Fall is upon us, and we’re saying goodbye to the sweltering heat that has encapsulated most of the country over the past few months and hello to the beauty that comes with the change of season and cooler temperatures. The weather change isn’t the only thing we are looking forward to. Black queer artists will continue to impact culture throughout the second half of 2022.

There is no shortage of new literary works from Black queer authors. Whether you prefer to curl up with a physical book, a Kindle download, or an audiobook, The Reckoning has you covered with recommendations for titles to add to your must-read list. But wait, we’ve got you covered with music and movies too.

HIV and sex work criminalization often intersect, which means a person suspected of “exposing” someone to a virus can be grouped with a person exchanging sex for money, housing, or food, as both are labeled “criminals.” Advocates from both decriminalization sectors have rallied for doing away with these long standing policies, which have public health and criminal justice implications.

Organizations ranging from the Positive Women’s Network and the Sero Project to Sex Workers Outreach Project USA (SWOP-USA) have concentrated forces most recently to tackle both HIV and sex work criminalization in a collective called Health Not Prisons. They’re organizing to remove criminal charges and shift policing away from sex workers and people living with HIV (PLWH).

Chauncey McGlathery, sexual justice coordinator at the Sero Project, supports breaking down the silos that have kept HIV activists and sex worker activists from joining forces.

Like Townsend—who works as an HIV Prevention Manager and is a Philadelphia transplant—Edmond, a Gary, Indiana native and an HIV Peer Support Specialist at THRIVE SS relocated to Atlanta in 2015 in search of community, which he found through Undetectables Atlanta (UA); a private Facebook group that provides support and brotherhood for Black queer men living with HIV. It was through the THRIVE SS/UA network that the duo soon became a trio.

Enter Thaddeus Works, 56, a retired law enforcement professional whose routine visits to the THRIVE SS headquarters in Southwest Atlanta where he’d often see Edmond, wave hello, and then continue with his day, all of a sudden became less routine.

“I met Darriyhan three years ago. He was working with THRIVE [SS] and I used to come into the office and throw my hands up [in a gesture to say hello],” Works said. “And then one day I was talking to Larry [Walker, Executive Director of THRIVE SS]. I was trying to give Larry a hug, and I opened my arms and Darriyhan came up and hugged me. So that's how that happened,” he said.

Los Angeles-based gay filmmaker Michael Donte hasn’t been called to preach, but he has been called through his art and his latest short film “The Spirit God Gave Us,” to create a world that reimagines what is possible for Black queer people outside of the confines of the Black church.

A multi-hyphenate talent, in addition to directing, Donte also pens the screenplay and is a producer of Spirit. Full disclosure: Counter Narrative Project, which powers The Reckoning, is also an executive producer. The 20-minute short film, which stars Nic Ashe (“Queen Sugar,” “Choir Boy'”) and Elijah Boothe (“Luke Cage,” “Coin Heist”), had its world premiere in May at the Inside Out LGBTQ Film Festival in Toronto. “The Spirit God Gave Us” is an intersectional story of faith and queer love through the lens of Malcolm (Ashe), and Shamont (Boothe), two young Black men who volunteer as ushers for their Baptist church and are faced with reconciling societal and religious expectations with an intense longing for connection and intimacy.

While the history of homophobia in the Black church is well documented, Donte tells The Reckoning that he decided to take a different approach in his screenplay for Spirit.

“Writing the script was a kind of therapy for me,” Donte said. “Challenging the narratives that we often see in media—that was the hardest part about writing the script. I wanted to acknowledge the conflict without making it the centerpiece. And I think we did that,” he said.

In recent years, when the title of elder has been placed upon me, I’ve always rejected it. Not just because I felt too young, but also because I believed that being an elder was something you earned. And I did not believe I’d earned it yet. I still don’t.

What I have come to understand is that much of being an elder is really about who survives, and who is left to tell the story. In this sense, being an elder for me seems to be about loss, loneliness, and grief. It’s a reminder of the collective trauma that we as Black gay men and so many marginalized communities face—the war that was waged against us, against our bodies and desires that forced too many of us to become ancestors before we became elders. And for those of us remaining—left to become elders prematurely.

In 1999, the blocks between 10th street and 14th street in Midtown Atlanta was the world I entered. This is where I found community, made friends, earned enemies, felt desired and rejected, built community, mourned community, and ultimately became politicized in a way that is no longer possible. This is where I became an activist. This is where I became a leader; my origin story, if you will. Entering that world for me was like visiting Narnia.

When my boyfriend, Andre, heard that a new home renovation show was looking for service-oriented men and women impacting their communities, he nominated me for casting. Soon he became a co-conspirator with actress Danielle Brooks (“Orange Is the New Black”), the host of Netflix’s “Instant Dream Home” airing on the streaming platform on August 10.

Andre and Brooks devised a plan to lure me away from my 1930s three-bedroom, three-bathroom bungalow with the help of a team of rapid-fire renovators who transformed my home from top to bottom in just 12 hours. I am honored to be among eight families featured in the series. The show transformed my house into a home. I believe my father, Toye Holmes, is a co-conspirator on this project as well.

My father missed his opportunity to buy a house when I was a little boy in Madison, Wisconsin. His brand new white 1988 two-door Cutlass Supreme, with the spoiler kit and tinted windows, ate up his home buying power. Loan officers frowned upon his debt-to-income ratio. When the bank only offered him $60,000, he said, “Fuck that and them. I ain’t selling my car.” He thought he had more time.

By 1990, my father lost his job at Wisconsin Power and Light, where he was a journeyman. The termination sucker punched my family's finances, causing us to walk on lines just as thin as the lines dad once worked to repair.

With a bearded, high-heeled Saucy Santana featured in mainstream music videos and a pony-tailed Billy Porter hosting ballroom legends on the BET Awards, it’s become easy to think that the Black queer man has claimed his seat at the mainstream table. It took just one cable show and a blink-and-you’d-miss-it sex scene to prove otherwise.

In 2023, hip-hop turns 50, and in 2022 it’s time to give Common his flowers. It was 20 years ago that the Chicago native and conscious MC bravely denounced his previous homophobia on “Between Me, You & Liberation,” a track from his 2002 album “Electric Circus.”

In part 2 of our video, Michael Ward discusses potential barriers to Black gay men accessing the mpox vaccine as well as some potential solutions.

Our Narrative Justice Fellow, Michael Ward, chose to get vaccinated for mpox. He was out of the country when he first learned about the disease, and was fortunate to get an appointment.

The podcasting industry is experiencing a renaissance. Podcasts centering content created by the community, for the community, are difficult to discover on popular podcast apps like Apple, Spotify, and Google unless you hear about them through word of mouth. Many learned the amount some podcasters were earning when it was reported that Spotify inked a deal with Joe Rogan for more than $100 million. For Black LGBTQ+ folks in the space, deals like Rogan’s are not on the table or even a possibility. Anna DeShawn, co-founder of The Qube app, is on a quest to change that.

If you’ve never visited Chicago, you’ve probably still heard of the South Side. Giants of Black culture and liberation have called the South Side their home—Common, Michelle Obama, Kanye West, and Fred Hampton are folks from the sprawling section of the city—the largest of the three sections of Chicago. So, even if the name is unfamiliar, you’ve undoubtedly felt the effect of people who are from there.

The South Side is also home to DeShawn, who grew up in a working middle-class household with both parents. Because her father was a dean and coach, DeShawn tells The Reckoning that leadership lessons were all around her.

The most painful symptom during my two-week bout with monkeypox has been the grim understanding that if this were a different era, and the arrival of a different epidemic, any column or essay I wrote about my experience with the illness might’ve been among my last words.

I grieve thinking of how many of our gay ancestors attended a Sunday kickback like the one I went to a couple of weekends ago, played dominoes and laughed at memories; announced goals and made plans for getaways; attributed the queasiness they felt after the gathering to having drank too much on an empty stomach; went a couple of days expecting their sickness to pass, only for those at the kickback to soon learn that their friend was dead.

My sickness seems to be passing, and I’m operating under the assumption that this current outbreak does not have a 100 percent fatality rate or lifelong consequences. However, as a gay man who came of age in the 1980s and ‘90s, I feel the terror of being in the first wave of an emerging epidemic. I’ve spent my adulthood in the fast lane and have always recognized it could lead to early exposure to previously unknown threats, but it’s sobering when you find yourself in a situation that could’ve led to a fiery crash. Fortunately, it has felt more like getting a flat tire, as my monkeypox infection has been relatively mild.

A week after his appearance on the popular pop culture podcast, For Colored Nerds, author Aaron Foley hadn’t listened to the episode.

“I trust that it is good,” he told The Reckoning. “I am not a big fan of hearing my voice recorded, so I haven’t listened to it and probably won’t.”

Just being on the show was a career highlight for Foley, who works full-time as a senior editor for PBS NewsHour’s Communities Initiative. To be there talking about his debut novel, Boys Come First made it all sweeter.

“It’s all been unreal, to be honest,” he said. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all.”

As a journalist, Foley seeks to tell authentic, informative, and educational stories about real people and real life. Boys Come First is no different. As a Black, gay, millennial from Detroit, he wanted to tell a truthful story about his beloved city and Black gay men. It is something, he said, he does not always get to do in journalism.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has made Florida ground zero in the latest manufactured Republican culture war targeting the LGBTQ+ community. This development follows the passage of his controversial Parental Rights in Education Bill, commonly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” that went into effect on July 1. 

The law bans “instruction” about sexual orientation or gender identity “in kindergarten through third grade or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students per state standards.” A provision in the law also requires school staff members to alert parents about “critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being,” which many advocates believe will result in the involuntary outing of students. 

In Lee County, FL, the recent adoption of an LGBTQ Guide is amplifying advocates' fears. 

According to its authors, The LGBTQ Guide is “intended to create guidelines for teachers and administrators to help students who need it and to outline state laws for employees.” A provision in the LGBTQ Guide will notify parents — by form — if a student who is "open about their gender identity," is in a physical education class or on an overnight trip. The guidelines further instruct: “Upon notification or determination of a student who is open about their gender identity, parents of the affected students will be notified of reasonable accommodation options available.” 

For over 100 years, members of Black greek letter organizations have been on the forefront of social change in the Black community.

Affectionately referred to as the “Divine Nine,” all of these organizations have their own missions, visions and core values, but they all share common goals - to give back to the Black community and to uplift and educate. These organizations have sowed seeds in the Black community worldwide.

It’s tempting to argue that there isn’t a need for groups like this anymore, but when you look at the kinds of leaders that they have produced, it becomes a harder sell. Huey P. Newton, Vice President Kamala Harris, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and MC Lyte are just a few names of members of Black greek letter organizations, and the list goes on.

Being LGBTQ+, out, and a member of one of these organizations, can be a challenge. Despite sometimes feeling like an “other,” queer folks have found ways to navigate these challenges, even rising into various prominent positions in their respective organizations.

Walking down the aisle at his grand 2015 wedding, Nathaniel Holley had plenty of reason to feel proud: The Morehouse College graduate had secured both a successful career as a Washington DC-area paralegal, and the love of his life. Holley and his partner marked the occasion with a splashy $50,000 ceremony, complete with 125 guests to witness it all.

Their split, finalized just four years later, was a much quieter affair.

Finances had become a sore spot. The men argued, often. Soon, Holley felt forced to choose between the relationship and his sanity. He moved out on New Year’s Day 2019.

“I didn’t have any more fight left in me,” says Holley, 35. “I just realized that wasn’t the life I wanted anymore.”

For years, legal marriage has been exalted in the LGBTQ+ community, held up as an ultimate mark of social acceptance and stability. Yet while many consider same-sex marriage the ultimate fairy tale ending for LGBTQ+ couples, reality has proven otherwise: Less than a decade after the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges ruling secured marriage equality for millions of LGBTQ+ men and women across the nation, their divorce rates have neared those of heterosexual couples. Among lesbians, in particular, some studies suggest rates may be even higher.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is officially the newest United States Supreme Court member.

Jackson became the 116th member of the Court Thursday, June 30, at noon, following the official retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. Her appointment came after tense confirmation hearings in April. With her appointment, confirmation, and swearing-in, Jackson is the first Black woman to sit on the country’s highest court

Judge Greg Mathis Sr. has been a familiar face to television audiences for over two decades, but now it’s his son, Greg Mathis Jr., 33, and his partner Elliott Cooper, 38, who is stepping into the spotlight and challenging stereotypes about Black gay men on the new E! reality series “Mathis Family Matters.”

In a food truck in Southwest Atlanta, identical twins Jada Grèmillion and Branden Louis, 31, are serving up crawfish beignets, cornbread waffles, chicken, and candied yams at What Cha Cooking Baby, a thriving to-go-order restaurant on wheels that infuses the culture of their native New Orleans with authentic creole recipes passed down from their late grandmother Betsy Ann Anderson. The business is the manifestation of a lifelong dream for the owners and chefs who first opened their food truck to the public in March 2021, after a series of personal and professional setbacks that threatened to derail their future.

“We’re the same person, we just live in different bodies,” said the openly gay Louis in a 2018 documentary where he describes life with his twin sister Grèmillion, a trans woman.

“When we were younger, people would always say, 'Oh, Branden is the boy twin and Jada is the girl twin,' Louis said. “And then, I would always think in my head, what do they see that I don't see?”

“I just knew something about me was always different,” Grèmillion said. “And I knew that I didn't wanna grow up to be an old man. I knew that was not my story.”

Grèmillion tells The Reckoning that she knew she was going to transition as early as age 14.

We’re days away from closing out Pride Month, but we’re not letting this unwelcome fact slow down our celebration or our steady march toward the dance floor. The Reckoning has created the ultimate DIVAS! #Pride 2022 playlist to keep the party going beyond June 30th.