-marshaled by Rev. Pat Bumgardner of Metropolitan Community Church of New York.

Alongside churches that believe one can "pray the gay away," there is a steady undercurrent of black gay churches in the city. "There are more now than there ever have been," says Senior Bishop Zachary Jones, the head of Unity Fellowship of Christ Church, where Nakia is a minister. Members of his church counted 10 black LGBT Christian congregations in the city, most of which rent out space in Harlem. Unity Fellowship has its own building in East New York, one of the most violent parts of the city.

The church was founded in 1982 by Carl Bean, a performer who recorded the joyful 1977 Motown Records hit "I Was Born This Way," a precursor to the Lady Gaga song of the same name. After hearing too many stories of gay black people hurt by black churches, Bean identified a need for an accepting community. He started a Bible study group and welcomed people to be honest about who they were, with confidence that they would be loved. "God is love and love is for everyone," one of Unity Fellowship’s most common taglines says. Over three decades, that study group grew to 17 congregations across the country.

Nakia found Unity Fellowship in 1992, the year its New York congregation began, in the very building where she prayed at the vigil in October. She had gone to The Center with her newborn son Timothy to see a girl. On the way to an upstairs bathroom, she heard gospel, walked into a church service and stood the girl up.

Outside the church, Nakia’s grandmother had kicked her out of her house for being a lesbian. She avoided her son’s abusive father and had dropped out of a high school for pregnant girls and young mothers. She drank heavily and used every drug she could get her hands on.

Inside the church, Nakia was valued.

She wasn’t going to hell just because she wanted to date girls. With the help of Bishop Jones, she turned her life around. She never felt so important as when Bishop Jones greeted her from the pulpit by name.

Little did Nakia know then that her faith and work to create space for queer youth of color would become the focus of her life.

In January 2010, Nakia was in her fifth semester of classes at Alliance Theological Seminary. She had chosen the school on a whim because she wanted to learn more about the Bible—the same reason why she started attending the Unity Fellowship study groups that would make her first a deacon in the church and then a minister. She didn’t fit in at Alliance Theological, but she kept trying to make it work.

Nakia attended lectures on two floors of a high rise on Worth Street, above a Strawberry discount clothing store. In her classes, the Bible was the last word. Her teachers plucked out single verses and preached about how they related to their social agendas. When classes discussed homosexuality or abortion, Nakia fought 

with the other students,
many of whom went to fundamentalist churches. When gay issues came up,
she defended "them," never "us." She thought that if she prayed harder,
everything at the school would work out. Then, the last straw fell.

One
night after class, she headed toward the building’s exit with a male
classmate in his forties, a liberal pastor at a Hispanic church. Through
the doorway, Nakia saw her wife Diamond, a woman 10 years her senior
whom she met after they had both left rehab in the ’90s. Nakia knew that
greeting her wife then would be the first time she would out herself at
school. Well, this is my grand entrance, she thought.

Nakia
walked through the door and kissed Diamond, who wore her hair shaved
close to her head and had the same tattoo of the trinity symbol behind
her ear, representing unity between the two of them and God.

Then, Nakia introduced Diamond to the pastor as her wife. They shook hands and went their separate ways.

The
next night Nakia went to class, the pastor wouldn’t look her in the
eye. She sent him a message on Facebook later and he didn’t write back.
She felt like she was 16 again, wanting to be out, but at the same time,
terrified. Other people who used to say hello didn’t say a word now
either.

Finally,
the dean of the school called Nakia into her office. At first, the dean
didn’t say anything. "I heard what happened," the dean finally said.

"What? What happened?" Nakia replied.

The dean said nothing. "I’ve got to go," Nakia said as she rushed out of her office.

She
took the train home alone and cried for days. After talking with Bishop
Jones, she decided to leave Alliance Theological. She sold her
schoolbooks as fast as she could, not carrying how little money she got
for them.

Other
parts of Nakia’s life filled the hole left by the seminary. She busied
herself with moving from Harlem to Flatbush with Diamond, and helping
her son apply for scholarships to pay for his tuition at Morehouse,
where he would start college in the fall. In lieu of going to a
seminary, Nakia studied the Bible with groups at Unity Fellowship and
worked as Bishop Jones’ assistant.

Last
August, seven months after Nakia left Alliance Theological, she was
admitted to New York Theological Seminary. Other Unity Fellowship clergy
members had gone to the school, which prided itself on helping people
"find their unique ministries." The school’s offices were in a 19-story
building in Morningside Heights, and most classes were held in massive,
gothic Riverside Church.

To
try to decide whether she wanted to give another seminary a chance,
Nakia met with the school’s dean. She told the dean what had happened at
Alliance Theological. "I don’t want to give you my last transcript from
the other school. I don’t want to bring any of that weight here. Even
though I didn’t have that bad of grades, I want to relearn. I want to
lose what I learned there," she said.

"Well,
then don’t bring your transcript," the dean replied. "We’ll take your
undergrad transcript." Nakia nodded. "You know, you’re not the first
person who’s come to us from there," the dean said. "Welcome home."

A
few weeks later, before classes would start in September, Nakia
traveled to upstate New York for a weekend-long class retreat, which the
school’s 200 incoming and existing students attended to get to know
each other. Like the dean had said, several people from Alliance
Theological were there.

One
afternoon, a white woman with short brown hair spotted the rainbow ring
Nakia wore. She introduced herself as Joya and said she was a
third-semester student. Then, she said, "May I ask you a personal
question?" "Yes, and I’m married," Nakia said and laughed. Joya laughed
and told her she had been thinking about starting an LGBT group at New
York Theological. She wanted Nakia to help. Nakia said OK.

Before
the end of the retreat, the new classmates had to elect a class
representative. A black woman in her sixties nominated a tall, white,
openly gay 30-year-old from a liberal Christian church in Greenwich
Village. The nominee left the room and his classmates voted him into
office.

He gave a short acceptance speech.

"Oh
my God. If I had known that you all were going to nominate me, I would
have done my hair!" he said. His new classmates laughed.

He’s straight Valley Girl, Nakia thought.

She liked him. If New York Theological could pick him, they could pick her, too, she thought.

On
a warm Sunday morning in mid-October, a female minister at Unity
Fellowship stood before the congregation and intoned the names on the
parish’s prayer list. Outside, car horns honked on a congested stretch
of Atlantic Avenue in East New York. Only a twinbed-sheet-sized plastic
banner marked the gray converted warehouse as a church.

Inside,
the minister stood at the edge of the church’s low stage, dressed in a
black button-up robe that began just under her chin and ended at her
ankles.

An organist
played softly and the dozen-person choir cooed, "Hear our prayer." The
40 or so people at the service clasped their hands in front of them or
raised their arms above them, palms upturned.

Young
people, old ladies and middleaged men prayed together for the sick,
needy and deceased. Some women looked masculine, some men looked
feminine, but most wouldn’t stand out on the street.

Nakia
sat on stage alongside Bishop Jones and a dozen other members of
clergy, wearing a long robe, too. Diamond sat in the front near one of
the speakers, dressed in a man’s dress shirt and black dress pants.

When the female minister finished individual prayers, people called out "Well!" in affirmation.

Then, she asked the congregation to turn to someone with whom they had not come to church.

"Tell them, ‘You are special’ and hug them," she said. "This may be the only hug some people get today."

People hugged old friends and complete strangers alike.

Then,
the organist burst into a quick march. The congregation jumped to its
feet and burst in song. Bishop Jones seized a microphone.

"I’m blessed, ’cause God says I’m blessed!/ I’m blessed ’cause God said I’m

blessed!/
I’m more than a conqueror for God who loves me!/ I’m blessed ’cause God
says I’m blessed!" "I’m healed ’cause God says I’m healed!

/ I’m healed ’cause God says I’m healed," the congregation sang. Bishop Jones swung his body around with full force.

"HIV
ain’t got nothin’ on God!" he hollered mid-verse. Gray-haired women
banged tambourines shaped like hearts and Jesus fish. Mountainous men in
hooded sweatshirts clapped. Diamond strutted down the aisle like a
rooster, and Nakia swayed from side to side in her seat on stage.The
choir started on the next verse.

"I’m gay cuz God says I’m gay!/ I’m gay cuz God says I’m gay!" Everyone sung this line the loudest.

"This is the controversial verse!" Bishop Jones called out impishly.

"I’m
more than a conqueror," the congregation repeated. It devolved into a
call and response chant. And then it broke down to just "more."

"More, MORE!/ More, MORE!" The organist sped up. The tension built.

"I’m so much more than all this pain!" someone in the front row yelped. People shouted, "Hallelujah!" and the song wound down.

A few days later, on a warm Thursday morning, Nakia worked at her cluttered corner desk at the church.

She
planned to leave at night for a class on the Old Testament, which was
how she spent most of her days: at church, at the seminary or on the
subway for the hourlong ride between the two.

The door buzzer sounded and Nakia got up and pressed the listen button.

"Is Minister Nakita there?" a young man asked, mistaking her name.

Without a word, Nakia jogged down the stairs to let him in.

A
slim, young black man in an ’80s-style Members Only jacket introduced
himself as Christopher. He said his mother was married to Deacon Diane
at Unity Fellowship’s church in Long Beach, Calif. Nakia hugged him.

"You
look just like her!" she said. "You look like your mother without a
wig! When I was just in L.A., Diane was like, ‘He didn’t call you yet?’
And I was like, ‘No problem, it’s cool, we’re family,’" she said.

Christopher,
24, had just moved to a low-rent section of Bedford-Stuyvesant. He had
recently finished college and was looking for work in public relations
or event planning.

Nakia
introduced Christopher to everyone in the office, and they all knew his
mother and his mother’s wife, despite the distance between the New York
and Long Beach churches.

Once
Nakia and Christopher had done the rounds, Nakia scribbled out her cell
phone number for him. She tried to help LGBT young people whenever she
could because Unity Fellowship had helped her.

To
let Christopher know that someone cared for him as much as Bishop Jones
had cared for her, Nakia invited Christopher to attend the church youth
group.

"They come
for fellowship and, you know, to hang out. So you don’t feel like you’re
alone. You’re not alone. There are a lot of us out here. And we do not
want you to be by yourself."

Christopher listened, took her number and said he would come.

The
next week, Nakia and her classmates at New York Theological studied the
Old Testament in a classroom at Riverside Church. They were wrapped up
in Isaiah 6:1: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord
sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the hem of His robe filled
the temple."

About
50 students—clergy members and parishioners from liberal churches all
over the city—leaned over heavily annotated Bibles. Nakia sat in the
second row, wearing her khaki tunic, black dress pants and white, pink
and silver Nikes. She took notes in loopy handwriting and indelicately
leafed through a small, worn Bible with a purple cover and satin page
marker ribbon.

The
professor, an animated, middleaged Korean man, sat on the edge of a
table and spoke excitedly into a microphone. "When King Uzziah died,
when the nation was in trouble, Isaiah went to temple and saw God
where?" he drilled the class.

"On the throne," the group droned in response.

"On
the throne," the professor said with American pronunciation but
emphasis on the wrong syllables. He called on a middle-aged black woman
in the back of the room to re-read the verse for the class. "Tell me!
Did Isaiah see God or not?" the professor asked forcefully.

"Yes!" the woman replied incredulously.

"Does everyone agree?" the professor asked. "I say no," he added.

"No,"
Nakia said quietly. "Read carefully," the professor said, chuckling.
"He didn’t say he saw God, he said he saw the hem of the robe! God was
just too big to fit in the room! Isaiah just saw the hem of the robe!"
He was laughing so hard he could barely finish his sentences.

Nakia and many of her classmates laughed heartily at the joke few people outside the room would get.

The
woman in the back of the room piped up, not laughing. "But can’t we
take it objectively that the hem of the robe filled the room from floor
to ceiling?" she asked.

The
meaning of the verse is God’s magnitude and the ungraspable nature of
the religious experience, the professor said. The woman didn’t seem
convinced. Nakia laughed to herself and muttered, "That’s old thinking."
A lot of people, when it comes to religion, are stuck in what they grew up in, she thought.

On a Tuesday night in early November, Nakia attended her Critical Interpretations class at the seminary.

The
assigned readings for the evening were chapters on sexism, feminism,
masculinity, homophobia, transgender issues and ablebodied privilege.
The professor, a middleaged Ecuadorian, led the class through the
material. Despite the relevance of the topics to her life and work,
Nakia was distracted and tired.

The
class started with sexism, moved to feminism, and then talked about
masculinity. Just when Nakia thought they would talk about sexual
preference and gender expression, they skipped ahead to able-bodied
privilege. No one in the room said a word.

As Nakia walked to the subway after class, she thought about what had happened. Great.
A pink elephant in the room. If we don’t talk about it, there won’t be
any challenge, right? It’s like "don’t ask, don’t tell."

She was disappointed in her classmates but had faith that they could change, eventually. Even a little.

Somewhere along the way in this program, their minds are going to be opened, she thought. Something
is going to rub them the wrong way or strike a chord, and they’re going
to have to open up and at least listen. You can’t sit in a classroom
for three hours and hear completely nothing. You just can’t.

A
few days later, Nakia ate Korean food at a school seminar with Joya,
the third-semester student who had asked her at the retreat if she
wanted to help found an LGBT group at the school. Nakia and Joya didn’t
see much of each other, but they had been in touch by email about their
ideas for the group. Nakia brought up what had happened in the Critical
Interpretations class.

"I thought it was really odd that we had this class and this chapter, and we didn’t even talk about it," she said.

"The same thing happened in my class, too! We didn’t talk about it either," Joya cried.

"Some people can’t even put ‘God’ and ‘gay’ in the same sentence," Nakia said and shook her head.

They
opened their planners and picked a date in early December for the first
meeting of New York Theological Seminary’s LGBT student group.