I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher's Journey through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ [Hardcover]

Carl Bean (Author), David Ritz (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2010

In I Was Born This Way, Carl Bean, former Motown recording artist, noted AIDS activist, and founder of the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Los Angeles, shares his extraordinary personal journey from Baltimore foster homes to the stage of the Apollo Theater and beyond.

CARL BEAN has been crossing boundaries all his life and helping others do the same. He’s never been stopped by his race or orientation, never fit or stayed in the boxes people have wanted to put him in. He left his foster home in Baltimore at seventeen and took the bus to New York City, where he quickly found the rich culture of the Harlem churches. As a singer, first with the gospel Alex Bradford Singers and later as a Motown recording artist, Bean was a sensation. When Berry Gordy signed him to record "I Was Born This Way," it was a first: the biggest black-owned record company broadcasting a statement on gender identity. The #1 song, recorded with the Sweet Inspirations, was the first gay liberation dance club hit.

Whether making records, educating the black community about HIV and AIDS, or preaching to his growing congregation, Archbishop Bean has never wanted to minister to just one group. He’s worked on AIDS issues with C. Everett Koop and Elizabeth Taylor and on civil rights issues with Maxine Waters, Julian Bond, and Reverend Joseph Lowery. At the height of his recording career, he worked with Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach, Miles Davis, and Sammy Davis Jr. He’s brought South Central Los Angeles gang members into his church, which now has 25,000 members in twelve cities nationwide; those same Crips and Bloods have shown up at the Gay Pride parades Bean has organized with U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters. And he has courageously devoted his time and energy to spurring black civil rights leaders to address the AIDS health crisis within the African American community—an issue on which they had been silent.

Preaching an all-embracing progressive theology, he is an outspoken practitioner of brotherly love, a dynamic preacher, and a social activist. The Unity Fellowship message is grace: "God is love, and God is for everyone"; "God is gay, God is straight, God is black, God is white." I Was Born This Way is the rare personal history of one of black gospel’s biggest stars and a frank, powerful, and warmhearted testament to how one man found his calling.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There is a wonderful gospel song entitled, "How I Got Over," which I believe exemplifies the life of Archbishop Carl Bean.This book is an amazing testimony of one man's journey to find himself, and in doing so he became one of the heroes of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered movement, as well as being a major crusader for the fight against HIV/AIDS. Carl's story will make you laugh and cry. He tells of his life with an honesty that will, I'm sure, shock some readers, but you will not be able to put this book down until the end."

--Reverend Troy D. Perry, Founder of the Metropolitan Community Churches

“Sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying, always illuminating, I Was Born This Way will become a light in the darkness for many readers. It could not be more welcome.

--Anthony Heilbut, author of The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times

"Bean has certainly led a one-of-a-kind life, and his fast-moving, engaging memoir illuminates the 1960s and ’70s gospel world and provides the rare perspective of a homosexual minister....The message is insightful and often powerful. A worthy memoir from a truly unique individual."

-- Kirkus

About the Author

David Ritz is the only four-time winner of the Gleason Music Book Award. He has collaborated with Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Smokey Robinson, and Don Rickles. He also cowrote, with Gaye, the song “Sexual Healing.”

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416592822
• ISBN-13: 978-1416592822
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #754,677 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "God.. Can't do nothing but Love You.", December 5, 2010

By 

Demosure "Old One Ear" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher's Journey through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ (Hardcover)

Carl Bean lived through unspeakable horrors, poverty, and the music industry and has triumphed over all of them with his unshakable faith in God and Love. Okay, honest, this is not the best written book, the narrative jumps and is a little inconsistent, however the book is the author's journey. The journey through compassion, through service, and through respecting the dignity of every marginalized people in the dawn of the AIDS epidemic is heart-wrenching and can teach us all about how to be better. Christianity, thanks to the religious right, has a terrible reputation of judgment, condemnation and fear. Thank you Reverend Bean for showing people that it isn't all like that.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Perseverance and faith combine for an inspiring memoir, July 18, 2010

By 

Bob Lind "camelwest" (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher's Journey through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ (Hardcover)

Born into a life of poverty and abuse in Baltimore, Carl Bean managed to glean the positive forces within his life and Christian faith, eventually going off on his own to New York City, as an openly-gay 16 year old with a dream of becoming a famous gospel singer. After many years of ups and downs in the music industry, being cheated by those he trusted but who were jealous of his talent, he had a Motown disco hit, "I Was Born This Way," a gay anthem that caught on like wildfire. Offered a lucrative contract to sing "mainstream" balads (i.e., heterosexual love songs), Bean turned it down, eventually finding his calling to the ministry during the height of the AIDS crisis in Los Angeles. He founded the Unity Fellowship, the first area ministry that specifically had an outreach to minority individuals with AIDS, and which still exists today with churches in several cities.

This is a memoir filled with seemingly insurmountable problems in his life, which he handles with great faith ... not necessarily just faith in God, but faith in good people to help a fellow man. An uplifting, spirited story of an extraordinary individual who found his calling and personal fulfillment. Especially recommended for fans of gospel or early R&B singers, many of whom are an intergral part of the story. Four stars out of five.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Very Compelling", June 23, 2010

By 

Terry Richard "Terry Richard" (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher's Journey through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ (Hardcover)

Carl Bean may not be a well-known name, but his life story is both extraordinary and shocking. Carl was born in the North East in Baltimore where as a young boy he was constantly sexually abused by heterosexual males. As the years went by he discovered he had a fondness for music, and he is perhaps most known in the gay community as a so-called "one hit wonder" having released the song "I Was Born This Way", a gay disco anthem that hit the charts in 1977 on Motown Records. He eventually left recording and became a minister and a proponent for AIDS/HIV.
If you love biographies and enjoy reading about the ups and downs of people, "I Was Born This Way" will satisfy your thirst. As a gay man I especially enjoyed reading this book about a man growing up in the very conservative 1940's and 1950's and realizing that no matter how hard I may have had it, homosexual men like Bean are an example that if you have faith and believe in yourself you can and will survive.