Homophobia in the African American community

Homophobia in ethnic minority communities refers to any negative prejudice or form of discrimination within the ethnic minority communities worldwide towards people who identify as – or are perceived as being – lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), known as homophobia. This may be expressed as antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, irrational fear, and is sometimes related to religious beliefs. While religion can have a positive function in many LGB Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, it can also play a role in supporting homophobia.

Many LGBT ethnic minority persons rely on members of their ethnic group for support in terms of racial matters. However, within these communities, homophobia and transphobia often exists within the context of ethnocultural norms on gender and sexual orientation, with one American researcher claiming that "a common fallacy within communities of color is that gay men or lesbians are perceived as 'defective' men or women who want to be a member of the opposite gender." There is a lot of difficulty regarding how to categorise homosexuality throughout different cultures, In recent times, scholars have argued that Western notions of a gay and/or heterosexual identity only began to emerge in Europe in the mid to late 19th century. Behaviors that today would be widely regarded as homosexual, at least in the West, enjoyed a degree of acceptance in around three quarters of the cultures surveyed in Patterns of Sexual Behavior (1951).

Attitudes towards a person's sexual orientation vary throughout the United States, and the social and cultural mores surrounding sexuality have a large sociological impact on how individuals behave, especially with regards to the family unit. Many ethnic minority families in the United States do not feel comfortable discussing matters of sexuality, and disclosure of one's sexual orientation or identity often presents challenges, and many feel that their coming out process may force them to be loyal to one community over another.

...
Wikipedia