I was once a very active person in LGBTQ+ organizations in Roanoke, VA. I performed in benefit shows for various, what was then called “LGBT”, organizations. I performed at the nightclub, The Park, doing all kinds of characters, performing alongside many friends and even my mother, who is affectionately known as “Miss Mama”. There again typically for benefits.
When the AIDS epidemic hit we did a lot of AIDS benefit shows because the disease would be devastating for people both emotionally and financially. The blind eye of the government, then headed by Ronald Reagan, was no help at all with Reagan refusing to even say the word “AIDS” until he was forced to because of public outcry.
Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge (MCCBR)
I was a member of the Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge (MCCBR) in its very early years in 1987. I did leave the church for a length of time from 1990 to 2003 when I was studying for my I.T. degree, getting my career started and buying a house. In all honesty, as a student, I didn’t have a lot of money and couldn’t support anything or anyone but myself and I was living hand to mouth at that. After that I started working and saved for a down payment for my house and bought a new car.
When I did reemerge in 2003, I stayed pretty active in all kinds of things until 2016 when, after several years of frustrations over petty nonsense, I finally wised up and left again for the last time.
During 2003 to 2014, I rejoined MCCBR and so did Miss Mama. I would sing solos, performed in some of their music programs, volunteered in the children’s church and reprogrammed, maintained and updated their website at no charge for years. I’d also give money and canned goods to the church’s food bank.
What I didn’t volunteer for, I tried to give some money from time to time to other organizations as I could. Sure, there were some frustrating times and differences, but nothing compared to what I faced from 2014 to 2016.
When I first came out in Roanoke, VA in 1980, the LGBTQ+ community was very integrated with elements of various sub-cultures. At The Park there were gay men, lesbians, drag queens, butch queens, trans people and yes even hustlers and drag queen prostitutes, and even a number of straight people who were gay-friendly. We were a melting pot of all kinds of people, young and old, big and small and types of all sorts. The LGBT community really cared and watched out for each other. It was marvelous. This however changed.
When a longtime lesbian pastor of MCCBR decided she needed a change, and after a lengthy and turbulent search, MCCBR elected a male pastor who was Rev. Joe Cobb who is now on Roanoke City Council with stints as vice-mayor. When Joe was confirmed as pastor of MCCBR, many of the lesbians were extremely pissed off. I even heard several of them bitching on the sidewalk outside of the church basically saying, “I don’t want some fucking man as my pastor!!” Quite a number of them left the church after that.
Just because I don’t want to sleep with women doesn’t mean I hate all women. I have worked with and for many great women who I loved and respected. I believe women really get the short end of the stick with legislation, trying to be treated equally in the workplace and trying to preserve their rights to choose. Over the centuries, women have basically had to deal with all the bullshit thrown at them by men.
That said, I can’t figure out why some lesbians hate men. It’s outright misandry. I’ve heard the “I was abused and molested by a male relative or loved one” bit but no one else is that relative or loved one so I found that reasoning a pitiful excuse to hate.
Lesbians who were once MCCBR members tried to start an all lesbian church during Joe’s time as pastor but it ultimately failed. That should’ve told them something but it seems that lesson was totally lost.
In 2014 Miss Mama and I left MCCBR because it wasn’t handicap accessible with no sign of anything being done for the church’s disabled and, with my mother’s declining mobility, it was getting too dangerous trying to get her up and down the stairs at the entrances. Frankly I was glad when we quit going because I had quit performing in ensembles at the church because I had enough of the bullshit I had to put up with by the two misandrist lesbians who were in charge of the music department. I noticed after I quit doing choirs or ensembles, the ones these two women would pick on and fuss at in their choir were always men. Even when I would sing a solo for the church one or both of those two lesbians would always try giving me a bunch of shit before I went on. My attitude was basically I was going to do what I do my way and those two bitches could go fuck themselves.
Plus there were people in the congregation who would make me and Miss Mama nervous. Quite a number of them were downright crazy.
A couple of years after we left the church, the time came Joe Cobb left MCCBR to pursue his local political career. MCCBR once again went through a time when there was no pastor and church services were conducted by whoever they could get, typically members of the congregation.
Over this time, I began getting calls or messages from friends of mine saying they visited MCCBR but the lesbians were so cold and unwelcoming to them they didn’t want to go back. Who could blame them? Most of the time when I’d hear these sort of things I’d take them with a “grain of salt” but when multiple disconnected people say basically the same thing, there’s usually something to it.
Eventually everyone owning a penis, except for maybe one or two “hanger ons”, quit going to MCCBR, and of course their offerings fell off sharply. They rented the downstairs of the church to the Roanoke Diversity Center and it seemed that was their main source of income. Eventually the Roanoke Diversity Center moved out of the basement rooms and into their own place. MCCBR could then no longer afford their building and were forced to sell it.
The church is now renting a chapel from another church for, what I heard, fifty bucks a week like they did when they began in 1986.
The misandrists lesbians wanted an all lesbian church. Well they got it and it destroyed the church. I have no sympathy for them.
MCCBR once had the moto, “A Church For All People“. It’s obvious it’s not like that anymore.
I do not direct my opinions of the church to pastors of MCCBR past or present but to their congregation. MCC pastors pretty much have to deal with the congregations they get good or bad. MCC of Rehoboth, Delaware also had a lesbian take over of their church and their male pastor ended up leaving.
Roanoke Pride
When the night club, The Park, closed in 2013, Roanoke Pride became the new management and reopened the bar in 2014. I was hoping the bar would go back to being the pleasant place to hang out in like it was in the 1980s. I really hoped it would turn out to be a good, positive place for the LGBTQ+ community to hang out in again.
I was friendly with the man who would ultimately become manager of the bar and he also, along with his drag queen co-host, would emcee the shows. They really were quite good together, they put on excellent shows and, to my joy and pleasure, didn’t put up with any shit.
I was even an upper level “yellow” sponsor for the Roanoke Pride Festival in 2014. I thought it would be a good way to promote my album, “Debut of a Lifetime” which came out the year before. I sang in a few shows and I thought it was all going very well. I was really impressed with the professionalism of the Roanoke Pride Committee then. Unfortunately, that professionalism was short lived.
In January 2016 that would all change. The president of Roanoke Pride decided to show his true colors, fired the manager of The Park saying the manager wasn’t doing his job.
I thought this was strange because every time I went to The Park I saw the manager working his ass off in that bar and also emceeing the shows. The manager was also a key person in putting together the Roanoke Pride Festivals which were very good festivals…THEN. No one worked harder for the community as that manager.
When the Roanoke Pride president spread what I perceived as total lies, I called “BULLSHIT” publicly. I have always been one to call foul even to my own detriment.
I was then attacked online by not just the Roanoke Pride president but also from a slew of Roanoke Pride’s supporters and The Park’s new manager and some of the employees. One of them even tried to attack me using one of my own music tracks which was promptly taken down when a “fan” of mine complained to Facebook. I was even planning on suing Roanoke Pride and The Park for defamation and possibly for copyright infringement for using my label’s intellectual properties for destructive purposes.
That was when I finally said “FUCK IT,” decided that trash was no longer worth it and it would be a waste of time and money suing that mess.
Roanoke Diversity Center
My involvement in the Roanoke Diversity Center was sparse and brief. A new drag performer who went by the stage name, Dreama Belle, was emerging and I ended up singing in a couple of her shows at the Roanoke Diversity Center which still resided in the basement of MCCBR.
The first show I did was in 2015. When our little show was going on, I had heard by the then director of the Diversity Center that the trans people were having a meeting across the hall and they were all so upset a drag show was going on at the same time.
I told the Diversity Center’s director that was the pettiest shit I ever heard. You couldn’t meet a nicer queen than Dreama Belle and the other queens in the show were just as sweet as they could be.
It seemed to me that if the trans people wanted to be accepted then perhaps they should learn to be more accepting of others themselves. That’s just my opinion. I could never stomach bickering between the “L”s, the “G”s, the “B”s or the “T”s. It also seemed to fly in the face of what the Roanoke Diversity Center was supposed to be about which was “diversity”.
I sang in only one more show at the Roanoke Diversity Center again in a Dreama Belle show. That very talented queen eventually left the area and went to New York and is now a regularly working performer. I couldn’t be happy for her.
I Reached My Last Straw
I then began wondering why should I even bother? I wouldn’t support a misandrist congregation at MCCBR, I no longer felt welcome at The Park or Roanoke Pride, and I wasn’t going to put up with the bullshit from anti-drag trans people at the Roanoke Diversity Center either.
So in September 2016, I started thinking about all the bullshit I had put up with in the 21st century’s 2010 decade in Roanoke’s LGBTQ+ organizations and thought, “ENOUGH!!” I decided to leave the public Roanoke Gay Community for good.
It has been seven years. Even though I have endured illness with a kidney disease diagnosis in 2017, Miss Mama’s stroke in 2018 and nearly losing my brother to COVID in 2021, I was thankful I no longer had to put up with the hatefulness of the passive-aggressive bitches in Roanoke’s LGBTQ+ organizations.
Things have settled down for the most part and I’m finally at peace with myself.
This year, when I posted an announcement I was leaving Facebook, a member of the board of the new Southwest Virginia Pride organization sent me a text inviting me to their spaghetti dinner and auction fundraiser. I told him my medical condition has left me immune compromised, which is the truth, and I no longer go to large public gatherings, which is also true.
In spite of my medical condition, too many times I jumped on board when something new came up over the past 43 years only to have my expectations and feelings dashed to pieces. I wish SWVA Pride good luck but they will have to function without me.
I will never give Roanoke’s LGBT Community the opportunity to ever hurt me again. I will never again support any of their organizations either with money or my attendance. They will never again take away my peace or my self-esteem. If anyone of them reads this and get pissed over it then so be it. I’m sure after they get over being pissed at me, they will quickly find something else to get pissed off about. They go on an endless cycle of outrages.
I honestly no longer give a flying fuck what they say or think. I’ll do my little recordings as I feel like and if anyone doesn’t like it then they can go listen to something else. I do my personal projects to make one person and one person only happy…MYSELF!!
I now work from home and have been taking care of Miss Mama, who is now 89 years old and totally disabled, for sixteen years as of this writing. I had my house redone to accommodate someone in a wheelchair by putting in a wheelchair ramp and putting in a roll-in shower. I also use a lift to get Miss Mama in and out of bed. I basically equipped my house like a little care facility for my mother.
So as one can see, I now have more important responsibilities. I no longer have the time or the patience for the Roanoke Gay Community’s foolishness.
I’m at the age now where I prefer to have my peace of mind rather than company.