COLUMN: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in the Black Church

I’d been assigned to write a story for Loop21.com, an online African-American publication, about how pastors at black churches were handling homosexuality with their congregations. I’d picked one of my friend’s fathers to interview, a Pentecostal minister in Chicago. It was my first time talking to a minister about homosexuality. In fact, it was my first time discussing it with anyone of his generation (He is in his late 50s.) A few times it had come up at home with my mom while watching TV when there was a love scene involving a same-sex couple. “This is a bit much,” she’d say and that would be the end of it. Over the years, I’d grown close with the minister’s family. His daughter and I were college roommates, and we are both praise dancers — it’s like being in the church choir except with dance.