The gay activists that picketed President Obama at a recent fundraising event in Los Angeles for allegedly not doing and saying enough to beat back Proposition 8 must have dropped in from another planet. Obama remains wildly popular among African-American voters and an attack on him for being less than resolute on gay rights does nothing but further tick black voters off. They'll need those voters now more than ever if they plop another initiative on the ballot in 2010. The measure would reverse Proposition 8 and legalize same sex marriage.
The Catholic Church and the Mormon groups dumped millions into the Proposition 8 initiative campaign. Yet even with their money and their drum beat media campaign, polls showed that Latinos marginally supported the proposition, Asians voted overwhelmingly against it and whites were split. Polls also showed that a majority of black voters in key parts of the state voted for it. Los Angeles was one. Nearly sixty percent of blacks backed the initiative. The black vote made the crucial difference in passing the initiative.
A well-heeled and probably well paid off core of preachers who head fundamentalist leaning, mega and medium-sized black churches held rallies and took to their pulpits and bible thumped their congregations to pass the initiative. Proposition 8 backers shrewdly flooded mailboxes in mostly black neighborhoods with a mailer that featured a stern faced Obama and his horribly out of context quote saying that he opposed gay marriage. Obama vehemently denounced Proposition 8.
Even if the ministers hadn't said a word about gay marriage, a significant number maybe even the majority of blacks might still have voted for it. The warning signs that black voters were susceptible to religious and conservative pitches to oppose gay marriage lit up in 1997. Then the late Green Bay Packers perennial all-pro defensive end Reggie White, an ordained fundamentalist minister stirred a firestorm when he took a huge swipe at gay rights and gay marriage in a speech to the Wisconsin state legislature. White became the first celebrity black evangelical to say publicly what many black religious leaders said and believed privately about gay issues. Few blacks joined in the loud chorus that condemned his remarks.
A year before White's outburst, a Pew Poll measured black attitudes toward gay marriage and found that blacks by an overwhelming margin opposed it. A CNN poll eight years later showed that anti-gay attitudes among blacks had not changed much since then. At a tightly packed press conference in October 2003, five of Michigan's top black prelates publicly called on the state legislature to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The ballot measure passed in November, and more than fifty percent of blacks backed it.
The same year the conservative Virginia-based Alliance for Marriage corralled a handful of top black preachers to plop their name on the Alliance's letterhead and tout the Alliance's anti-gay rights agenda.
At the NAACP convention in July 2004, there was some talk of taking a delegate vote to put the organization firmly on record backing gay rights. It didn't get far. Reverend Julius Caesar Hope, the head of the NAACP's religious affairs department, warned that a resolution to back gay marriage "would make some serious problems. I would think the membership would be overwhelmingly against it, based on our tradition in the black community."
Seven months before the November 2004 presidential election, a legion of black churchmen staged a rally on Capitol Hill, "We believed that we are faced with a challenge," Bishop Paul Morton thundered to the crowd, "God versus same-sex marriage and we will not compromise in that area." A day later an AME convention forbade its ministers from performing same-sex marriages.
In nearly every state since then where gay marriage bans have been enacted, conservative church-influenced blacks have been the driving force backing the bans. Christian fundamentalist groups have played hard on that sentiment.
At the same time, however, a significant percent of blacks have rejected the bigoted, narrow religious appeals of some black ministers and opposed gay marriage bans. Even in the winning Proposition 8 campaign, forty percent of black voters overall opposed the initiative. Many, perhaps the majority of blacks, can be won to back same sex marriage as a paramount civil rights issue. Because that's what it is. But picketing President Obama is the absolute wrong way to get them to do that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com
Don't blame the victims of their bigotry for not appeasing them properly.
I think your approach, while peaceful, would lead to little change.
When the SAME hateful 1913 Law to ban recognition of inter racial marriages was used by Mitt Romney in MA, to ban out state couples from marrying in MA.
So what do we do?
And, if gay marriage is going to be a state-by-state issue, we do not ignore any community. We inform, lobby, and engage everyone. We do not allow misinformation to stand. Given the nature of homophobia, we do not assume anyone or any group is supportive or inflexibly not supportive. We try to get as many allies as we can.
We do not rely on one person like Obama to tell the LGBT story or take a stance. We tell our own stories of gay oppression and discrimination. We speak for ourselves. We inform. We include. This did not happen in Cali.
see http://www.politico.com/politico44/
I have not read all the comments but from what I have read so far.......typical
Thanks "We-Are-The Ones" for help in proving that point.
You have it completely backwards.
There are an estimated 2,349,542 Blacks in population.
Again, just because "some" Blacks are against gay marriage, doesn't mean all Blacks are. Dont paint with such a broad brush.
A few years back here in Georgia a group of White supremacists led a march against Blacks in Forsythe County Georgia, I was a part of a very big group of counter protesters then and I'll do it again. Being called names by the kkk protesters of traitor to my race had no effect on my views.
Whether you like it or not there is wide spread homophobia in the Black community. Just as there is wide spread homophobia in the White community. I will not back off any group with blackmailed threats of being labeled a racist.
20,000 did not represent the whole population, but you live in fantasyland if you don't think there is widespread homophbia in the Black community.
Why protest Obama? Why not just protest the situation?
Being told to not protest a man because of his race is wrong no matter how you spin it.
2) The entire Democratic Party is kind of out of flavor a little bit in the gay community right now (although it doesn't mean the repubs are more in favor...). Obama is the head of the Party; the gay community is equally disappointed at quite a few Congressmen (esp. Nancy Pelosi).
3) The Cali legislature has voted for gay marriage. twice. Arnold vetoed the bills, though he did come out against Prop 8.
4) Remember, rick Warren campaigned for Prop 8 as did the Mormons and the Catholic Church and they get unrelenting criticism, far more than Obama, in fact. The media doesn't tell you about that.
California has it's own governor, it's own state legislature, it's own supreme court, and it has 2 senators and 53 members of the house of representatives (including the SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE) in Washington DC.
These are the people the proponents for gay marriage should be picketing, because these are the people who can solve their CALIFORNIAN problem.
As for DADT and DOMA .............. There was no picketing for President Clinton (THE PRESIDENT WHO ACTUALLY SIGNED THE BILLS FOR DADT AND DOMA)............... So why grandstand just because President Obama is in office?
And again it is the 2 Californian senators and the 53 Californian members of congress that these should be picketed by the Californians, because both the repeals of DADT and DOMA have to pass on the hill, BEFORE it gets to the President's desk for signature.
There are Blacks in the LGBT community and there are Black allies for the LGBT community.
I hope a day will come when we can see the "them" in us. We are not there, yet.