A Racial Double Standard?

Keith Boykin, one of the premier writers of our time (who happens to be gay), links to -- with the clever headline "BrokeBlack Mountain? Don't Count On It" -- and is quoted in an interesting column in The Guardian. Its premise: When a married white man comes out of the closet, he is often heralded as a hero. When a married black man does the same, he is ripped apart:

What was Brokeback Mountain but a brilliant film about two men on the down-low set to glorious music and enchanting scenery? "It's pretty clear that if they had been two black men it would have been a different reaction," says Keith Boykin, the author of Beyond the Down Low. "It would have been an evil, nefarious story about deception and disease. These are guys who blatantly cheat on their wives with other men. There's no way it would have been called a love story if they were black."

Unfortunately, this attitude is most prevalent in the black community itself. And it starts in the church, where some of the most popular black preachers in this country rail against gay people -- a group that, by the way, definitely includes most of their music ministers and half of their choirs.