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[music]
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): There's a leak in this old building.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): And my soul.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): Oh my soul.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): Oh my soul.
[speaker]
A'OMARE KYYAM: I tested positive for *** 15 years ago.
It literally made my life more positive.
Upon getting the diagnosis so much clarity came to me about what I wanted to do, because
now I realized I had a timeline,
that I was only going to live to be a hundred and fifty.
Being positive means that I need to be positive.
And so, 15 years ago was the start of a new journey for me.
And yes, it took me on a different path, but it was probably a greater path with a greater
purpose of helping others and affecting others positively..
It annoys me and frustrates me because I think there is a stigma of what *** looks like.
There is a stigma of what a gay man looks like.
And I’m six-four and 270 pounds.
Hell, I’ve been struggling trying to lose weight for three years, and that’s just
not the perception of what a person with *** should be focusing on.
A'OMARE KYYAM: I was the family member that went to everybody’s church.
You went to this cousin’s church and this aunt’s church and your grandmother’s church
and your big ma’s church. You just went to everybody’s church.
I like the ceremony of church.
I loved the fact that everyone loved me as a kid.
That was, that was so and so’s nephew, that was so and so’s cousin.
So I kind of ran around the church a little behind the scenes because my cousin’s father
was the pastor or the deacon or the minister.
Church was church.
A'OMARE KYYAM: I always felt, even then as a kid, that I, I didn’t feel a great connection,
but I just knew I was supposed to be there.
Like, you knew you got up on Sunday morning, you put on those dress socks, you put on the
tie, and you just went to church with your mother.
I wasn’t really paying any attention.
Sunday School was fun, Vacation Bible Study, you know, was fun.
But I wasn’t necessarily, as a young child, a one-digit child, I really wasn’t thinking
about what was happening.
If anything, church was entertainment, seeing the people shouting, and the women falling
out and the ushers running with the white sheet and covering up her,
you know, covering her up with the white sheet and people getting Pompeian Olive Oil put
on their forehead and all the anointing.
It was kinda, it was theatrics to me.
And I never really, I could say I didn’t really grasp any of it until I started going
into my early teens.
I think you have the ah-hah moment where you like step back and you like, “What is this?”
And,“Where do I fit into that?”
A'OMARE KYYAM: Clearly homosexuality was the only sin known to man that was, that was taught
in church.
Nothing. No other sin mattered.
It was the scourge - homosexuality.
It was what was crippling the community and breaking up families and just ruining everything.
And it was just like ok, “Well, I guess… I won’t be gay.”
It was one of those thoughts where what, clearly, if everyone was passionate about it and the
pastor is this passionate about it, I just won’t do it, I’ll just keep it to myself.
And I think that was when I really started burying it and not really saying I was going
to act upon it, until I was a lot older.
Even through bouts of being molested it never really kicked in.
I think when I was in a consensual interaction with someone my age, and I realized: "Okay,
this makes me feel good."
This is something that I want to do and be a part of and it is me and it feels right.
Then you start listening even more intently to the sermons and hearing what pastors are
saying and it’s just like, “Well, damn, I can’t even go here for comfort.”
So it’s kind of like I had to just find comfort on the inside.
A'OMARE KYYAM: The judgment in the Black church, and even amongst family members and strangers
and everyone being so judgmental, I knew I couldn’t feel safe there.
And I wasn’t a part of the clique, because I felt like churches really have these cliques,
and if you’re not down with one of the cliques, you’re just an outsider, so there is no
safety in the church.
By 21, when I came out, I was just like, “I’m over religion.”
I had a, a praying grandmother and a praying great grandmother, I had a Big Ma and a Big
Ma Queen.
And the thing that fascinated me about them was that they did not need to be in church
to be one with God and my Big Ma Queen always taught me to have my conversations with God
on my level.
And so for me it wasn’t about all the religiousness and I learned to talk to God a long time ago
and I acknowledged Him all the time and I would literally sit somewhere and just talk.
And it wasn’t bowed head, bowed, on my knees and all of that, I just talked.
And I talk to God through my poetry.
I’ve always just had a great relationship with God.
It was the church that I did not have a relationship with.
A'OMARE KYYAM: I had to literally ignore the Black Church in order to find God and to find
the God within me and to, and make peace with that
because the messages that I was hearing in church weren’t edifying of my own spirit.
Even with my whole process of coming into my sexuality, if I’m turned away at home
– which I was not, I have a very loving and supportive mother – you know,
if I was turned away at work and shunned because of my sexuality, if someone happened to find
out,
you would think the last bastion would be the church, and then to go to church and realize
you’re not loved on there and you’re not appreciated and, and you’re not built up
there.
So I had to realize that was not the place where I was going to get the spiritual boost
that I needed so I just looked inward and I just continued my own personal conversations
with God and learned how to pray and learned how to meditate and just being still.
Because I felt that you have to love yourself.
That is the foundation, is to love yourself first in order to be able to do any other
great thing in life..
When it comes to my being, I don’t really put other people’s perceptions on myself.
I’m going in there as A’Omare Kyaam, and if you can’t accept the entire picture then
you don’t deserve to look at the artwork, so….
A message that I would like to have heard when I was attending church regularly was
that this is home for everyone, from any background.
They always, it always had stipulations upon it.
[music]
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): There’s a leak in this old building.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): And my soul.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): Oh my soul.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): Oh my soul.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): There’s a leak in this old building.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): And my soul.