Keeping the Faith: More Queer Women of Color Are Making Room for Themselves in the Religions of Their Ancestors
By Karen Hawkins

When Urooj Arshad’s mother finally forced her out of the closet four years ago, she demanded that Arshad swear on the Koran to tell the truth about her sexuality, once and for all.

After years of denial, Arshad found that she couldn’t disrespect the holy book of Islam by lying, and admitted to her mother, who was clutching the Koran, that she is attracted to women. The shock of that incident has irrevocably linked her religion and culture with her sexuality in Arshad’s mind. “I just felt so cornered and very traumatized … because my mom used the Koran,” Arshad says.

Arshad, 26, was born and raised in Pakistan; her family moved to the United States when she was 17. She currently works for a lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender youth agency in Washington, D.C. She has recently begun to reconnect with her culture after years of trying to escape it, and that reconnection has been liberating, she says, freeing up her energies to focus on other parts of her life.

Her experience represents one of the many ways women of color come to reconcile their culture and religion with their sexuality. While some may initially separate their ethnic and religious identity from their sexual identity and later seek to reunite the two, others manage to seamlessly blend them, carrying all parts of themselves with them at all times.

As gay men and lesbians gain acceptance in mainstream America, more of them — regardless of their ethnic backgrounds — are asking that their religious, cultural and spiritual institutions follow suit. There are vocal groups of LGBTs in almost every major religion and denomination, from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Buddhists to Southern Baptists. Karen Weldin, director of operations for the interfaith network Soulforce, believes the movement of vocal queer people back into communities of faith reflects a larger societal phenomenon. “People are searching for meaning and purpose, and when they do that, they turn to religion and spirituality,” she says.

But as Arshad’s experience illustrates, some queer women of color who return to their faith find that they have to work to make it a good fit.

When to Let Go

For Arshad, distancing herself from her Muslim beliefs and culture was a necessary part of accepting her sexuality.

“I denounced Islam, and that made coming out easy, because I kind of let go,” she remembers. “I didn’t have a framework anymore, and I didn’t care what Islam said anymore.”

Going away to college at a large Midwestern university opened her eyes to whole new ways of living and celebrating spirituality, ways that didn’t mesh with the rigid ideas of Islam she was raised to accept. Growing up in Pakistan, she says, she remembers hearing few, if any, references to homosexuality, and the ones she did hear were negative. She was in high school the first time she heard friends mention it, and even then, it was only to discuss how they had stopped listening to George Michael because he was gay. “I just don’t think there’s any space to talk about it,” she says.

It wasn’t until Arshad met other queer South Asian and Muslim people that she realized it’s possible to be all three at once. She’s been especially grateful to build a relationship with the Al Fatiha Foundation, the world’s most visible LGBT Muslim organization. Al Fatiha and its founder, Faisal Alam, are based in Washington, D.C., and Arshad has become active in the organization, even attending a recent retreat.

In mainstream, or orthodox, Islam, “Same-sex acts are considered wrong and are forbidden,” Alam says, adding that in some countries governed by Islamic law, same-sex acts are punishable by whip-lashing or even death. Islamic religious leaders typically use certain books of the Koran and declarations by the prophet Mohammad to support their beliefs about homosexuality, Alam says. Despite the fact that neither of these sources makes any mention of female sexuality, references to forbidden acts between two women were added long after the prophet died, Alam says.

Many contemporary Muslims believe that homophobia in Islam is a product not of the Koran but of colonization by England, Alam notes, arguing that anti-gay sentiment didn’t surface in Islamic states until after World War I. Before coming under English rule, Islamic states had an abundance of same-sex expression, including harems of both men and women and same-sex erotic art and poetry.

Currently, a movement among contemporary, progressive Muslim scholars is rediscovering the true meanings and intentions of the Koran within a feminist, pro-gay framework. “Our sexuality is a very small component of what makes us Muslim,” Alam says. “It’s about your relationship with God.”

“We view Islam as a very, very progressive faith,” he adds. “It is a faith that is evolving.”

Arshad acknowledges that part of the evolution of Islam is acknowledging that there is a spectrum of opinion in the queer Muslim community about the Koran and its influence. “I met other queer Muslim people, and it’s important for them to study the Koran and see how they’re accepted by Allah, and they’re queer.” Connecting with the queer Muslim community has helped Arshad realize that she, ultimately, gets to decide what she believes and accepts about Islam. “If Allah loves me, Allah loves me for who I am, and God has given me the opportunity to be who I am,” she says. “I’m not really interested in what the Koran says … I believe in my heart.”

Written in Stone?

Mary Torres, a Puerto Rican grandmother living in Chicago, has a similar approach to the Christian Bible that Arshad has to the Koran. “The Bible was written thousands of years ago,” she says. “In 2000, we can’t just go by what the Bible says. … You have to deal with yourself first.” Torres, who facilitates a support group for a local lesbian organization called Amigas Latinas, tells the women in her group they have to make peace with being Latina, Catholic and gay.

“You’re you, so what are you going to do with yourself? Stop being you?” she asks them. “God knew you were going to be gay, and he’s not going to stop loving you.”

Torres, 55, grew up in the Catholic Church in Puerto Rico; she and her family continued their commitment when they moved to Chicago. “I’m very involved in my church,” she says. “I have been all my life.”

She has served on the parish council and taught Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine (CCD) classes for her congregation, the same one she has been with for the last 29 years. She is well-known in the church community, though only her close friends know she’s a lesbian.

“It took me a long time to be able to say I’m gay. The whole community doesn’t need to know. I tell people if I need to,” Torres says. “I think I have a wonderful relationship with God, and I didn’t want that to change because I’m gay.”

With the help of an understanding deacon at her church, she has reconciled the two seemingly conflicting parts of her identity. She remembers the deacon told her, “God is love. God loves everybody.” She has since come to believe that “the church is supposed to accept everybody, no matter what.”

But that message of acceptance and unconditional love contrasts sharply with mainstream Puerto Rican society’s view of homosexuality, Torres says, noting that the country’s deep Catholic roots keep it from positively acknowledging lesbians and gay men.

“We’re not accepted at all,” she says. “Religion is very important for the Latin people. For anybody who’s gay, it’s not the right thing to do.”

So great was the pressure to do the right thing and be a “good Catholic” that Torres ignored her feelings about women and entered an 18-year marriage to a man. That union produced three children, all grown.

Despite their culture’s views, members of Torres’ family, including her ex-husband and their grandchildren, now know and respect her sexuality. “I’m very lucky,” she says. “I’m the exception to the rule.”

Sister Outsider

Wendi’Autumn O’Neal has also had an unconventional — and positive — coming-out experience. She laughingly admits to being raised not in a traditional church setting, but in what she refers to as “the religion of the Civil Rights movement.” Born and raised in New Orleans, she comes from an activist family that has celebrated her sexuality.

Her father, she remarks, has come out to his friends as the father of a queer child, and O’Neal received gifts and congratulatory calls from them when she came out. Her father was raised African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) and her mother Catholic, but it was important to her father that she not be raised in an organized religious setting.

Instead, she got a mix of religious influence that came from attending Mass on special occasions with her mother and watching rituals that she now realizes are retentions from Africa, including going down to the river to give offerings.

When she recently lived and worked in rural east Tennessee for four years, she attended the local A.M.E. church, which is an offshoot of the Methodist faith and was founded in 1816 for free blacks in response to segregation in the church.

When O’Neal arrived in Tennessee, she immediately came out to her pastor, lending her a copy of the award-winning documentary All God’s Children, which examines African-Americans and homophobia. The pastor took things well, saying the congregation probably wasn’t ready for the film but that she, personally, got a lot out of it. While O’Neal never openly declared her sexuality to her fellow church-goers, she says she knows people made assumptions, especially after two stereotypically lesbian-looking friends visited from out of town. Her friends held hands and were affectionate when she took them to church — something O’Neal says not even straight couples do there. She remembers being very aware of her friends’ actions and considering the repercussions — she thought, “Ya’ll are going to leave, but I’m going to be here. I live around the corner.” She eventually decided to respond by moving closer to her friends in the pew.

“I’m not going to separate myself from my people,” she declares.

Being unabashedly lesbian didn’t earn her any open enemies in Tennessee, but it didn’t necessarily earn her any friends, either. “I did feel isolated out there because I was an outsider,” she remembers. “I didn’t really incur violence, or people mocking me, feeling unsafe in those ways, but just not having any company. I didn’t know where people were.”

She says her experiences in Tennessee and in other rural areas conflict with what people think of black church communities. “I generally find that there are a lot of assumptions that people make, like black people are more homophobic, and my experience is that it just isn’t true,” she says. “If I don’t have a relationship with people outside the church, they’re going to be suspicious of me, period.”

O’Neal says her current spirituality revolves around African traditions, particularly those of the Yoruba culture of east Africa. Ifa is the major faith of the Yoruba people, and through it she has learned about various Orishas, or deities, of the faith. She keeps altars in her home, and calls on the powers there for prayer and healing.

No matter what faith she is practicing, she has never had a problem blending it with her sexuality.

Keeping It Simple

Ultimately, women of color — like other lesbians and gay men who have rediscovered their religious roots — come to believe that spirituality is more about their personal relationship with God than about what their religious leaders or texts have to say about homosexuality. Ancient religious texts are increasingly viewed as products of their time or as examples of what can happen after centuries of politicization. Just as there is more than just one “right” way to be queer, there is more than just one way to be Muslim or Christian, an idea that is slowly gaining acceptance in some denominations.

Often it is the simple things that help women of color sort through the complexity of their identities.

“I want to be happy,” Arshad says. “I think that would be what Allah would want.”

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