Who put the homophobia in hip hop?

"to all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends i wanna offer my love and respect to the end"

MCA on 'Sure Shot', effectively 'apologising' for the mysoginist comments made by Beastie Boys on previous album(s), before their apology to the gay community too i imagine.

FWIW, I went ahead and wrote Williams about my own specific thoughts and objections to the article re: Public Enemy, and received a polite and straightforward response this morning. To sum up:

* Williams agrees about the importance of contextual homophobia and how it 'generally' comes from a religious perspective

* Related to this, Williams feels that her central argument, which she thinks in retrospect only occurred to her while writing the article and wasn't emphasized as well as it could have been, is that any debates over homophobia are more appropriate in 'religious quarters' and that 'black culture only gets involved where it intersects with fundamentalism.'

* Ultimately, Williams feels much had to be left out because of space and agrees there was glossing over.

So there you go -- her responses raise some potential further questions (and I've passed a couple on to her), but she does not seem unaware of the complexities. I've mentioned the thread and perhaps she might yet appear here.