^noith
& sout
CAROLIN
lebrate diversity! CelebrcLte your life!
Angela Davis visits
JCSU in Chariotte 03
CNN cultivating gay
journalists 05
Nepal police brutalizing
LGBT community 21
North arwd South
Caroursa
North Carolina:
OutWilmington celebrates
a banner year 08
South Carolina:
Greenville Tech art exhibit
includes photo of local
drag diva 10
in tlie military and jpi;
were required to enlist 1
luldvou^
Next Issue:
Valentine's Day
Same-Sex Mortice
NIo'tes
noted . notable . noteworthy GLBT issues
Q-Living:
Winter Vacation
^tamys
VOLUME 20 . ISSUE ±9
SINCE / WWW.q-NOTES.COM
JANUARY 28. 2008
For Black History Month:
Today's celebrated LGBT African-Americans
LGBT African-Americans active in pop
culture, literature and politics
by Donald Miller
Throughout the month of February,
Americans will celebrate Black History
Month. In recognition of the contributions by,
LGBT African-Americans made to our culture
at large, Q-Notes is proud to pro
file these select individuals.
Keith Boykin
Keith Boykin is a former
White House aide to President
Clinton and a New York Times
bestselling author of three books.
Born (Aug. 28, 1965) and raised
in St. Louis, Mo., Boykin attend
ed Countryside High School in
Clearwater, Fla., before attending
Dartmouth College and Harvard
Law School.
After graduating from
Dartmouth in 1987, Boykin
spent a year and a half working
for the Mike Dukakis for
President Campaign and then
entered Harvard Law School, where he was
a leader in the campus diversity movement
and general editor of the Harvard CMl Rights-
Civil Liberties Law Revieiv. He received his ].D.
from Harvard in 1992 and then joined the
Clinton/Gore Campaign in Little Rock, Ark.
After Bill Clinton’s election, Boykin became
a special assistant to the president and
director of specialty media. Once the high
est-ranking openly gay person in the
Clinton White House, Boykin helped to
organize and participated in the nation’s first
meeting between
gay and lesbian
leaders and a
U.S. president.
Boykin left the
White House to
write his first
book, “One More
River to Cross:
Black and Gay in
America,” published in 1996. His second
book, "Respecting the Soul,” was published
in 1999.
In 1997, President Clinton appointed
Boykin to the U.S. presidential trade dele
gation to Zimbabwe, along with Rev. Jesse
Jackson, Coretta Scott King and Trans
portation Secretary Rodney Slater. From
1999 to 2001, Boykin taught political
science at American University in
Washington, D.C.
Boykin’s most recent book, “Beyond
the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in
Black America,” was released in Feb.
2005. Since Jan. 2004, Boykin has
served as president of the board of
the National Black Justice
Coalition, a Washington-based
civil rights organization dedicated
to fighting racism and homopho
bia. Boykin lives in New York with
his partner Nathan Hale Williams.
He writes daily commentary on his
website, www.keithboykin.com.
Angela Davis
Angela Davis, for many years,
was thought of as specifically an
African-American radical activist
see CELEBRATING on 12
Celebrating 30 years
St. John's MCC — one of the nation's oldest Metropolitan
Community Churches — is in Raleigh, N.C.
by Mark Smith
Raleigh’s St. John’s Metrojxilitan Community Church (MCC) has the
distinction of being one of the oldest churches in the denomination.
Beginning Feb. 17, the church
will offer a weekend-long series
of events designed to celebrate
30 years in the business of
teaching inclusive Christianity,
which makes room for all in the
LGBT community and more.
“1 can’t be any more proud
of this community than 1 am.”
says St. John’s MCC’s Rev. Belva
Boone. “In 30 years we’ve been
here, there are still people that
come through the door that did
n’t know we were here. As part
of our 30th anniversary, I want
to make sure St. John’s MCC is
no longer the best kept secret in
Raleigh. I’m just so excited that the people are excited about what God
has done here and what’s going to happen in the future.”
Boone came to St. John’s in July of 2001, after
working for an MCC church in Washington, D.C.. see MCCon 19
Belva Boone: 'I can't be any more
proud of this community than I am.'
A soldier's story
Love and war
Editor's Note: These are the thoughts of a gay soldier — a North Carolina
native — who has been deployed to Iraq. Because of the militory's "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell" poricy, he must remain anonymous.
Most people would laugh at this title, but relationships really
can be like love and war. You can think the sweetest of thoughts
and have great times with your partner, then fight tooth and nail
over some trivial subject, argue, not speak, sleep in other rooms,
all of which 1 have
done, then to only to
be sweet again.
I would say that
my relationship has
had both, lots of love
and some war. The
war part of the rela
tionship seems
insignificant when I
think about the sup
port my partner has given me during my military career and in our
lives together as a couple.
We met a little over two years ago. We both hesitated over
each other, because there was a lot of war (baggage) in our past
relationships. When we got over ourselves and finally realized
that love could conquer the past
(wars) in one’s life and relationships, see SOLDIER'S on 22