The Rev. Darlene Franklin's voice rises and falls with a preacher's familiar rhythms as she delivers a radio sermon. But Franklin, the 44-year-old leader of Full Truth Fellowship of Christ Church on Detroit's west side, is not a standard-issue pastor. Last week, she became the first openly gay African-American minister to have a religious radio show in Detroit. Her show, Getting the Word Out, airs on WMKM (1140-AM) from 7:30 to 8 p.m. each Thursday. "It's about explaining to people who are gay, lesbian and transgender especially that the Bible is not about condemnation," said Franklin, a divorced mother of two who came out about her sexuality 15 years ago. [...] As is true of other groups, Metro Detroit's major African American religious groups take a conservative approach to homosexuality. But Franklin argues that this approach, which she says leads churches to ignore gays, is more threatening to the black community, which is seeing an increase of HIV and AIDS cases among young black men and women.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!