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Filmmaker Lee Daniels: “Black men can’t come out”
He’s got the number one movie in the US right now with Lee Daniels’ The Butler opening this weekend with a gross of just under $25 million.
As part of his publicity blitz for the film, writer-director Lee Daniels stopped by for a chat on Larry King Now (It’s on Hulu and I watch it all the time – highly recommend!).
The conversation with King got very interesting when Daniels said homophobia within the black community has all but forced many gays to live double lives and led to dire consequences.
‘Black men can’t come out. Why? Because you simply can’t do it. Your family says it. Your church says it. Your teachers say it. Your parents say it. Your friends say it. Your work says it.’
‘So you’re living on this ‘DL’ thing and you’re infecting black women – and its killing us. The black culture and the Hispanic culture have a thing about [homosexuality].’
Daniels found that out first-hand at a very young age. One day when his father and some of his policemen friends were playing cards, he walked down the stairs wearing his mother’s red pumps.
‘I got beat. He beat me severely for it,’ he says. ‘But that didn’t stop me because the following Sunday I walked down the stairs wearing her blue pumps – this time with her purse.’
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Larry says:
As a gay black man I can tell you one hundred percent without a doubt that Lee Daniels is correct,my own father told me when I was a very young boy and he had found out I had kissed another boy “god hates boys that kiss other boys”. I knew than that my dad hated gays more than he loved me and so to this day almost twenty years later I have not told my father that I am gay because I know my dad hates gays and all I want, all I ever wanted is for him to love me.