MACT/NY Turns 30!

Come June of this year, Men of All Colors Together/New York will turn 30 years old. As some of you may know that I have been a part of some of their functions over time. In fact, just last year they sponsored me in a Q & A session. You should know by now that I don't put my name behind anyone or anything that I don't feel strongly about what they stand for. And such is the case as to why I stand behind MACT/NY.

This post is written with great disappointment in my heart. Not towards MACT/NY by any means, but New York City itself. For I've been to enough MACT/NY meetings at the LGBT Center to know that for a city as big as New York with such a big gay population, that there are way too few members, and how not enough of those too few members are in their 20's.

It brings to mind once again the question I say that we need to keep asking ourselves as a whole....WHAT HAVE WE BECOME?

Has New York City once known to be where gays of all colors and backgrounds came to and embraced each other, now become a mecca for separatism? I fear the answer is YES, as the proof is in the porn produced here where it takes a recession to get Black models hired, gay televsion, films, and music video made here in NYC, and practically every party plastered in Next Magazine. All actions of all these mediums speak as if the gay community is back in the 1960's saying to people of color, "This is a our White world, and you are a pion. So we'll take your money, but if you colored folks want fun or some representation, you're on your own."

This distresses me because I'm a native New Yorker. I grew up knowing that should I come out in any degree gay that I could come to Manhattan and be embraced. Not only as a gay man, but as a gay Black man. And when I came to terms with my orientation in 2002, New York City showed itself to be all those great things I imagined.

So what happened? Why is it now that just 8 years later, the racial climate that was progressing with the rest of American society has taken a step backwards to where non-Whites (unless light-complexioned) are made to feel that "since they not light, they ain't right"? Why is it that as the fight for gay rights wages on, this younger generation of gay males leaving their narrow-minded bigoted hick towns are making the racism born from that narrow-mindedness and bigotry part of the luggage they packed to come to NYC, while their gay forefathers had the good sense to leave it behind?

Men of All Colors Together/NY is a product of those gay forefathers. It challenges those actions within the New York gay community by making it clear that we can only progress TOGETHER, YOUNG AND OLD, BLACK AND WHITE, AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN. So to all the gay magazine editors, TV producers, porn directors, party promoters, etc. who claim they know we must band together to get equal rights for gays, but show extreme hypocrisy by practicing racism and separatism....MACT/NY is an organization whose standards YOU need to adopt.

It is these standards that make me proud to be associated with MACT/NY, and why I plan on being a part of their next get together this Friday night as the explore the past 30 years of MACT/NY and discuss plans for the future. If you care to join me, here's the info:

MACT/NY turns 30!

April 16th

@The LGBT Center

208 West 13th Street, NYC

8 - 10 PM

Suggested donation: $5

I actually hope for the day that we are so unified amongst our-gay-selves regardless of color, ethnicity, and nationality that the need for MACT/NY and its brother chapthers across the nation are no more. But for now, as we need and love you....

....HAPPY 30th ANNIVERSARY, MACT/NY!!!!