As the publisher of a 13 year old periodical which targets Black gays and lesbians, I have had the opportunity to publicly address thousands, influencing closeted people to “come out” and stand up for them selves, which is particularly difficult in the African-American community. But now, I must come out of the closet again. I have recently experienced the power of change that came over me once I completely surrendered to the teachings of Jesus Christ. As a believer of the word of God, I fully accept and have always known that same-sex relationships are not what God intended for us.
– Venus magazine publisher Charlene E. Cothran, in her February 2007 cover story titled “Redeemed! 10 Ways to Get Out of the Gay Life, If You Want Out”
If you want to leave “the life” then by all means do it. Just don’t bash other people “on your way out.”
– A comment in response to Cothran’s story, posted by a reader on the Venus blog
On a Tuesday morning last June in the parking lot of a mall, after speaking to a preacher, Venus magazine publisher and African-American gay activist Charlene E. Cothran decided to renounce her lesbianism and hand her life over to the Lord. Nothing wrong with that; ex-lesbians happen, and usually Jesus plays a role in the transformation.
But after reading the story of Cothran’s conversion – published in Venus in the article “Redeemed! 10 Ways to Get Out of the Gay Life, If You Want Out” – I’m having a very hard time swallowing her claim that the Lord Jesus, and not some other lord – the Lord of the Dance, perhaps – is behind her change of heart, because the Jesus I’m familiar with is a stand-up guy, not a sidestepping creep.
In her article, Cothran proudly shared the new anti-gay mission of her magazine, and in doing so not only betrayed 38,000 unsuspecting queer readers, but also desecrated the memory of her “good friend” and the magazine’s namesake, Venus Landin, a fellow lesbian advocate who was murdered by an ex-lover in 1993.
Why Cothran didn’t have enough respect for her subscribers to “come out” for Jesus without condemning them in the process, and why she didn’t have the journalistic integrity to sell her magazine to someone in the queer African-American community that would continue its original mission, are questions that beg for answers that don’t reek of self-loathing. But her decision to continue to use the name of a lesbian activist as the vehicle by which she now spreads her anti-gay convictions is beyond reasoning – it’s an unconscionable choice that illustrates a level of depravity normally reserved for sociopaths in soap operas.
Cothran’s actions reveal either a complete repugnance for a woman she claims to have once loved and admired, or such a bloated sense of self-righteousness that she believes Venus Landin would actually approve of having her name attached to a publication that reinforces homophobia in the black community, as well as in the world at large.
To say that this story is simply sad and unfortunate would be a gross understatement. What probably began as one woman’s search for inner peace through Christ turned into a witch-hunt wherein one hunted was already slain, and the rest were her sitting pet ducks. The absence in the article of any admission (or even of any hint) of ethical struggle over her decision, coupled with her eagerness to damn the people she so arrogantly still calls “brothers and sisters,” reveals that Cothran’s alliance with her new so-called Christian friends has corrupted her morals to a despicable degree.
Pathetic, yes, but not surprising.
It’s no secret that neophyte ex-lesbian Christians like Cothran generally suffered from feelings of inferiority before finding Jesus, and, unfortunately for the rest of us, enjoy feeling superior after finding Jesus. Thanks to a bastardized interpretation of Christianity, they lose sight of Jesus through the forest of their newly sprung and exaggerated self-importance, and instead of spreading Christ’s message, they manipulate scripture to serve their own purposes. Believed sanctioned by God to save the souls of all who don’t jibe with their egoistically engineered ideology, they refuse to accept that what they call “ministering” is absolute condemnation.
Granted, Venus is Cothran’s magazine, and she’s free to “minister” through it as she pleases, but what causes a woman who was once passionate about human rights and dignity to demoralize the very people she once emboldened?
The answer, according to some in the gay and lesbian community, is greed.
Immediately following Cothran’s announcement, the gay media reported that Venus and her other magazine, Kitchen Table News, were both in dire financial straights. The Rev. Irene Monroe, a lesbian who once wrote for Venus and who now writes for a number of gay and lesbian publications, has been among the most vocal about her suspicion of Cothran’s motives. In a March 1 editorial for In Newsweekly, she wrote:
Venus‘ loyal readership had hoped the magazine would do for its queer population what revered publications like Ebony and Jet magazines did for all people of the African Diaspora — that is, change society’s negative and misinformed perceptions about us.
But as a fledgling magazine with the threat of folding always hanging over its head, Cothran opted to take financial support from black churches funded by white right-wing Christian organizations that emphasize “reparative therapies.” In fact, she opted to be her own magazine’s “ex-gay” poster girl, rather than let the magazine fold. And with her 4-year-old publication, Kitchen Table News, funded by black church support, Cothran has not only sold her soul for paltry pieces of silver and gold, but she has also sold out the African-American LGBTQ community for her ravenous desire to save her magazine by any means possible.
That sentiment was echoed in letters sent to Cothran, included one posted on Venus magazine’s website and signed by “Members of New Jersey’s LGBT Community”:
We are well aware that you changed Venus magazine because it didn’t make any money. … Hence it is perfectly obvious that you are playing to your grandstands. You clearly know your market and have decided to tailor your life to fit your economic necessities.
Cothran quickly denied the allegations. “Venus has managed to pay for itself AND Kitchen Table News,” she wrote in response. “As for support from black churches, we have been and continue to be avoided them financially. Support given usually comes in the form of an ad, here or there, but they are few and far between.”
But Monroe didn’t buy it:
What Cothran isn’t telling us is that not only is she getting financial support from black churches, but they have helped her land anti-HIV ads from big pharmaceutical companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abbott Laboratories that pay for half the cost of the magazine, with the other half paid for by the black churches promoting “ex-gay” ads targeted to the African-American LGBTQ community. One of these ads features Rev. Carla Thomas Royster, founder and pastor of Blessed Redeemer Church in Burlington, N.J. The ad states, “Only God brings us out of the closet: An uncensored testimony of one woman’s struggle with life and a lesbian spirit.”
Whether or not it’s true that money is at the root of the new Venus or, as the saying goes, at the root of all evil, Cothran wouldn’t be the first lesbian to sell out herself and her gay friends for a few bucks and some nefarious version of “truth” cloaked in holy drag. She also wouldn’t be the first black woman to be thought of by her own as a race traitor.
Time will tell how, or if, Cothran’s betrayal of the queer African-American community will pay off for her. But one thing we know for sure is that her actions reinforce what’s become a sad fact of American life: Regardless of how often or how loud a person calls herself a Christian, it doesn’t always mean she’s decent.
The most important lesson to be learned from Cothran’s behavior, I think, is that she — and all of the people who now support her — are not only allowing a very sad part of black American history to repeat itself, but are also propelling the recurrence. Despite having been victims of church-sanctioned bigotry, together they accept the role of oppressor without question or guilt. Enthusiastically, as if wildly aroused, they favor the condemnation of people who want nothing more than to love one another and to be treated like any other group of law-abiding citizens. And for that, they should be ashamed.
Members of the queer black community have had the floor pulled out from under them by one of its very architects. Their mission now is not to reason why, or to even complain about the reasons, but to rebuild. They’ve lost one of their own, a woman many consider a pioneer in the fight for gay and lesbian rights, but the truth is, Charlene Cothran was only one person with a good cause and a mediocre magazine.
Judging from the few issues of Venus that I read years ago when I lived on the East Coast and, more recently, from her article, Cothran’s good intentions and clout were far greater than her talents as a writer and publisher. The opportunity exists now for someone more noble and skilled to not only step forward and finish what she started, but also to do it better.
I hope that when their pain and anger subsides, those hurt most by Cothran respond to her gross violation of both their dignity and Venus Landin’s memory in a measured, mature and very public way, speaking to the fact that too much time and effort is spent looking for the mysterious ways in which God works, and not in noticing His fondness for the obvious.
The people who sell most loudly the promise of a blissful and everlasting life in Heaven are the same people who thrive on misery here on Earth, and who have made it very clear that they have little interest in getting along with anyone but each other. In contrast, the folks who do dedicate their lives to Christ in the most unselfish ways and without the damning rhetoric are the people who move us most. They act not only in service to God, but also, unlike Charlene Cothran, in service to humanity, obeying not only the word of Christ but also their collective conscience.
