Rev. Kev's Cure for the BGM Blues

By Keith Boykin, in books
Thursday, January 18 2007, 12:45PM

I've known Kevin Taylor since the days when we both lived in Washington, D.C. Back then, when BET planned to air a controversial music video from reggae artist Buju Banton, Kevin was the one on the inside who shut it down. Kevin was always an inside/outside man, comfortable working in the system at the same time he was challenging it.

Kevin has also been something of an eclectic enigma, not easily categorized into a simple box. He's worked in television, in the music industry, in publishing, and even in the church. They don't call him "Rev. Kev" for nothing. His ministerial days date back to his experience in Washington when he was working alongside Rev. Rainey Cheeks. Now Kevin is back on the radar screen with his new book, Jaded, a story that looks into the question of why so many black gay men seem so jaded about life. With that in mind, I decided to sit down with Kevin for a one-on-one interview.

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INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN TAYLOR

Keith Boykin: Hi Kevin, thanks for doing the interview. You’re an author, a minister, and a man of many talents. Tell me what you enjoy doing most?

Kevin Taylor: I would say talking. I think that as a preacher I’m afforded the opportunity to do that. Of course as a preacher I talk every Sunday. But as an author I get to use my other voice. And then as a producer I get to let other people talk and help them tell their stories. It’s all from the same stew.

Keith Boykin: Where did you grow up?

Kevin Taylor: I’m a DC native, born and raised. I hold the distinction of having lived in all four quadrants [of DC]. I was raised in southwest. We moved as a family into northwest. And then I moved independently to southeast and bought my home in northeast.

Keith Boykin: And where do you live now?

Kevin Taylor: I live now in Somerset, New Jersey, which is right outside of New Brunswick.

Keith Boykin: What do you think about that New Jersey Supreme Court decision on marriage and civil unions?

Kevin Taylor: I’m on the board of Garden State Equality. So I can proudly say I played a role in that, and I’m actually hosting a house party on Tuesday [the interview took place in December]…I joined the board about two and a half years ago.

Keith Boykin: How did you get into the ministry?

Kevin Taylor: In Washington. Well, I was born and raised in the church since I was about 10. When I was clear about my sexuality I kind of stepped [away]…I was raised in the church but kind of when I left for college and that independence happened I stopped going. When I got back from college I dedicated my life to black gay stuff in DC. I was co-chair of the DC Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gay Men. I worked a lot with Whitman Walker [Clinic]. Activism became my new church.

Keith Boykin: Is there a conflict between homosexuality and Christianity?

Kevin Taylor: Not for me. In 1993, I was one of the founding members of Inner Light Unity Fellowship Church with Bishop Cheeks. And that for me is what kind of fused everything together. It was really cool to be able to bring together the personal and the theological. Because it was never a conflict for me…but it was nice to have a place to fellowship.

Keith Boykin: Why do you think so many black LGBT/SGL people are so conflicted about their spirituality and sexuality?

Kevin Taylor: Honestly, and this is one of the things we used to deal with in DC as a community, most of Dupont Circle is comprised of white gay men from New York, LA and Tulsa, Oklahoma. But for us, as men of color, we were from around the corner or up the street. So I think that our sexuality has much more social conflict to it.

Keith Boykin: What does that mean?

Kevin Taylor: For example, marching in a parade. Unless it makes the news, the boy from Tulsa is in no danger of his parents finding out. For us, your mama, your aunt or a friend of the family could be on the bus driving by…So I think that we are much more concerned with the tribe…the mother, the grandmother, the aunt…the sense of shame and disappointment is so far-reaching because we are afraid of disappointing so many more people.

Keith Boykin: And why do we go to churches where our pastors beat us up?

Kevin Taylor: Honestly, Keith, I am not sure. I have [been] in churches [like that], only one or two cause it don’t take much, and heard that come from the pastor with such vile hatred that I could not understand not only how a black gay man or lesbian could stay there but how half the church is still there. Cause at the end of the day my belief is that people come to church to be fortified. And I don’t understand how you fortify the woman who’s dealing with cancer or hunger by kicking me in the ass.

Keith Boykin: Tell me about your books. First, what are the titles?

Kevin Taylor: The first book, which came out in 2003, is called Unclutter: Cleanse Your Spirit and Claim Your Stuff. And it was a help yourself book…Change doesn’t happen by itself. You have to be willing to make change, to enforce change, to stand by it. That was kind of a mix of my new direction in the ministry and my dozen years in the music in dusty…Each of the chapter titles is a song. So for example, "How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore?" is about having an active prayer life. Many of us call on God when we’re in dire straits but after that we kind of put down the gauntlet of prayer.

The new book. I really was prepared to do a series of help yourself books….And then while I was out talking…I kept meeting the same man [not literally, but figuratively] and he was Jaded. He was broken. He was through with love. And he swore that he was so ready for Mr. Perfect but his heart was cold.

So all of these conversations made me deal with the Jaded in me. And one day, listening to India Arie’s “I’m Ready For Love,” the character Joshua just came in the room and started talking to me.

Keith Boykin: I love that song too. I really agree with you. I meet a lot of black gay men who are really jaded about everything, but especially about men.

Kevin Taylor: But the sad part, the brilliant part is that they’re jaded about everything but it’s all rooted in our ugly and imbalanced relationship with love. They’re jaded bout work, jaded about their dreams, jaded about their relationships with family. The first journey about getting unjaded is to fall in love with yourself.

Keith Boykin: Well I agree with you, but I think when most people hear that they might not understand.

Kevin Taylor: To ask someone to love you when you don’t love yourself is to set them up. It’s a set up to ask somebody to do something for your that you’ve never done for yourself. It means that you never know when they’ve done it. If you don’t know what that feels like is to have an unattainable goal. You never know when I’ve hit your spot. It’s like someone inviting you to your favorite restaurant and you don’t have one. You’re open for anything.

Keith Boykin: So how do you overcome this issue in your own life?

Kevin Taylor: For the longest time, something kept telling me that when I turned 37 something major is gonna happen…And I think it was probably my childhood fascination with 2001: A Space Odyssey….I thought that 37 was going to bring HIM. My BET career would be solid, I owned a home, so the only thing missing was HIM.

Keith Boykin: And did it?

Kevin Taylor: And then, as I was headed toward 37, boom, BET says we’re headed to New York and we want you to move with them. Right after I moved, Archbishop Bean called and asked me to found Unity Fellowship Church in New Brunswick. So within 6 months I’m in a new city with a new job and being asked to found a new church. I had no room for a HIM.

Keith Boykin: Yes, but I believe we always have time for the things we want to do…When we don’t have time, we make time if it's something we really want to do.

Kevin Taylor: So for both of us, transitioning to New York, particularly in the music and entertainment industry, honestly my first year here was networking. I would be sitting across from someone thinking I was on a date, and [find out that] he was networking.

Keith Boykin: That’s so New York. [Laughter]

Kevin Taylor: When I left BET and left New York for New Jersey, I decided to do the conscious work on me because New York messed with my head for a minute and almost made me forget about love.

Keith Boykin: Can you ever really forget about love?

Kevin Taylor: That’s why I said almost. It was for love’s sake that I left New York and really took the time to spend time with me again. The more I spent time with me the more I became clear about who didn’t get to spend time with me.

Keith Boykin: I’ve always agreed with that saying that not everybody deserves a front row seat in your life.

Kevin Taylor: Once I decided that I was really liking me I started dating me…I started having real conversation with people to see if they were in the same place with me. If they were fellowshipping somewhere because that was really important to me. And somebody who went home to their family because of the joy, not drama. And somebody who wasn’t afraid to use the word married.

Keith Boykin: Do you want to get married?

Kevin Taylor: Absolutely. My coming out to my mother happened at 13. I was lip synching [probably] a Natalie Cole song in the mirror to a hairbrush. And my mother asked me at 13 if I was ever going to get married and I looked at her in my mirror’s reflection and said yes ma’m as soon as they make it legal. Fast forward to 2006 and me living in New Jersey and my mother calling me and saying honey, I guess God heard your prayer and your husband is on the way.

Keith Boykin: No kidding?

Kevin Taylor: Cause I never said boyfriend. I never said life partner….I knew I wanted a husband…I could have been sent to any other state and God sent me to a state where there was already another Unity Church (Newark) but it happened to be the state where marriage equality was at the forefront.

Keith Boykin: Are you in a relationship?

Kevin Taylor: No. And I’m comfortably not in one. I’m a pastor. I’m a parent. I’m a producer. I’m on my second novel, working on my third and fourth. I’m starting a T-shirt company. And in the midst of all that, I can still make room for him. Because it’s busy work. One day it’s one thing, then the next two days it’s something else. I’m a black gay Virgo. We’re the original multi-taskers.

Keith Boykin: I’m a Virgo too. You believe in horoscopes?

Kevin Taylor: I believe that somehow people do inhabit their characteristics. I don’t know why that is but I am definitely a Virgo. I’m spiritual. I’m methodical, critical, sometimes to a fault, but more than critical I’m analytical. And I’m a lover of love.

Keith Boykin: I’m all the same but never thought of myself as being critical. [Laughter] But other people have said that to me.

Kevin Taylor: But you’re a critical thinker….We’re the ones who question the 'you won 10 million dollars in a lottery' line…We’re the ones who ask how come you don’t have his home phone number?…Our brain goes right there. We consider it a gap in the story.

Keith Boykin: So where do you see yourself 10 years from now?

Kevin Taylor: Married, probably on my 4th novel. Maybe on the 6th novel. Probably on a second movie, maybe a third. Pastoring a church that’s so big and so expansive that it looks like what I always thought church should. Black, white, gay, straight, young, old, crying and shouting.

Keith Boykin: Are you talking about a megachurch?

Kevin Taylor: I don’t know if it’s mega in size but it’s mega in my vision for it. I want a performing arts center. I want an adult life skills center, a soup kitchen. And I definitely want it to be the church. I want it to be the community sanctuary, a spiritual drop-in center.

Keith Boykin: There’s a lot of churches in my neighborhood in Harlem and sometimes I wonder why we have so many problems in the community when we have so many churches.

Kevin Taylor: Because I think in our community we’ve forgotten that the church is a 24-7 institution.

Keith Boykin: Are you talking about churches themselves?

Kevin Taylor: That’s what I’m saying. First and foremost, the megachurches moved the church out of the community….I remember youth activities on Tuesday at church. Bible study at church…Now we try to squeeze five services into Sunday and don’t even think about coming back until the following week. The problem is the preacher is so busy serving on the city council and touring that the building of the church is in somebody’s else’s hands.

Keith Boykin: But shouldn’t the pastors be involved in doing other things?

Kevin Taylor: Absolutely, but for me all of my years as a producer will come into building that performing arts center. All of my years as an activist will come into building the soup kitchen and the adult learning center and at the end of the day I just believe that people join the church because of the pastor and the pastor has to be accessible.

Keith Boykin: Is that a good thing that people join churches for pastors?

Kevin Taylor: I was very particular in selecting the word joining. Because I believe it’s the pastor and that the word that pulls people into the block but that’s not going to keep you. You’ve got to have a community of like minded people who join the church not because of the speaker of the word but because of the word itself.

Keith Boykin: You worked at BET for a long time. What was that like and what did you do there?

Kevin Taylor: I was there from 1991 to 2002 and I still actually do some independent stuff. And for me it was amazing because I got to be all of who I was because of BET. I thought there was no way that I could be a black gay man and not be out in the entertaining industry. I was free to be out. I was wrong. I was a rare breed. Less than a year after I joined one of the producers was preparing to book Buju Banton onto a show called Video LP hosted by Sherry Carter. I knew who he was because "Boom Bye Bye" had just been discovered and everybody was talking about it on the radio. I remember going to her personally as a black gay man and airing my shock and dismay. I said to her if this is somebody talking about killing women you would have my support…she didn't care.

And I remember Donald Suggs with GLAAD got on the phone with me and said you can’t let this happen….And I went to [BET founder] Bob Johnson and said 'Either this show gets unbooked or I will have 900 queens in this parking lot before nightfall.' And that was the exact quote in Bob Johnson’s face. So the show got unbooked and I got to have some really intimate and personal conversations with people who didn’t know a black gay man…who was willing to stand up and say this is who I am and I’m willing to fight for it, and if I have to I’m willing to fight about it.

Keith Boykin: I remember another incident when I was invited on Tavis's show on BET and I was disinvited because Angie and Debbie Winans didn't want to appear on the same show with me. And once again, we had to stage a protest to get BET to do the right thing. What was that all about?

Kevin Taylor: Part of it was in fact part of the culture. I don’t know [the specifics] because Tavis Smiley does do balance.

Keith Boykin: What do you think about BET today?

Kevin Taylor: Partly it’s the reason I’m gone. I just don’t feel any sense of family or community on BET anymore. I’m really thankful that BET J has come alone and we can have some programming for adults…But I have a 16 year old son who doesn’t watch BET.

Keith Boykin: When I started doing my show last year, the people at BET told me that BET is for 18-24 year-olds and BET J is 30 and older. So I would think your 16-year-old would like BET since it's in his age range.

Kevin Taylor: I took him to "106 and Park" and he loved it…but now two years later he’s bored with it…but he said it’s too monotonous…a 16 year old with a mind of a sieve saying that is a big statement.

Keith Boykin: What do you think about the music videos today? People used to complain that music was glorifying violence. Now it seems a little different. Are we glorifying materialism?

Kevin Taylor: I think that hip hop is in conflict with itself right now. The guys who still want to use it to say my story is this and then the next album they own a mansion and a yacht. And is their on camera struggle the same conflict we have in our communities? We can’t figure out if we want to do good and make change or do better and move out.

Keith Boykin: Why can’t we do good, make change, and do better for ourselves at the same time?

Kevin Taylor: I believe they are attainable. But the problem is we never sit down at the table to say that. Remember we had the C. Delores Tucker conflict [the civil rights leader who challenged rap music]…I think there’s still that kind of faceoff going on….I think it’s beautiful to see a more…because you don’t automatically dismiss them, and nothing gets people to talk quicker than knowing their being listened to…

Bob Johnson never had a problem making that statement…I created this company to help my family…and as limited as that thinking was at least he created shows…I got to create shows…all he cared about was does it make money…you know I had a career at BET that I guarantee you I could have had nowhere else in the world.

Keith Boykin: Well we've come to the end of the interview. I do a series on my web site where I ask prominent people to tell me five of their favorite things. Can you tell me five of your favorite things?

Kevin Taylor:

1. The smile of my son’s face when he says “Hi Dad.”
2. Natalie Cole’s voice.
3. My mama’s cooking.
4. A nice picture frame.
5. A rainy day.

Keith Boykin: Thank you very much Kevin. And good luck.

Kevin Taylor: Thank you.

Kevin Taylor is a preacher, producer, prolific author and a parent. He can be reached at www.kevinetaylor.com.

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