There has been an outpouring of support for queer Democratic State Rep. Park Cannon (D-58) in the aftermath of her March 25 arrest, where she was apprehended by Georgia State Troopers at the office of Gov. Brian Kemp. In a viral video that has been viewed over two million times on Twitter, Cannon can be seen knocking on Kemp’s office door during the signing of SB 202, a controversial voting rights bill critics say targets Black and Brown voters, effectively making it harder for minorities to exercise their right to vote.

When Magic Johnson announced during a press conference in 1991 that he’d acquired HIV, Masonia Traylor, 34, was only four-years-old. And in 1995, when the first HIV “cocktail,” a combination of antiretroviral drugs used to suppress the replication of HIV in the body, became widely available for use, Traylor was eight. The gravity of Johnson’s diagnosis and the impact it would have around the globe at the height of the epidemic couldn’t have been further off eight-year-old Traylor’s radar. HIV wasn’t a part of her world as a child growing up in Atlanta, and this would remain unchanged well into her early 20s until it did.

On a lunch break from work, Traylor recalls seeing a woman wearing a t-shirt that read on the front, “I Have HIV.” Traylor says she was shocked and figured if the “woman was bold enough to wear that I could ask her if she had HIV.”

Traylor says the woman chuckled and said, “Girl, no. Read the back.” The woman turned around to reveal the text written on the back of her t-shirt: “If only it was that easy to tell. Get tested.”

In 1989, Malcolm Reid, 63, had gone to so many funerals that he lost count. He remembers being so emotionally exhausted from burying friends he decided during those early days to stop attending funerals altogether. The clock was ticking towards his demise, or so he thought.

“Well, I'm next,” Reid recalls thinking. “And when the next person died, I was like, I'm next. And that never happened. And I remember asking myself, why did they die and I'm still here?”

It would be another eight years, in 1997, before Reid would learn that he acquired HIV. But his story would not mirror those of his friends whom he laid to rest, instead, it would become the impetus he needed to co-create The Silver Lining Project, a group that would impact his life and the lives of Black gay men living with HIV, particularly those over 50 who are often rendered invisible in the broader Black gay community.

Nicole Roebuck says she has always felt chosen throughout her 20-year career with AID Atlanta, the city’s leading HIV service organization, founded in 1982 in response to the national HIV epidemic. Roebuck, who has served as Executive Director of AID Atlanta since 2015, became only the second Black woman in the agency’s history to ascend to the top leadership position, a role that she says she actually never applied for, continuing a non-traditional but rewarding trajectory from the beginning of her tenure at the agency.

If you ask David Wilmott, 38, and Darnell Morgan, 34, co-owners of the new Kennesaw restaurant Forks & Flavors how long they’ve been married, you’ll likely encounter a moment of awkward silence followed by laughter that comes from a place deep inside their bellies indicating to anyone within earshot that there is a story behind their reaction.

“A year and a month this time,” said Morgan, as he interrupts the laughter to explain the couple’s complex history that led them down the aisle and to divorce court before ultimately remarrying and opening their restaurant in 2020.

Growing up in the progressive Washington D.C. area, lesbian-identified Britney Lee never gave a thought to whether she’d be able to marry when the time was right. The right time arrived in 2020, five years after a chance meeting of a fellow soror with whom she shared a near-instant bond. The pair married last July, in an intimate ceremony in their East Point backyard, becoming one in a wave of Black lesbians increasingly saying “I do.”

Something is happening on blackgayweddings.com, and that something reaches beyond the dozens of Black LGBTQ+ couples prominently featured on their website or popular Instagram page during one of the most pivotal moments in their lives. In 2021, there are still very few spaces, digital or otherwise, where LGBTQ+ couples comprising two Black partners are celebrated in mainstream or LGBTQ+ media. But unless you’ve followed this disparity over time, you’d probably never know that there is a lack of representation in this area after scrolling through blackgayweddings.com. All at once, the website is celebratory, inclusive, and keenly aware of how intersectionality impacts Black LGBTQ+ people. And like many of the long-standing and revered Black publications that came before it, Black Gay Weddings was also birthed from discrimination.

(Thumbnail Image of Sevyn and Annie by Majore Photography)

Prentiss Matthews III is a playwright, director, actor, and singer who made quite an impression after we met a few months back. I wanted to learn more about his work, artistic vision, and his approach to his craft. He graciously agreed to sit down and chat with me. Here is what we discussed.

Before Lady Gaga released her gay anthem “Born This Way” in 2011, singer Carl Bean, an openly gay Black man signed to Motown Records released the soul-stirring disco gay anthem “I Was Born This Way,” 34 years before it was in vogue to be anything other than heterosexual publicly, or even an LGBTQ+ ally. The gay-affirming single, which cracked the top 20 on the Billboard charts is one of many groundbreaking achievements by Bean—the recording artist turned social justice activist and minister with deep roots in the Black Pentecostal experience, dating back to his childhood at Providence Baptist Church in his native Baltimore, Maryland.

Three is not a crowd for Que Brown, 28, Tye Brown, 26, and Martel Star, 27. The Tallahassee, FL and Mansfield, OH transplants are one of many Black gay polyamorous triads or “throuples” in Atlanta who are finding and creating healthy romantic partnerships outside of the traditional two-person monogamous relationship model. However, there is one distinction between their triad and others— these men are living and loving out loud, online and off, and are rejecting the stigma associated with polyamory that often pushes those within this relationship structure to the margins of society.

Eventually, Agarrat’s work ethic would command the respect of Barclay, and the hungry intern who began making coffee would be trusted to write music video treatments alongside the in-demand music video director, ultimately becoming responsible for Snoop Dogg’s 1993 debut single, “What’s My Name?.”

“I’m gonna get hurt.”

That’s what Deondray Gossfield, 47, recalls saying to himself in the fall of 1996 after meeting Quincy Gossfield, 46, through mutual friends. Together for 24 years and married for seven, the directing/producing duo behind the indie hit gay series The DL Chronicles, has experienced magical highs and devastating lows in their decade's long relationship—long before their nuptials were televised in front of an audience of millions at the 2014 Grammy Awards, and long before they became the public face of Black gay relationship longevity.

Gay dating coach and matchmaker Lamont White, 40, has been successfully introducing single Black gay men in Atlanta and across the United States to their ideal mate through his dating service Better Way To Meet since 2014. The Pittsburgh, PA native who works in public health by day, was already using his master's degree in professional counseling by providing therapy for gay men and couples as early as 2004. So when a gay friend mentioned his less than stellar experience as a client of a matchmaking service, it lit the fuse for White to create a new model tailored for gay men.

At 45-years-old, Darnell Moore is coasting on blessings. For much of the last decade, Moore has been a formidable force in the movement for Black equality and LGBTQ+ liberation, while meticulously providing a blueprint for Black queer men to claim our freedom. With every media appearance, speaking engagement, article, or book, Moore continues to lay the foundation for a legacy that will be remembered and studied long after his work is completed in the physical. He is our ancestor’s wildest dream—living, breathing, teaching, learning, and thriving in the fullness of his badass Black, queer self.

Juan Smalls says he simply wanted to be liberated. As one half of the highly visible married couple known by many as Juan & Gee and the owners of Virgil’s Gullah Kitchen and Bar in College Park, along with the non-profit The Gentlemen's Foundation—this Atlanta Black, gay power couple raised more than a few eyebrows after revealing that they’re in a non-monogamous marriage in the pages of Gee Smalls’ memoir “Black Enough Man Enough.” The spiritual and emotional capacity for the life partners of over a decade to define their relationship on their terms required both men to release themselves from the expectations projected onto their relationship from those within the Black LGBTQ+ community who often refer to their union on social media as #couplegoals. For Juan Smalls, the process was not overnight, and the lightbulb went off when he least expected it—during a six-hour flight delay at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport en route back home to Atlanta.

There’s a three-day period in Lovell Lykaon’s life where he has no recollection of the events that transpired that caused him to be admitted into the hospital as a non-disabled person, only to leave with all of his limbs amputated. The 27-year-old Atlanta native, graphic designer, musician, and adult entertainer tells The Reckoning that his usual stroll in the park during the fall of 2019 turned out to be the beginning of a dramatic shift in his life within a matter of days.

Perry Meeks, 39, master barber and owner of The Grain Grooming Studio in Buckhead is affectionately called Blanca by many of his clients—a reference to the character and mother of The House of Evangelista played by trans actress MJ Rodriguez on the hit show “POSE.” The Grain is nestled on the corner of North Fulton Drive before a row of beautiful homes in Buckhead, and if you drive too fast you’ll most likely miss it. But the same can’t be said for the Black gay men and other members of the community who regularly flock to Meeks’ shop for his cutting expertise and the de facto community center environment he’s created in the absence of an actual LGBTQ center in Atlanta. At The Grain, Meeks and his staff are providing more than just haircuts, they’re changing the narrative about how Black gay men should expect to be treated once they enter a Black barbershop by expanding on the model that has historically been unwelcoming to gay men by making the experience more inclusive.

During that visit, Nolan invited me to meet him at James’ house for a few libations before his flight back to St. Louis. James was the consummate host, and he welcomed me into his home as if we were old friends. We were a group of Black gay men sharing a bit of what we all hoped that the New Year would bring our way. None of us could have predicted the confluence of crises that would play out in 2020, and James certainly had no way of knowing that this New Year’s celebration would be his last. This time, Nolan was coming to Atlanta, not to visit James, but to attend his funeral. James, a healthy man in his mid-40s, was one of the more than 350,000 Americans to die of COVID-19.

Winter is always a unique season for gay independent filmmaker Davien Harlis, who is currently basking in the success of his second feature film, “Some Kind Of Christmas,” which is considered by many to be the first-ever holiday-themed film centering Black gay characters. Harlis debuted the film to Atlanta audiences over a three-day period in November at Cinevision to enthusiastic and sold-out audiences, and is gearing up to share the film during the increasingly popular online “Black, Gay, stuck at home” (BGSAH) series on December 18.

Award-winning chef Deborah VanTrece is laying it all on the line. The highly-respected chef and owner of “Twisted Soul Cookhouse and Pours” in West Midtown has had to reinvent the model for her successful soul food restaurant more times than she could have ever imagined in 2020. But during times of uncertainty and stress, clarity is not often far behind–or in VanTrece’s case—the desire to no longer publicly sugarcoat the challenges brought on by the pandemic, and the racism that she and other Black colleagues have endured in professional kitchens long before the pandemic upended the restaurant industry.