ABilly Jones-Hennin

ABilly Scott Jones-Hennin is a bisexual LGBTQIA+ rights activist. He was born in 1942 in St. John's, Antigua, and at the age of three was adopted to the USA by parents who were civil rights activists themselves.

He identified variously as gay, straight, and same-gender loving for years until learning more about bisexuality from a bisexual friend, Loraine Hutchins.

ABilly learned later in life that his father was also bisexual.

Activism
ABilly's adoptive mother and father were civil rights activists, and it was from them that he learned how to be a community organizer.

He helped create the National Coalition of Black Gays (later renamed the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays) in 1978, and in the following year was a key player in organizing the first March on Washington for Lesbians and Gays. ABilly was also a founder of the Gay Married Men's Association and the National Association of Black & White Men Together.

Relationships
ABilly was married to a woman for 14 years and they had three children together before separating. In a 2016 interview, ABilly shared that he still loves his ex-wife "very, very much". He currently lives with Chris, his husband of 39+ years, in Washington, DC.

Quotes
"It's interesting, I mean, I defined myself as gay. I defined myself as straight. What we were taught at that time is that your sexual orientation is fixed by between the age of 2 and 5. We didn't talk about our sexuality being fluid. The word "fluid" was not there. It was like saying you got to be Black or you got to be white. Heavens forbid it if you say you're something else. It's the same thing. It was like saying you got to be straight or you got to be gay. At the point that I really started embracing and accepting myself as being a same gender-loving person, I decided defining myself as gay, but everybody knew I was married. Everybody knew that I had kids because I dragged them around with me. I met my partner Christopher in a support group for gay and bisexual men called GAMMA, Gay and Married Men's Association. Even that organization didn't use the word "bisexual." Some of the members did. It took me a while to really think about the term bisexual and whether that really was what I was and what I am. It really did take my friend, Loraine Hutchins to get me to rethink my label."

"I think we live in a world [which] says you have to choose and it doesn't allow you to be fluid. It doesn't allow you to love people regardless of the gender. It's the person. What is it that I love? Is it the penis? Is it the vagina? I mean, that's a part of it, but it's the person as a whole person that I have the capacity to love. I'm meeting with a woman tomorrow again that I'm madly in-love with and she's madly in-love with me and we talk, and we like, "Oh, we better not go there.""