In what one longtime activist called the largest rally in the history of the local black LGBT community, about 50 people gathered in a South Dallas parking lot on Saturday morning to voice their objections to City Councilwoman Vonciel Hill’s anti-gay comments last week concerning an HIV prevention billboard.
The billboard, part of the Greater Than AIDS campaign, features a black man with his arms around another black man and says, “UPDATE YOUR STATUS.”
Hill, who is African-American and virulently anti-gay, told a TV news station that she objected to the billboard in her district because she believes it sends the message that homosexuality is “acceptable.”
Saturday’s rally, which had as its theme a hashtag, #RevLOVE, was held under temporary awnings erected in the parking lot of Abounding Prosperity, an HIV/AIDS agency in the heart of South Dallas at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and SM Wright Freeway. Harold Steward, who organized the rally, explained to those who braved 90-degree heat that the hashtag #RevLOVE is based on a line from pioneering gay black activist Joseph Beam’s book, In The Life.
“Black men loving black men is the revolutionary act,” Beam wrote.
“We have been here before,” Steward told the crowd. “If we have to we will plaster our faces and lives and our loves on every billboard in America. We will love in this revolutionary way until our haters catch up with our history.”
Alpha Thomas, a longtime African-American lesbian activist, said she was attending the rally to support her black gay brothers.
“We will not be silent or invisible while AIDS continues to ravage and devastate our community,” Thomas told the crowd. “Black gay men have always been and always will be part of Dallas.”
Thomas, 55, said later it was the largest black LGBT rally she’s seen in decades of activism in Dallas. Thomas said she promised many of her black gay friends who died from AIDS that she would continue to fight for them.
“By my being out here today, I’m able to keep that promise,” she said. “We’ve got to keep hope alive.”
Eric Henry, 19, a volunteer at Abounding Prosperity, questioned whether Hill believes the behavior of some heterosexual African-Americans is “acceptable.” Henry said his father abandoned him at a young age, his mother neglected his emotional needs and he was molested for more than five years. When he ended up living out of his car, the black gay community took him in.
“Tell me, is that acceptable?” Henry said. “Whether or not you accept me, Councilwoman Vonciel, I’m going to continue being a proud African-American gay man.”
The Rev. Alex Byrd, senior pastor at Living Faith Covenant Church, blamed objections to the billboard on religious beliefs, and said therefore they must be responded to in a religious context.
“It is ungodly and un-Christian for us to ignore that 49 percent of all new HIV cases in Dallas are in the black community,” Byrd said.
Kirk Myers, president and CEO of Abounding Prosperity, said those statistics are “right there with sub-Saharan Africa.”
“Although I’m encouraged that all of you are out there, this parking lot should be overflowing,” Myers said.
Raheem Harris, co-chair of the Campaign to End AIDS for the Southwest Region, said Hill’s comments marked the first time in the seven years he’s been HIV-positive that he was outraged by statements from an elected official. But ultimately Harris thanked Hill for “turning a billboard into a national and international symbol of hope.”
