Minister became face of Black AIDS activism
‘GOD IS LOVE AND LOVE IS FOR EVERYONE’
HE WAS THE VOICE THAT PROCLAIMED THE SACREDNESS OF ALL LIFE — FOR TRANSGENDER MEN AND WOMEN, LATINA, BLACK HETEROSEXUAL PEOPLE — FOR ALL PEOPLE. — REV. ELDER RUSSELL THORNHILL, ON CARL BEAN
Carl Bean, a progressive minister, AIDS activist and singer who popularized the 1970s Motown song “I Was Born This Way,” an exuberant dance club staple and gay pride anthem that inspired one of Lady Gaga’s biggest hits, died Sept. 7 at a hospice centre in Los Angeles. He was 77.
His death was announced by the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, a Christian denomination that grew out of his ministry to LGBTQ African Americans in Los Angeles. The church said he had “a lengthy illness” but did not give a specific cause.
Proclaiming that “God is love and love is for everyone,” Archbishop Bean founded the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in South Los Angeles soon after he was ordained as a minister in 1982. Three years later, he started the Minority AIDS Project, becoming the face of Black AIDS activism in the city at a time when AIDS was widely viewed as a disease that mostly affected white gay men.
“For the Black LGBT community, he was the voice,” said the organization’s current director, the Rev. Elder Russell Thornhill. “He was the voice that told men who were dying that God’s love is for you. He was the voice that told men who were living with AIDS, and transgender people, that nothing will ever separate you from God’s love. He was the voice that proclaimed the sacredness of all life — for transgender men and women, Latina, Black heterosexual people — for all people.”
Long before he began delivering Sunday morning sermons, Bean was spreading a message of love through gospel, funk and disco. He had turned to music after a difficult childhood in Baltimore, where he said he was sexually abused by his uncle as a young boy and attempted suicide after his foster parents found out he was gay; at age 16, he took a Greyhound bus to New York, where he joined gospel groups and eventually sang with songwriter Alex Bradford.
“The vehicle out of the ghetto for me was Black gospel,” he later told Vice.
In 1977, Bean recorded his only hit as a solo artist, “I Was Born This Way,” an irresistible disco track with a gospel feel that featured strikingly upfront lyrics about gay pride: “I’m walking through life in nature’s disguise, yeah / You laugh at me and you criticize, yeah / ‘Cause I’m happy, carefree and gay — yes, I’m gay / Ain’t no fault, it’s a fact / I was born this way.”
Hailed by Vice as “one of the greatest gay club anthems of all time,” the song reached No. 15 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart and was remixed multiple times in the 1980s. It reached a new generation of listeners after Lady Gaga said it inspired her 2011 album and single “Born This Way,” another celebration of queer identity.
“Thank you for decades of relentless love, bravery, and a reason to sing,” she tweeted in May, addressing Bean on the 10th anniversary of her Grammy-nominated album. “So we can all feel joy, because we deserve joy. Because we deserve the right to inspire tolerance, acceptance, and freedom for all.”
Written by Bunny Jones and Chris Spierer, “I Was Born This Way” was first recorded in 1975 by the singer Valentino, with limited success. Motown record label executives were apparently hoping that a new version would do better — the gay liberation movement was on the rise, and the Village People were on the verge of a commercial breakthrough with songs like “Macho Man,” which became a gay anthem — when they got in touch with Bean.
“They came looking for me and they didn’t even know I was gay,” he told a reporter after the song’s release. “Bunny heard my voice on a gospel album and told the people at Motown that she wanted me for the single.” He had previously appeared in the Broadway musicals “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” and “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” and said he was getting offers for additional stage work.
“But after I found out what the song was I knew I had to do it,” he added. “It was like providence. They came to me with a song I have been looking for my whole life.”
In a phone interview, Thornhill said Bean “had a spiritual experience in the Motown studio while singing that song.” Within a few years, he had left music to go into the ministry. “The song became an anthem of liberation for everyone,” Bean wrote in a 2010 memoir, also titled “I Was Born This Way.” Looking back on the recording session, he wrote, “It was Holy Ghost power, prompting me, pushing me on.”
Bean was born in Baltimore on May 26, 1944. His father was 16, his mother 15; Bean said she later died after a botched abortion, at a time when the procedure was not yet legalized nationwide. His neighbours took him in and raised him as a son.
When he was 14, they learned he was gay and brought him to their minister. The church “was my haven,” Bean recalled in a 1992 interview with the Los Angeles Times, but the pastor “didn’t have an answer” and left him feeling despondent. He returned home, locked himself in the bathroom and attempted suicide. His foster father broke in and took him to the hospital.
A doctor there offered support, assuring him that he did not need to be “cured” of being gay. “That gave me enlightenment and the chance to accept myself,” he told Vice in 2016. “If I had another doctor, I might have been a different animal.”
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
In becoming a minister, Bean said he sought to provide a spiritual and literal sanctuary for Black gay men who, like him, had been shunned by their churches and communities. He grounded his ministry in liberation theology, which calls for social change and aid for the poor and oppressed, and said he was motivated in part by his frustration over the Black clergy’s response to the AIDS epidemic.
“Where were they?” he asked The Washington Post in 2004. “The same place they had always been on sex: silent and hiding.” He added that when Black men died of AIDS in Los Angeles, their mothers called him, saying, “Can you bury my son? My preacher won’t do it.”
Bean launched the Minority AIDS Project with support from music industry friends such as Dionne Warwick, who performed at celebrity fundraisers for the group. The organization grew to offer nursing care, counselling, financial aid, HIV testing and temporary housing, and recently expanded to offer coronavirus vaccination and testing.
His influence as a minister also grew through the years, with more than a dozen Unity Fellowship churches opening around the country.
THEY CAME TO ME WITH A SONG I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR MY WHOLE LIFE.”