Despite What You May Have Been Told, Your Queer Sexuality Is Sacred
Monroe Howard-Shackelford, a D.C.-based licensed psychotherapist, is reframing the way Black queer men view their sexuality through a series of “Sacred Sexuality” virtual workshops and a recent in-person presentation at the 2022 NAESM Conference.
Howard-Shackelford says he never heard anti-gay sermons in the church he grew up in, but the message was clear about how society and the traditional Black church felt about LGBTQ+ people. Any romantic relationship or sexual desire that dared to exist outside of the heterosexual binary of traditional marriage was to be demonized. For many Black queer men, the messages received from the pulpit are often in direct conflict with their truth, making it nearly impossible to experience organized religion without harm being inflicted.
For some LGBTQ+ people who are deeply entrenched in the Black church experience, the concept of queer sexuality being sacred can be jarring, if not completely foreign. Sexuality is sacred on its own, and that includes Black queer sexuality, says Howard-Shackelford.
More Than A Woman: Remembering Aaliyah On The 20th Anniversary Of Her Death
The tragic and sudden death of R&B superstar Aaliyah on August 25, 2001, remains one of the most devastating tragedies in the history of music and pop culture. Only weeks after the release of Aaliyah, the self-titled third studio album, and a final television appearance on BET’s 106 & Park, four days before boarding the twin-engine Cessna plane that crashed shortly after take-off at Marsh Harbour Airport in Abaco, Bahamas, killing all nine people on board, the beloved singer and budding actress was on a meteoric rise.
Now, twenty-years later, family, friends, and fans continue to grieve the loss of an artist whose cultural impact in her short seven years as a mainstay on the R&B charts…