Homophobia is not a winning anti-AIDS message

So I am browsing on GayKenya.com, of all places, when I get news of the dust-up right here in NYC over Lifebeat's cancellation of a planned AIDS awareness conference, after black gay activists protested the scheduled performanes of Beeny Man and TKO, who have in the past issued lyrical calls for lesbians and gays to be murdered.

Some of the activists involved include Jasmyne Cannick, Staceyann Chinn, and Keith Boykin. In response to Lifebeat's condescending challenge to "do something constructive for the Caribbean American community," the activists are calling for a new concert to be organized in support of Jamaican lesbian and gay rights organization J-FLAG.

This is already being cast as "hip hop vs. THE GAYS round XXXII" on sites like allhiphop.com, so its a tribute to the activists (roundly chastised as "black gay bloggers" as if their access to the internet, and audacity to know how to use it, implies an elite lifestyle dripping with contempt for salt of the earth Caribbean Americans) to have come up with this ingenious way of calling Lifebeat's bluff. For indeed, the best way to fight AIDS in poor black nations like Jamaica and Kenya -- and in poor black communities in the US -- is to combat homophobia and specifically lesbophobia, which are expressions of misogyny and patriarchal values that are self-defeating as strategies for black empowerment. If Lifebeat can't figure that out, who else can?