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.”
John Wright, “Vonciel Hill Sparks Largest Rally Ever In Dallas’ Black LBGT Community,” dallasvoice.com (via racialicious)
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