In a piece by the WaPo's Darryl Fears, A Sanctuary From Hate, you get a good look at the specific struggle that black LGBTs face in the religious black community and by the white gay sphere. The article profiles Bishop Rainey Cheeks of Inner Light Ministries in the Washington D.C.'s H Street area.

For 16 years, it has served as a sanctuary for a small community of black gays and lesbians who say they feel shunned from all directions — by black men and women who give them cutting looks of disapproval, by mainstream black ministers who condemn homosexuality, and by white gays who make them feel unwelcome in subtle ways, such as switching from hip-hop to country music in a club when too many black men hit the dance floor.

At Inner Light, members say they can be themselves. In the pews on a recent Sunday, a woman adoringly placed an arm around the shoulders of her girlfriend. A man with a linebacker's strong build sat near the front wearing mascara. And condoms sat in a basket near the door in case any worshipers wanted to grab some on their way out.

About two thirds of the people in Inner Light's pews are gay or lesbian, and some, but not all, are in the closet when they return to their homes. Rev. Cheeks preaches safe sex and by speaking frankly and providing those condoms, it underscores the tragic explosion of HIV/AIDS in the black community in DC.

Nearly 60 percent of men in the city who contracted HIV through sex with men are black, according to a D.C. government survey released in March. Every minister and deacon at Inner Light Ministries has had a close encounter with the disease. Four of them are HIV-positive, including deacon Ronnie Walker, 54, who said that 20 years ago he had unprotected sex with a partner who never mentioned that he was sick and dying.

Cheeks, 57, contracted HIV in the early '80s, when few people knew much about the strange new infection that was sending so many gay men to their graves. Much to the bishop's chagrin, HIV continues to ravage his city almost three decades later.

The article speaks frankly to the attitude of denial, damnation and self-loathing that leads to unsafe-sex and the epidemic in the community. The story of Ronnie Walker, who is HIV-positive, and cheated repeatedly on his wife over the course of seven years of marriage, beginning on the night of his honeymoon when he slipped out to have sex with his best man. 

More below the fold.

Today, after joining Inner Life, he has found affirmation as a black gay man and has a male partner, yet he continues the denial of another critical part of his life — his HIV status. His partner knows, but Walker erases any association with his status in the home by keeping all of his medications elsewhere so that no one will inadvertently see them and learn he's HIV+.

The desire to hide being HIV-positive — not just from visitors but from prospective sexual partners — is powerful and difficult to change. Some men are reluctant to reveal their health status to possible partners for fear of being rejected. Short said he might avoid the subject if he and Walker broke up and he were dating again. It would depend on how I feel,” Short said, adding that he would probably use a condom but that in the heat of the moment, he couldn't guarantee it. “Sex is a very powerful thing.”

Speaking to young gay black men, Rev. Cheeks is taken aback by the level of complacency — a lack of safer-sex practices, and the belief that AIDS is “an everyday disease” that won't touch them — and he is frequently called from these young people who learn they've contracted HIV.

Cheeks said the discussion had driven home the need to start a youth mentoring program at Inner Light. “Most messages . . . to young folk is if you're gay or lesbian, you're going to hell,” he said. “So why take responsibility if you're already condemned?

And the counseling and mentoring is sorely needed because responsibility is not being taken — in DC, if you are a man 20-29 years old who's had sex with another man, 22% are HIV+; if you're 30-39, the number jumps to 40%. This is silence and religious damnation killing the black community, and it's not only in D.C. If there were only a way to clone Rev. Cheeks to take up this education battle.