Carl Bean, singer, clergyman and queer rights activist, dead at 77

Bishop Carl Bean. Via Unity Church Fellowship.

Gospel singer, minister and queer rights advocate Carl Bean has died. He was 77 years old.

Bean first rose to fame in the early 1960s as a soul singer in New York and Los Angeles, founding the Motown group Carl Bean and Universal Love. His profile continued to rise into the 1970s, and he hit a new level of fame in 1975 with the disco hit “I Was Born This Way.” As the title might suggest, Bean lived his life as a proud gay man throughout his career.

As a queer man, Bean claimed he’d been rejected by his family and his church. He, therefore, founded the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, a congregation aimed at LGBTQ African-Americans in 1982. Bean intended the church, which now has 17 individual locations worldwide, to “proclaim the ‘sacredness of all life’ thus focusing on empowering those who have been oppressed and made to feel shame.” Bean would also go on to found…

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