Black Blindness on Proposition 8

According to a SurveyUSA poll, 58% of black voters support Proposition 8, which would enshrine irrational fear and rank bigotry into the California Constitution in order to deny gays the right to marry. Black support is 10% higher than support of any other ethnic group. This is ironic, considering that in striking down the law banning same sex marriage, the California Supreme Court cited the landmark 1967 civil rights case Loving vs. Virginia that struck down the prohibition of interracial marriage.

A majority of California's voting African-Americans seem blind to that irony, however. They see no kinship to their own past as a reviled minority whose sexual touch toward a single white man or woman would sully the entire "race" of American whites--just as legally sanctioning the sexual touch of same sex partners would so sully heterosexuals' unions that they will... what? Seek immediate divorce? Abandon their children to the streets? Suffer mass orgasmic dysfunction?

58% of the black voting population sees no irony in accepting a "separate but equal" status for gays despite the fact that the Supreme Court freed us from just such subjugation with Brown vs. Board of Education; without it we would still be classifiable as second class citizens.

We see no slippery slope in enshrining hatred and bigotry against a specific group into our ruling document--our California Constitution. If we can enshrine the second-class citizenship of gays with respect to marriage, why not the second-class citizenship of blacks with respect to education, or Hispanics with respect to citizenship itself? Someone will always hate you with equal vociferousness to your hate for someone else. It's simply a matter of convincing enough to do so--as has been done in convincing 58% of blacks to support the same kind of irrational hatred that kept us in figurative shackles for most of the last century.

We say it's "Jesus." Jesus says... It's because Jesus hates the fags... The Bible says so... First, the Bible does not. The Bible contains no imprecations against homosexuality stronger than those against the eating of pork. Bacon anyone?

Secondly, it wasn't that long ago that the Bible (thrust upon our ancestors to make them more accepting of their enslavement) supposedly preached that black skin was a curse from God. The Curse of Ham or Noah's Curse infected Christianity and became a justification for our debasement. We were accursed of God, just like gays are supposed to be today. Jesus said so. The Bible said so.

That debasement is still at work. I believe its lingering effects account for much of that 58% black support for the repellant Proposition 8. Throughout American history, black men could not protect themselves, much less their families, from the predations of the majority, who could own, rape, maim and kill you and yours at will. Later, they could heap endless indignities upon you for your kith and kin to see; and there was not a damned thing in the world you could do about it. In the traditional sense of manhood, black men did not qualify. Once we began to develop some sense of self-respect, we overcompensated with a black buck hypermasculinity that's still apparent today. From blaxploitation movies to gangsta rap, it's been a constant in the images with which we're entertained.

Fear feeds those images. Fear of being once more less than a man, less than able to protect and defend what is yours. Fear of once again being treated as the dirt beneath white men's feet. Fear fuels Proposition 8. It's like some sci-fi creature that feeds on it; and we blacks have so much of it in reserve.

That 58% number makes me sorry for us all right now. It reminds me of what we've been through, and how it allows us to be manipulated by the same racialist, religious right zealots who've spent the last 40 years trying to deny us our rights to equal housing, equal educational opportunities, equal voting rights, and equal treatment under the law.

Today, our attempts to defend our pride in the manhood of our men, we only prove that we're still vulnerable to whims of those who've most reviled us. We're ready to open the door to the legalization of bigotry--a door through which we too might one day be shoved. We're not defending our "manly" bona fides through supporting Prop 8. We're only proving how damaged we remain.

Comments

[NorCalJoe]

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated

"INJUSTICE ANYWHERE IS A THREAT TO JUSTICE EVERYWHERE­."

Proposition 8 is UNJUST and UNFAIR. STOP DISCRIMINATION COLD, and VOTE *NO* on Proposition 8 on Tuesday 11/4.

Obama'08

[RayRing]

Readers may also be interested in the new issue of High Country News, a nonprofit magazine covering the American West, which has my 5,000-word analysis piece about the Mormon Church pushing California's Proposition 8 against gay marriage. The link is http://www.hcn.org/issues/40.19/prophets-and-politics ...

[antaeus]

This is 2008, not 1858. Same-sex marriage is coming. It's in Europe. It's begun in MA and CA. And those who are digging in their heels now are planting themselves on the wrong side of history.

All of this nonsense about whether there are some analogies between the fight for same-sex marriage and the historic struggle for racial equality is a distraction. Our grandchildren will live in a country where same-sex marriage is legal. The only choice now for individuals is whether you want to be on the bigoted, losing side of history or among those who can see the future.

[Pearlswan]

Hey FJRinLA,
I recognize your cultural values argument from back in the 1970s in my Philadelphia High School when we tried to get a Black History Month into the school curriculum. They told us they did not want to force black cultural values onto the mainstream (read white) population. Isn't that the same argument you are using in those ads and your argument that children will be taught they can marry their same sex friend as in imposition of non-Christian values on the mainstream? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck, huh? Same argument. It didn't work back then (thank God) and it won't work now. Heterosexual kids won't turn gay when they learn about gay marriage anymore than white kids turned black just because they learned about black history and black culture. It was a fear based argument used to perpetuate a closed minded discrimination of black people and black culture in America. It failed.

[FJRinLA]

NO....Just another analogy that doesn't hold water IMHO.

1. They're not my ads, but they are very effective with me.

2. I believe in the truth and in teaching history so we don't repeat the bad things and can amplify the good things. So again, I see your analogy here very weak and inappopriate. What happened in the past, good or bad, right or wrong, is not a value to be passed on. History is a collection of facts to be passed on.

3. For example, I have no objection to children learning about the existence of discrimination and the historical examples of such. High School students in CA and elsewhere probably should know who Harvey Milk was and the lessons of his life. That's a more appropriate analogy to African-American studies or Black History Month.....­not marriage.

[FJRinLA]

NOTES FROM A 58%er (PART TWO)

…Yet we still don't want that family member's lifestyle taught as authentic or anything to be aspired to because of both our deeply held religious beliefs and our lessons learned from practical living.

5. The truth is that some Blacks have tried homosexuality and didn’t like it. It didn’t work for them; but they’re still stuck with trying to make being Black work for them.

If I can accept the reality and dignity of homosexuality can my desire to not have that lifestyle choice taught or presented as something equally aspirational to young people not be marginalized as coming from some hateful, ignorant or discriminating place?

It comes from my belief that heterosexual marriage is more fulfilling and offers more promise and wholeness to young people?

And that would be my view even if you persuaded me that no instances of homosexuality were ever “lifestyle choices”, but rather were all God-inspired revelations or resulting from social/biological gifts from birth.

I still would no more want same-sex marriages taught in schools as I'd want single-parent households highlighted ....not because I'm in denial of their existence or because I think they're all bad households occupied by bad people. It's that when presented as normative, they became self-affirming and would lead to a increase in the incidence of those types of households which is not a social or economic outcome that I think public funds should be leveraged to encourage or engineer.

[Pearlswan]

Please vote NO on Prop 8 and show this country that California supports full civil rights for all its citizens regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. We are a progressive and diverse population that is strong enough and flexible enough to make room for all. Your church will not be forced to perform marriages to gays because it is a civil law, not a religious one. Your church will still be free to discriminate but your county clerk will be required to recognize all its citizens' rights to marry the partner of their choice, regardless of sexual orientation of the parties.
Meanwhile, If you truly want to protect marriage then outlaw divorce, not gay marriage. Marriage is marriage. How can marriage be a threat to itself? It is divorce that threatens marriage. Why not focus on preventing divorce rather than preventing gay marriage? That would make sense to me and to my five children and my five grandchildren, who couldn't care less what my sexual orientation is or whether I was born gay or chose to be gay. Acceptance is the law in my family. How about you?

[Pearlswan]

Many gay couples do have children. Some are born of heterosexual relationships. Consequently, some LGBT people find out about their true sexuality after they have already engaged in heterosexual unions. What about their children? How a child is conceived should not deny them equal protections under the law. Both heterosexual couples and homosexual couples have benefited from scientifc progress in human fertility and in vitro fertilization techniques. If their parents are denied the right to marry because of sexual orientation, these children are not given the same protections under the law as the children of "traditional" marital unions. Marriage exists to provide household economies of scale that benefit couples raising children and their children. That is why they get tax credits and benefits of inheritance through marriage. So why should it be a more difficult financial venture for gays to raise their children outside of wedlock? It hurts all of society when we discriminate against any part of it. Children benefit from the security and access to wealth that marriage provides and all children should have those benefits, not just the ones who have heterosexual parents. Children don't choose to be born to a particular set of parents. So why should they be treated differently because of who their parents are and who their parents love? The discrimination runs deep. Marriage is an shelter that protects young and vulnerable children from economic duress until they are old enough to earn their own living. It should shelter all children equally.

[FJRinLA]

NOTES FROM A 58%er PART ONE

1. African-Americans should not be marginalized by these comparisons with Right Wing Fascists. The Christian Left is very different from the Christian Right in significant ways that do mean the difference between life and death for Blacks, Latinos, Gays/Lesbians and certain other targeted groups.

2. For the good of our shared Progressive Community, the parallels and historical analogies between Blacks and Gays should end there. Many African-Americans reject AND resent these comparisons in many of the same ways and for many of the same reasons they sometimes object to the Women's Rights Movement and other groups who try to leverage every Civil Rights precedent to advance their own group's special interest. There are commonalities, but at some point these analogies don't hold water and should end.

3. The Christian Left espouses sincere Acceptance and Tolerance of any and all behaviors and lifestyles; however we 58%ers don't want that Christian Love conflated into an authorization to endorse, condone and/or validate, via the public school system, behaviors that are neither consistent with our faith nor our pragmatism. There's your slippery slope.

4. Blacks within the Christian Left are not homophobes, denying the reality of homosexuality in our own lives and our own families. We all have g/l family members that we love and accept AND ARE NOT TRYING TO CHANGE OR CONVERT. Yet we still don't want that family member's lifestyle taught as authentic or anything to be aspired to …

[FJRinLA]

NOTES FROM A 58%er (PART TWO)

…Yet we still don't want that family member's lifestyle taught as authentic or anything to be aspired to because of both our deeply held religious beliefs and our lessons learned from practical living.

5. The truth is that some Blacks have tried homosexuality and didn’t like it. It didn’t work for them; but they’re stuck with trying to make being Black work for them.

If I can accept the reality and dignity of homosexuality, can my desire to not have that lifestyle choice taught or presented as something equally aspirational to young people not be marginalized as coming from some hateful, ignorant or discriminating place?

It comes from my belief that heterosexual marriage is more fulfilling and offers more promise and wholeness to young people?

And that would be my view even if you persuaded me that no instances of homosexuality were ever “lifestyle choices”, but rather were all God-inspired revelations or resulting from social/biological gifts from birth.

I still would no more want same-sex marriages taught in schools as I'd want single-parent households highlighte­d....not because I'm in denial of their existence or because I think they're all bad households occupied by bad people. It's that when presented as normative, they became self-affirming and would lead to a increase in the incidence of those types of households which is not a social or economic outcome that I think public funds should be leveraged to encourage or engineer.

[Pearlswan]

As concerning the matter of choice versus birth, I would identify the "choice" of a black American and a white American to marry each other as a point that makes how a person becomes gay irrelevant to their choice to marry. Love is a choice too. You may be born black but you choose to marry a person who is not black because you have chosen to love that person regardless of their race or ethnicity and that right or choice is protected under the law. Similarly, a person is born gay but makes a "choice" to marry or not so that choice should also be protected under the law. It makes no difference how or why a person is gay, just like is makes no difference how a person became black, white, hispanic, religious or atheist. A heterosexual person would be just as uncomfortable in a homosexual union as a homosexual person would be in a heterosexual union. If the state offers marital unions for religious couples and atheist couples alike, why not gay couples too? If the "man and woman only" clause is written into the Constitution it becomes state sanctioned discrimination. What's next? The Constitution should have no say in this matter except to allow equal access to all social institutions available under the law.

[celticjag]

The case of Loving v Virginia had to do with anti-miscegenation laws, that prohibited the mixing of the races, and not marriage! Marriage as a societal institution and as defined by law was not under consideration, as the Lovings fulfilled the marrriage requirement of a union of two people, a man and a woman. The courts in MA, CA and CT decided that marriage was a civil right and redefined its definition to a union of two people. Unfortunately, the cases were decided by 4-3 decisions, giving opponents much material to make their arguements against activist judges, et cetera.
Now that marriage is defined in the above three states as a civil right, I wonder how long it will take polygamists, polyandrists and others to sue for marriage rights.

[Pearlswan]

Like there are no gay blacks? If you believe in the concept of race then you should also know that every "race" on earth has a percentage of their population who are gay. So, in essence, if you take a position that discriminates against the civil rights of the LGBT population then you are condoning discrimination against a portion of your own ethnic population or "race." So, it makes no sense that the black and hispanic populations have a greater amount of support for Proposition 8 unless you understand it to be a projection of their own discrimination as minorities in the greater American culture. Perhaps its a "kick the dog" phenomenon?
And, since gay marriage is a civil rights issue, the fact that the court has cited the Loving v. Virginia case has nothing to do with a comparison between blacks and gay culture struggles or rights. The Loving case is a part of our collective common law and is thus cited as an example of minority rights in the face of majority denial of those rights. So, it is relevant to the gay marriage issue and those that suggest otherwise have little understanding how the law is applied. Consequently, they ought not to be advocating an amendment to the California Constitution if their understanding of California law is demonstrably limited.

[FJRinLA]

It's explained by the fact that a greater percentage of Black and Latino populations describe themselves as Catholics or Christians than the general, mainstream population.

If you compare Black & Latino Christians against mainstream Christians, you would probably find more tolerance among Latino Christians and even more among Black Christians­...althoug­h majorities would probably still oppose same-sex marriage as law regardless of how much spiritual and personal tolerance they have for it.

[Fzetmptres1]

Amen
Those who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them......­...

Obama/Biden '08

[NeoStar9]

Discriminating against anyone for anything is wrong even if you don't agree with how they live their lives. Live and let live but that doesn't mean you have to like or expect others to like it even if they won't deny you something. I wanted to get that out of the way first.

My take on gay being a lifestyle choice is this. It doesn't matter if you believe one is born gay or purposefully makes a choice. If you are gay you can pass for straight. No one else has to know your sexual orientation unless you allow them to see it. One makes a choice in allowing others to know they are gay. However when you are black there is no way to hide that outside of never meeting anyone in person or bleaching your skin. It's there for the world to see and you can not hide it. The experiences are two completely different things and are no way comparable.

[antaeus]

Right. The feminine 8th-grade boy is somehow making a conscious choice to opt for a sexual identity, and when he gets beaten by the kids coming out of ignorant and backward homes, it's his own fault for having chosen a different "lifestyle­."

Clearly Appalachia doesn't hold a monopoly on confusion.

[DCCommuter]

If 58% of blacks don't want gay marriage, I think we are overlooking the fact that 42% are okay with it. That is a lot of black people. Why are you saying "blacks" don't want it, when it only half of the black voter population? I think a lot of black people are just going by what is preached in their church. Preachers preach harder against gayness--than adultery for instance--because less people's feelings will be hurt. And gays are an easy target. I think if tv commercials were put on tv that point up the parallels between the Loving Supreme Court case, and this issue, that a lot of blacks would give more thought and be more progressive on the issue.

[antaeus]

What is with the false argument that claims we are equating racism with homophobia? Of course they are not identical. Not getting the job because you are black is different from not getting the job because you are a gay, both of which are different from not getting the job because you are a woman. These three situations clearly share no qualities . . .

[boricua72]

You are wrong! The three scenarios share a similar theme....d­iscriminat­ion because of who you are.

[antaeus]

I was being sarcastic.