Creative Director Behind ‘Black Gay Weddings’ Talks Turning Discrimination Into Success
Dewayne Queen (Photo Credit: David Slocumb)
Something is happening on blackgayweddings.com, and that something reaches beyond the dozens of Black LGBTQ+ couples prominently featured on their website or popular Instagram page during one of the most pivotal moments in their lives. In 2021, there are still very few spaces, digital or otherwise, where LGBTQ+ couples comprising two Black partners are celebrated in mainstream or LGBTQ+ media. But unless you’ve followed this disparity over time, you’d probably never know that there is a lack of representation in this area after scrolling through blackgayweddings.com. All at once, the website is celebratory, inclusive, and keenly aware of how intersectionality impacts Black LGBTQ+ people. And like many of the long-standing and revered Black publications that came before it, Black Gay Weddings was also birthed from discrimination.
Dewayne Queen, Atlanta-based Creative Director of Black Gay Weddings, tells The Reckoning how founders, Michael (COO) and Lawrence (CEO) Broughton’s nuptials set the wheels in motion for the platform to celebrate Black LGBTQ+ couples while working to ensure that what happened to them would never happen to another couple.
“Michael and Lawrence were married in 2018. They sent out notifications to publications regarding their wedding, and they were featured in one publication and got all this hate mail from the readers of the publication—e-mails, threats, you name it, they received it,” said Queen. “And then they submitted to other white publications to celebrate their union and they got letters stating that they didn't fit their demographic. They were not the kind of people that they wanted to celebrate. And so in 2018, Black Gay Weddings, the platform was birthed out of the hate that they received for their union,” he said.
The Reckoning reached out to the Broughtons for an interview, but they were unavailable before publishing.
Now, three years later, Queen says the mail they receive for “creating a space to normalize the celebration of [Black] LGBTQ weddings that didn’t exist” has been life changing for people in and outside of the LGBTQ+ community.
“We get a lot of mail, you know, messages and etcetera from people who never even conceptualized it,” said Queen. “But then now that they see it, it's easier for them to talk to their daughter or their son. It's easier for them to approach their trans brother or sister, or their intersex brother or sister, and say, I see you and I understand you. You just want what everybody wants. And it's love and acceptance,” he said.
“The common thread in any relationship, whether it’s heterosexual, whether it’s LGBTQIA+ is the love that people share. People gravitate to the platform and they want to be celebrated, and I think now is the time.”
Queen believes, for better or worse, the website serves as a point of conversation, specifically in Black families with conservative beliefs regarding LGBTQ+ people and marriage equality.
“Because notoriously our community is so steeped in religious-based beliefs. If we don't see something, then we don't believe it,” said Queen. “And so I think what the platform has done is it has given a newfound birth to the idea of us living a full, healthy, happy, beautiful life with our partner and, allowing it to be a topic of conversation for people that it might not have been before,” he said.
Inclusivity is not just a buzzword
Black Gay Weddings isn’t just a place where newlyweds are celebrated. The site also celebrates engagements, elopements, and anniversaries, according to Queen, who also adds that the platform is “not just geared towards Black gay men or lesbians, but is a celebration of all unions,” which he says is inclusive of trans couples.
There is no shortage of representation from Atlanta couples who have jumped the broom and submitted their special day to be featured on Black Gay Weddings. From Sevyn & Annie to Ashley & Ashlee to JP & Myke, to Hakeem & Russell, to Tahir & Amon, each fairytale wedding serves as both a celebration of the love shared between each couple and a possibility model of what could be for single LGBTQ+ individuals who aspire to marriage.
Queen also tells The Reckoning that the safety of all couples who appear on Black Gay Weddings is a top priority, which is why they only publish first names, choosing to keep last names private to ward off attacks from homophobic internet trolls.
Tahir & Amon, an Atlanta couple featured in The Reckoning’s February 2021 coverage of Better Way To Meet, is also featured on Black Gay Weddings. The couple’s wedding is detailed through a beautiful video, vendor info, and a detailed narrative of their special day, which is common for many couples represented on the website.
“The event space for the reception was transformed into a picture of updated elegance and taste through purple up lighting, flowers in orange, plum, and ivory, and an ivory and gold dance floor that was monogrammed with the happy couple’s names. As the couple entered the reception hall, they were greeted by cheers and applause. The couple changed into purple and burnt orange velvet jackets and wore matching embroidered velvet masks to reflect the color palette. They had the whole space swaying and ready to party as they began their first dance and broke into a choreographed number. As the night went on, it became more and more apparent that everyone there was genuinely happy for the couple as they danced and played the night away,” wrote Black Gay Weddings of the newlyweds.
Queen says the celebration of Black LGBTQ+ couples on this scale is long overdue, noting that there is no time like the present to elevate these couples into the digital and public space.
“At the end of the day, the common thread is love,” said Queen. “The common thread in any relationship, whether it's heterosexual, whether it's LGBTQIA+ is the love that people share. People gravitate to the platform and they want to be celebrated, and I think now is the time. I believe James Baldwin said something to the effect of not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. So that is exactly what the platform does. It changes the vision or the understanding of what some people, the ignorance, even of what some people think the love life of an LGBTQ+ person is,” he said.
“It’s a true testament that when you give someone the space to be celebrated...when you give someone the space to be acknowledged, then you get people that come out of the woodworks.”
With some in the Black LGBTQ+ community taking the position of marriage as a low-level priority for Black LGBTQ+ people during the debate over marriage equality before its legalization in 2015, it can come as a surprise that Black Gay Weddings has enough submissions to sustain the website.
“It’s a true testament that when you give someone the space to be celebrated...when you give someone the space to be acknowledged, then you get people that come out of the woodworks,” said Queen. “I don't think space existed before Michael and Lawrence came up with the idea for the platform,” he said.
The concept and execution behind Black Gay Weddings is more than a collage of beautiful photos capturing a moment in time. For Queen, it is a tool that allows those within a marginalized community to see a reflection of themselves, an opportunity to change the hearts and minds of potential allies, and a moment with each click by new and returning visitors to the website to give the Broughtons their flowers for creating a space that in 90s terms is “FUBU”—for us, by us, but in 2021—simply necessary.
(Thumbnail Image of Sevyn and Annie by Majore Photography)
