David Neale battles ignorance and raises consciousness about black gays and lesbians through speaking, writing, and entrepreneurship. A Brown University graduate, he is the founder and resource manager of Black Lavender Resources.

Neale's crusade began during his senior year at an all male, Catholic high school in Maryland. Unwilling to remain silent any longer in the face of regular harassment from those who already perceived him to be gay, Neale came-out. The harassment intensified, but Neale ? a straight-A, model student ? received little support from the school's administration for his act of self-empowerment and self-acceptance. When the school's principal prevented him from publishing an article about his experiences as a gay student in the school newspaper, Neale took matters into his own hands. With the help of his mother, he made 800 photocopies of the 3-page article and distributed as many as he could himself before the administration confiscated the articles. Neale?s coming-out story is chronicled in Being Different: Lambda Youths Speak Out (Franklin Watts, 1995).

A Eulogy For Sakia Gunn An Eternal Sista Warrior
By: Alicia Banks

(I dedicate this column to young homosexual warriors who are out and proud everywhere. You all are my greatest inspirations. I live for you...AB}

It is an undeniable and historically proven fact that those who are oppressed often become the most cruel oppressors. The United States were founded by slave masters who wanted to be free from British rule, even as they simultaneously stole, enslaved, dehumanized, and forcibly ruled captive Africans for centuries. As fellow hostages on plantations, mulattos were often the most rabid overseers and treacherous house niggers, and often crueler than many white slave masters. In Nazi death camps, Jewish and Polish SS officers who passed as Germans were far more brutal than their actual German Nazi peers. During America?s genocide against Native Americans, Native American scouts and African-American Buffalo soldiers legendarily assisted white men as they robbed and slaughtered red, brown, and black people who looked like them. White gays are usually more blatantly racist than any of their racist heterosexual peers, especially those who control gay media. Closeted gays and gays who feign at being "healed heterosexuals" gaybash more rabidly than any homophobic or sexually bigoted heterosexual...

A Call To Black Lesbian Sisters
by Terri Jewell

Waiting To Exhale With A Rainbow Twist
by Andréna

You see, I have to fly off this island, Reggae?s rock, Marley?s big yard and Sean Paul?s root cause...just to breathe. Just to breathe in some gay air, some level lesbian vibes. In Atlanta, DC, Miami, Boston, NYC, wherever.  Wherever I have friends and no relatives, wherever there is a strong gay and lesbian community that gives a context of belonging and pride, all wrapped up in the love and politics of a universal rainbow. And of course a place, that has healthy throngs of fiercely cerebral, hot woman who look like Tweet and Beyonce.