Some years ago – fifteen or twenty, maybe – I had just walked out of the Friday service (“Jumah”) held in the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan when a man I had never seen before walked up to me and began kissing me all over my face. My embarrassment was not because we were surrounded by dozens of men – mostly from Egypt and Pakistan, but also from many other nations, as well as the United States – nor was it because someone might think this was a sexual involvement. I felt embarrassed because I was convinced that the man had mistaken me for someone else.
I didn’t stop him. I simply waited for him to realize his mistake, and then he would be consumed with embarrassment. That realization never came. As best I can tell, the man – who was from Bangladesh – knew who I was, and apparently deemed me worthy of his loving kisses.
To this day, I bask in the memory of his loving kisses. There is nothing sexual about it. I suspect that he knew of one thing or another I had done which made me worthy of such loving affection. Most Muslims – and especially my African American Muslim Brothers and Sisters – are unaware of many things I have done. One of my handiworks I was pleased to see in mosques all over New York City – some little, helpful thing that Muslims had duplicated and circulated without attribution. I was happy to see that I had done something helpful. My reward is with Allah. But, I don’t mind getting a few kisses of appreciation, if that was what that was all about.
I did not grow up being kissed by other men. I grew up being beaten. Apparently, it is a crime to be – as my older brother put it – “acting like a girl”. I wasn’t acting. I assume I had feminine mannerisms. I was, in actual fact, offended by the thought that I was expected to put on an act – to act like a boy. Life is not an act. (For whatever reasons, the lying and stealing little boys who were my occasional playmates were not deemed worthy of beatings or even reproach.)
I was almost 13 when our family moved from Harlem to the Bronx. We lived next door to a Russian-Jewish family. Every school-day, when Neil and I left home to walk to the local junior high school together, Neil’s father would lean out his front door and kiss Neil on the lips – showing his love for his son in broad daylight, in public. This is a wonderful thing. Every day, Neil went out into the world armed with a kiss from his father. Life is competitive. Those kisses gave Neil a competitive advantage in the world.
Affection between men is a good thing. Fathers should kiss their sons. Men should hold hands – as they do in West Africa. It is a good thing for friends to kiss. You can’t handle it – but that does not make it bad. African men do not hold hands simply because it is the custom; they actually feel affection – love – for each other. I discovered many years ago, when an African acquaintance held my hands as we talked, that my feelings toward him changed completely. I did not become sexually attracted to him. I just felt more affection for him, and thought better of him. I was astonished. Up to that point, I had actually disliked him, somewhat.
There is an effort among African American men who are homosexual – and who are close friends and associates of mine – to use the expression “same-gender-loving”. I have serious problems with that expression. Among other considerations:
- As a society, we need to stop using the words “sex” and “love” as synonyms. They are not. We need vastly more love in our society. We do not need more sex. We need to love everyone we see – on general principle (similar to “innocent until proven guilty”). We need to respect the loving relationship between mother and child, particularly. This is our closest loving relationship with another human being, ever. It is at the essential core of who we are.
- Our society needs for men to love each other – on general principle – and show it. This society was formed and fashioned by Anglo-Saxon (English) people who – and this is documented – do not even touch their own babies. Anglo-Saxon men grow up touching each other in brutal ways – whether in athletic competition or in anger – but not in loving ways (unless we equate sex with love). In other parts of the world, including Europe, men hug, hold hands, kiss – but not the English. In the United States, African American men have taken on Anglo-Saxon ways and attitudes. Emotional distance – alienation – between men is the norm. Among the effects of this alienation is that it makes economic progress extremely difficult, because African American men lack a positive emotional basis (love) for working with each other.
- Just because a man wants to have sex with another man doesn’t mean that he loves him. In many of our ghettos, the same homophobe who beats up the homosexual by day goes looking to the same homosexual for sexual favors at night. Is that love? According to what I have read, and according to what several non-homosexual friends have told me about their own lives, most American men “fool around” at some point in their lives – that is, they have sex with other men. Is that love? (If something is prevalent, that doesn’t make it right. If something is rare, that doesn’t make it wrong.) Is sexual promiscuity the same as an abundance of love?
Use of the expression “same-gender-loving” is not at the root of these issues, but it enshrines unfortunate attitudes in language. Among other things, it implies that men who feel a sexual need for other men love other men and that men who do not feel a sexual need for other men do not love other men.
In a society that is desperately in need of more love – and this is (in my understanding) the highest morality – confusing sex with love becomes a disintegrating force.
19-Dhu al-Hijjah-1432
November 15, 2011
Which Way Is Up? 