A new support group to help men who were victims of violence based on their sexual orientation or perceived sexual identity will hold its first meeting Jan. 20 at St. Mark United Methodist Church.
The group, named We Are Surviving Together, is founded and facilitated by Rev. Josh Noblitt of St. Mark UMC and Duncan Teague, a Unitarian Universalist candidate for ministry.
Noblitt and Teague, both gay, were victims of hate crimes based on their sexual orientation.
Over the years, Duncan Teague has kept journals, notes, photographs, programs, poetry and other writings in boxes stored in his garage, snapshots of his life growing up as a black gay activist.
"I was going to go back and read them," he said about keeping the boxes of papers.
But he knew the documents, whether notes from a gay activist group he belonged to or a program from ADODI Muse: A Gay Negro Ensemble, a poetry collective he helped found, were important to recording the experiences of black gay people. He also kept the poetry, journals and other writings of noted black gay poet Tony Daniels, who died in 1998.
"I knew they were important and as I traveled in gay activism and AIDS activism, I knew one thing was not happening, and that was the accounts of black gay life," he said.
Auburn Avenue Research Library celebrates donation of gay activist's papers with reception