BET Lives Up to Tacky Reputation with LGBT Web Section

I was all excited when I saw on The Daily Voice that BET.com had added an LGBT section to it’s website. That excitement quickly turned to annoyance, and then finally disgust. Perusing the website I stumbled across sections with bios of “who’s who” in the Black LGBT community, myths about the LGBT community, history, and an HIV/AIDS info section. There’s even a “what’s hot” among the Black queers section-annoying, but I can even deal with that.

But what really took the cake was this dumb-ass section on “How to tell if Your Man is Gay” which is full of every fucking ludicrous stereotype out there. Why, oh why do I expect BET to act right? Every time you think they’re gonna do something worthwhile they continue the downward spiral further into the abyss of foolishness. I did a show a few months ago on Blog Talk Radio about homophobia in the Black community, and the questions listeners asked were so conservative and uninformed it was really unnerving, like “Why are gay men always trying to take our men, etc.,” or “How can you tell if someone is on the DL?”

Given that that kind of ridicululous paranoia is out there in the world, and to have BET create a website that a lot of Black people will go to, and see that bullshit as their potentially first exposure to Black LGBT issues from a “legitimate” source, is downright sad. What someone at BET did to try to save themselves from the wrath of the Black Queers was to make the last entry in the series a thinly veiled way-letting you know the whole thing is “tongue-in-cheek.” Here’s what it says:

“The truth is, you don’t need all these signs to know whether your partner is gay or not. What you should do is sit down and talk to him about it. Make him feel that it is all right and that you understand. Finding out if your boyfriend is gay needs a little observation and a lot of honesty.”

Tags: BET, black homophobes, reginald hudlin, whack-ass television