First Katrina, then Bush

Washington Blade - Friday, September 15, 2006
By REV. IRENE MONROE
http://www.washblade.com/2006/9-15/view/columns/monroe.cfm

While seemingly invisible in this disaster, gay and transgender evacuees and their families faced all kinds of discrimination at the hands of many of the faith-based relief agencies because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status.

THE NEWS MEDIA has moved on, now that the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has passed. In its place, Sept. 11 anniversary coverage fills the airwaves.

But as the headlines about Katrina's anniversary receded, just as when the waters finally left New Orleans, the stench from wrecked homes and lives remains.

And the story you haven't read about in the mainstream media is how Katrina relief efforts have been divided along the odious fault lines of heterosexism and faith-based prejudice.

While seemingly invisible in this disaster, gay and transgender evacuees and their families faced all kinds of discrimination at the hands of many of the faith-based relief agencies because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status.

Since most of the evacuees were African American, racial issues and the "down low" of many African-American gay men, many black LGBT evacuees experienced discrimination from both general and black faith-based institutions. "The Superdome was no place to be an out black couple," said Jeremiah Leblanc, who now lives in Shreveport. "We got lots of stares and all kinds of looks. What were we thinking? But my partner and I were in a panic and didn't know what to do when we had to leave our home."

GEORGE W. BUSH'S faith-based organizations fronted themselves as "armies of compassion," but their anti-gay ministries kept gay people way. The same was true with black churches, who were a large part of the relief effort, since many are known for their unabashed homophobia.

"When we were all forced to leave the Dome, we were gathered like cattle into school buses," said Leblanc. "[My partner] Le Paul and I both needed our meds, clothes and a way to find permanent shelter after the storm, but we knew to stay the hell away from the black churches offering help.

"We couldn't tell anyone we were sick and HIV-positive," he said. "And when we got to Houston, we saw the Salvation Army, but Le Paul and I knew to stay the hell away from that, too."

The Salvation Army offers a different kind of salvation for gay families, declaring on its website, "scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life."

NOT ALL CHURCHES and faith-based organizations were unwelcoming to LGBTQ people. There were a few opening and affirming parishes in the area before Katrina hit.

"I wasn't going to the Superdome," said Angelamia Bachemin, an African-American lesbian percussionist renowned for her pioneering style of jazz/hip-hop. She was a professor of ethnomusicology at the Berklee School of Music in Boston before she returned home to her native New Orleans.

"When my partner and I and the children fled, it was not an issue for the folks at this Catholic church," she says. "The people at Epiphany Church just took us in, and we began rolling with the evangelists during the relief effort. They paid money for the materials for my roof. They have done more for me and my family than the government."

Bachemin is one of the lucky few gay families now in the long process of rebuilding their homes and lives in New Orleans.

Leblanc isn't. His partner, who was in the full-blown stages of AIDS, died two weeks after Katrina.

Since Leblanc and his partner were not legally married, Leblanc is not eligible for surviving spouse Social Security benefits. And because he is gay, he also feels excluded from the faith-based relief effort assistance to help him get his life back in order.

Katrina revealed for all the botched relief efforts of FEMA and the federal government, along with the fault lines of race and class in this country. But many still missed the hidden abuses of heterosexism and homophobia from Bush's faith-based organizations.

Consequently, those at the margins of society became the center of the tragedy as Hurricane Katrina nakedly exposed how Bush neither sees nor wants his administration to be the primary source of assistance or compassion for all Americans in crisis.