CHATTER AWAY: Overnight Open Thread

The Guardian reports:

Carl Bean, the US gospel artist and minister who sang the gay pride anthem I Was Born This Way, has died aged 77.

A statement from the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, a church for Black LGBTQ+ worshipers founded by Bean, said he “made transition into eternal life” following a lengthy illness.

“Archbishop Bean worked tirelessly for the liberation of the underserved and for LGBTQ people of faith and in doing so, helped many around the world find their way back to spirituality and religion”, the church stated.

The BBC reports:

Featuring the lyrics “I’m happy, I’m carefree, and I’m gay, I was born this way”, it was a disco hit in the US and inspired Lady Gaga’s Born This Way. She credited him as an inspiration, saying his song was “like a sermon”.

At the height of his music career, Bean worked with Dionne Warwick, Sammy Davis Jr, Burt Bacharach and Miles Davis.

But he turned down the offer of more work at Motown when they asked him to sing more commercially-viable love songs about women. Instead, he went on to become an AIDS activist and founded a network of LGBT churches.