Yesterday, I tried to outline a humanistic case against the whole "Teh blackz did us in!" argument. I also linked some math. Now we have better math. The basic idea is that you need black folks to have been about 10 percent of all votes cast on Prop 8 to make a difference. Black folks are one of the smallest minorities in California, making up about six percent of the total electorate, which numbers at about 17 million. At 6 percent, black folks are worth about a million or so votes. There were just over ten million votes cast on Prop. 8. For blacks to cast ten percent of those you would need a turnout of 90 percent in the black community. Lemme repeat that--90 percent. It's possible, I guess. I leave it to you to weigh the odds.
I'm still embarrassed by the fact that 70 percent of those who did vote, voted yes. It means we have serious work to do. But I'm seeing a makings of a disreputable trend to turn a problem into a black problem. We use disproportion as a crutch--what's important is that blacks are disproportionately poor, not that there are large numbers of white poor people. Ditto for homophobia. What's important isn't the large minority of whites, and the influential majority (barely) of Latinos who passed Prop 8, but the roughly 5 percent of the California electorate who voted for it.
Something is very very wrong with that. The anger is justified, expected, and human. But it's not how we're going to fix this.
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I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I'd guess that because of "ghosts" in the polls-- people who are registered and have moved, died, etc but not been purged-- 90% turnout would be literally impossible.
I read that diary and found the math enlightening.
I have come to two conclusions:
A. This is not a failure that comes down to blacks. We are being scapegoated. Not a shock.
B. Despite that, a problem exists, and we need to figure out how to solve it.
I am thinking that those of us in the black community who DO care need to think of ways to communicate on these issues to our people effectively.
I honestly don't know how to do that myself- I have called those homophobic "kill the batty-boy" attitudes and statements out in my religious family for my whole life, and I think I come across as effectively as the shrill liberal at Thanksgiving dinner comes across in white families. My Mom just rolls her eyes at this point, no other response.
I do not KNOW how to go about opening their minds, and I get frustrated when I try. Which probably does my efforts little good.
What's important isn't the large minority of whites, and the influential majority (barely) of Latinos who passed Prop 8, but the roughly 5 percent of Californians who voted against it.
I'm not sure that the part of the sentence after the "but" says what you meant it to say. I don't think there are any numbers where 5% is the number of Californians who voted against Prop 8. Maybe you mean the 50% who voted for it?
Yeah, and when you go to Arkansas, white folks turn out to be more homophobic than black voters. Obviously, this shit is more complicated than Savage and others would have us believe.
Thinking before writing. It's important. Yepper.
I don't think Savage was arguing that homophobia is a black problem. I think he was just pointing out that while gay people overwhelming supported a black president, black people did not reciprocate by supporting gay rights (i.e. progress for me but not for thee). Since I can think of a bazillion reasons to support Obama that have nothing to do with the color of his skin, I think Savage is off-base, but his larger point -- that people should be committed to ending all denials of rights for everyone, and not just for themselves -- is valid.
"but the roughly 5 percent of Californians who voted against it."
Where did you get 5%? The official results were:
YES 52.5% (5,417,748)
NO 47.5% (4,907,867)
One more note on that CNN exit polling: look at the breakdown by age:
18-29: 61-39% against the ban
30-45: 45-55%
46-64: 46-54%
65+: 39-61%
Ta-nehisi, you asked how we are going to fix this? Think about what those numbers will look like in 10-20 years. This thing will fix itself. All of the campaigning will make it happen sooner, of course, but the writing's on the wall here.
Something big happened that made those who grew up in the 1980's much more likely to support gay equality. Gee, what could it have been?
My own parents voted for Proposition 8. They're white protestants and lifelong Democrats. My sisters and I tried to persuade them, but we failed. I don't know how many people this is true for, but for my family at least the split on this issue lies not between demographic groups but between seats at the dinner table.
It's tempting, of course, to rage at the Mormons for putting their institutional weight behind indecent and bigoted nonsense. But I find myself reflecting on why I couldn't frame a persuasive enough argument in my own house to beat it back. For a majority of Californians, there was something deeply appealing about this proposition; I don't think we've fully understood what that was.
Tessa,
5 percent is the number of black voters who supported prop 8, out of the total number of people voting on it.
Diana,
That isn't in dispute. But voting for a president isn't the same as voting for a ballot measure. Your conclusion only works if you think Barack Obama=Black people. Gays overwhelming supported him because he was better for them. It wasn't a favor, it wasn't the moral high-ground, it was smart and the best thing to do.
Seriously, we need to lose the moralizing and the squishy quid-pro-quo-ism. It doesn't stand up to history, and it displays a shocking ignorance of the way actual human beings function. You don't oppose Prop 8 as some sort of favor, you oppose because it's wrong to discriminate against people who are trying to build family together. This isn't a swap meet. We aren't trading favors, here.
I'm late to this but is there a link somewhere to the actual exit poll. Also, everyone from Nate Silver to Karl Rove have said the exit polls were crap.
Ditto that TNC. And ditto Southpaw for looking carefully at what wasn't done by the advocates of voting NO on Prop 8.
And most of all, this is a case of us making a pledge of unity to one another: we are one people, and if some of us are discriminated against, we are all discriminated against.
It's time to go to work. This issue will be live again in 2 years, I am sure of it. We need to now be asking the organizational and messaging questions that southpaw is asking. And we, all of us progressives and liberals and middle-roaders who think discrimination is wrong, need to be there with our checkbooks and phonebanks and conversations with our families to get it overturned for GLBT Americans who deserve better than this.
I think a better view is that you have a large block of conservative christians (ie many baptist AAs) who vote for the Dems year in and year out.
Sometimes race trumps religion (most conservative christians vote GOP if they are white or Dem if black) but on particular issues religion remains the most predictive factor.
I am thankful that most religiously conservative AAs vote Dem because the GOP would be in much better shape otherwise.
In sum I see majority black support of prop 8 being more about religion than race (ie AAs who opposed prop 8 are probably less religiously conservative than those who supported it).
Therefore I suspect race is really a red herring on this issue and religion is more predictive.
I think the question has to be asked also why was it so believable that black people were the underlying reason that Prop 8 failed in the first place. Until that diary went up on dailykos this morning NOBODY challenged the validity of the statistics in a meaningful way and I include myself in that. So far black people have been blamed for the subrime mortgage crisis, the crisis on Wall Street and now for the passing of Prop 8 with little pushback against those memes. And all the while people are hollering that Obama's election makes us a "post racial" nation whatever in the hell that means. Even IF black people had been instrumental to passing Prop 8 where exactly was the LBGT community saying there needs to be out reach to black people or education for black people. All I saw was angry backlash and finger pointing. Just like Coates says Prop 8 is not the presidential election and this isnt some kind of trade off. If somebody is upset that black people didn't vote the way they would like then maybe they should try APPEALING to black people instead of demonizing them. I hear a lot that the fight against Prop 8 was akin to the Civil Rights Movement for black people. Now whether you believe that or not I can tell you unequivically that the Civll Rights Movement succeeded by appealing to white people's better instincts and trying to convince them through non violent means that granting civil rights to black people was the morally right thing to do. Martin Luther King didn't come out brow beating white folks to try to get them to march with him. He didn't come out brow beating white folks when he was arrested for protesting. He didnt come out brow beating white folks when Rosa Parks was arrested for not sitting at the back of the bus. He made the case to white folks that these things were wrong and that they didn't have to and shouldn't go along with it. Barack Obama ran a 50 state strategy that a LOT of people thought was wrong headed but guess what he went into places that people thought wouldnt be receptive to his message and convinced them anyway. Maybe its time for the LGBT to stop assuming that certain sections of the black community ie the black church will not listen to their message and actually try to reach out to them on a personal level. I would bet that doing something like THAT would produce a lot better results than running around pointing the fingers at black folks and blaming everything on their religious leaders.
But I find myself reflecting on why I couldn't frame a persuasive enough argument in my own house to beat it back. For a majority of Californians, there was something deeply appealing about this proposition; I don't think we've fully understood what that was.
Southpaw, the reality is that there are no rational arguments against same-sex marriage that don't start with some incredibly contentious premise, like "breeding is the primary function of marriage" or "Tradition! Tradition!" and go downhill from there, and there are a host of rational arguments for same-sex marriage, beginning with first principles: equality before the law. I know you don't like to think this about your own parents, but I think that you weren't able to persuade them because they're simply not able to work through the irrational arguments in their own heads that gay people just aren't as deserving of equal protection as they are, however they justified that (tradition, Bible, whatever).
You don't oppose Prop 8 as some sort of favor, you oppose because it's wrong to discriminate against people who are trying to build family together. This isn't a swap meet. We aren't trading favors, here.
TNC: At least for me, it's not trading favors, it's profound sadness (and some anger) that human nature seems to require that we are unable to learn to reject discrimination based on our own experience, but rather, we learn that it's OK to discriminate against others, or at least we fail to learn how to generalize our experience to others. In the case under discussion, one notes that both Mormons and African Americans seem to have failed to learn from their own history. This is, of course, hardly unique to those two groups.
This sucks.
It strikes me that this is another variant of the whole "the economy is failing because of the sub-prime mortgages given to... you know" argument. As if the $600,000 houses reappraised to $250,000 in places like Vegas did less damage than the economy than the $80,000 houses reappraised to $65,000.
Argh.
I get the feeling that if the gay marriage argument were successfully re-framed, it'd go through in a walk... lord help me, I can't think of the proper re-framing.
I don’t think that we can really get at homophobia as long as organized religion remains a sacred cow.
Never mind. Jeez! Shanikka did an adequate job in the above link IMO. I thought it was AP that did the exit polling though. Anyway....
I find it kind of odd that they can't break out the findings for Black Men or for Blacks by Age. The polling looks incomplete to me, almost as if someone was afraid to actually ask blacks how they actually voted.
"I get the feeling that if the gay marriage argument were successfully re-framed, it'd go through in a walk... lord help me, I can't think of the proper re-framing.
How about this:
Telling homosexuals they can't marry isn't like telling a black baptist woman she has to sit at the back of the bus; it's like telling her she has to convert to judaism or she can't ride the bus at all.
Can I get a witness?
"I get the feeling that if the gay marriage argument were successfully re-framed, it'd go through in a walk... lord help me, I can't think of the proper re-framing."
Here we go then:
Jesus said to love one another as he loved us. How can we love our gay brothers and sisters but tear their families apart.
Cue image of critically ill lesbian in hospital unable to be visited by her partner there. Cue image of gay man being deported because he can't marry his American partner, being separated from their 2 year old son who doesn't understand why daddy has to leave.
God made us who we are, and God doesn't make junk. God made gay people gay, and we are all his children in his eyes. Who are we to judge God's work?
And who is the government to tell Americans who they can and can't marry?
Cue image of fallen gay soldier who served in Iraq, with his partner talking about how much he misses him and how proud he is of his service, with an American flag in the background.
How's that?
James Brown said it best: "talking loud and saying nothing"! GO TO the Daily Kos! The so called argument on how black folks impacted Prop 8 is sunk. As some have noted that select homeowners caught up in the sub-prime mess are the basis of the current worldwide financial crisis and recession. So should I conclude that Santa Claus will be visiting the ghettos in the imagination of many next month. Scapegoating? How many goat exist on this planet? Sinking Prop 8, a world wide recession in 90 days, and with no accumulated wealth? Too tuff for me! Again ain't nutin but "talking loud and saying nothing"!
The real demographic in the Prop 8 vote was inland vs. the coast. But insofar as homophobia in the black community is concerned, I hope this one thought by a white educator is in ok taste, and not taken as simple tokenism, but isn't it time to educate people about the great James Baldwin, one of our history's greatest novelists, who wrote with blistering fire about black life including the church in ways few have ever equalled:
"Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality."
Okay. So while we're crunching numbers, I think it's interesting to look at the breakdown by county. Two of the biggest (democratic) counties voting against the measure were L.A. and San Diego:
L.A. County:
YES: 52.5% (5,417,748)
NO: 47.5% (4,907,867)
San Diego County:
YES: 52.5% (5,417,748)
NO: 47.5% (4,907,867)
Kevin Smith does some quick and dirty number crunching that shows the relevance of the minority vote:
"Each percentage point increase in the percent of the county’s population that is Hispanic increases its support for Prop. 8 by 0.05 percentage points...More Hispanic residents means greater support for Prop. 8. In a county like LA County, where Hispanics make up slightly less than half the population, this means an increase of 2.5 percentage points in favor of Prop. 8 compared to a county where there are no Hispanic residents."
"Likewise, all else being equal, more African American residents mean greater support for Prop. 8 in a county. Each percentage point increase in the percent of a county’s population that is African American increases the county’s support for Prop. 8 by 0.23 percentage points..."
Now, not sure why Kevin doesn't isolate the white vote and run the stats again, that sure would be useful (and just as relevant). Still I do think it's interesting to see that IF those two minority groups had voted in higher percentages against Prop8, it might not have passed. Since we're crunching numbers...
I like it Tony. I was thinking along the same lines.
How about:
Civil unions give gays the same rights as everyone else.
And those buses still took you where you wanted to go, no matter where you sat.
It isn't about getting where you want to go. It's getting there with your dignity.
You're overlooking one key fact that seems to be enraging Savage among others - the belief that African Americans ought to know better. How long ago was the Loving decision?
African Americans had been discriminated against in this very way - being told who they could and could not marry and that their marriages (those between a black person and a white person) were against the laws of nature.
But they perservered, and that thought process was relegated to irreverancy. Now African Americans are using that same hateful logic, taking away the right of marriage, from others.
It's not that they caused the loss, but the fact that now that they are not the targets, they are joining in on the discrimination. It's a feeling of betrayal, and I'm surprised that you don't understand it.
I just wanted to comment on this:
"Ta-nehisi, you asked how we are going to fix this? Think about what those numbers will look like in 10-20 years. This thing will fix itself."
The problem with this kind of thinking--and there's a lot of it out there--is that gays aren't gaining, they're falling behind. Florida passed an amendment to their constitution on Tuesday. For there to be gay marriage in Florida, we're not just going to have to wait for a majority in favor of it--but 60%. Over the last twenty years, anti-gay measures have passed 30 times. A Democratic administration has given us Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. There is more anti-gay discrimination enshrined in law in this country than there was when I became an adult.
All the progress that gays have made over the last twenty years have been social--from us taking risks and forcing people to change how they viewed us. We have gained no significant rights that did not require a majority vote. (Don't talk to me about civil unions--the only reason they were so easy to give was because they merely institutionalized rights you can get through contract.)
Demographic arguents are just stupid. What are we supposed to do? Pray for pandemic flu? Go firebomb a retiremen community?
DCwolverine, the answer is very simple.
Opponents of the ban should find the reddest, redneckiest county in the south and get the signatures to put an advisory referendum suggesting that interracial marriage be overturned. It would pass 70-30.
Then I think the message would be sent.
I'm still embarrassed by the fact that 70 percent of those who did vote, voted yes. It means we have serious work to do. - TNC
I'm not. So far the evidence does not support that number.
Telling homosexuals they can't marry isn't like telling a black baptist woman she has to sit at the back of the bus; it's like telling her she has to convert to judaism or she can't ride the bus at all.
Can I get a witness?
Posted by Tony Comstock | November 7, 2008 11:31 AM
I will have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. I don't think you win an argument with a person who has made up their mind on the basis of their faith by trying to make it analagous to a hypothetical situation dealing with a member of their faith. Most people would just dismiss it out of hand because to them you would be trying to compare follwing their religion with something that their religion teaches them is an abomination.
The tone that I think would be most effective is not any kind of an analogy. That is where most people are going wrong in the first place. When you try to say the LGBT movement is like another movement be it civil rights or women's suffrage you run the risk of alienating the people who were involved with those movements. What you have to do is make it a human emotional issue. You have to present them with straight forward evidence of the effect Prop 8 has on their fellow man and woman. Not gay men and women but people, human beings who happen to have a different sexual orientation than they do, but are no less human. When you frame it in terms of love and not sex I think more people can understand where you are coming from. And biggest of all I think the most common sense argument is this, banning gay people from getting married will NOT lower the number of people who are gay. So what purpose does it serve to deny them the ability to marry other than just to punish them for their lifestyle? Most people including evangelicals dont like the idea of punishing someone simply because of their beliefs. In that situation you won't have to make the connection to civil rights or women's rights, it will just come naturally
Now ultimately I want to say that I don't know if any approach will make a dent or not in the evangelical community because its hard to say what people will do or say when it comes to matters of their faith. But I do think its about time somebody came up with a straight forward approach instead of trying to identify themselves with past civil rights movements or coming up with analogies that don't work. Part of the reason in my opinion that Prop 8 passed is because the Yes on 8 people gave the populous their straight forward vision of what Prop 8 would lead to. Mind you most of what they said was based on lies and misleading statements but the point is they didnt try to just make it a referendum on faith. They also made it about gay adoption and promotion of gay relationships in schools and the affect on traditional marriages. Again it was all bullsh!t but for many it was plausible. For people who wanted to vote for Prop 8 but didnt want to be seen as intolerant or homophobic this gave them a helluva way out to be able to vote for it. Its time that the No on 8 people come up with a way to give them a helluva way in to vote against it!
For those of you crunching numbers, I find this map (click on the "available races" menu and go down to Prop 8) pretty useful. Can't believe we lost LA and San Diego.
"It's not that they caused the loss, but the fact that now that they are not the targets, they are joining in on the discrimination. It's a feeling of betrayal, and I'm surprised that you don't understand it."
@ DCWolverine: I don't think anyone here is confused about the irony of the oppressed becoming the oppressor and how reprehensible that is in the black community. The issue at hand is that some people are treating this as if black voters singlehandedly turned the tide to prop 8, which is a fallacy.
Just because this does not solely fall at the feet of blacks, that doesn't mean we don't have a problem with homophobia within the community.
The bigger issue at hand is religion. As long as the marriage equality proponents cannot sway the hearts and minds of the religious community that both bankrolled and supported this foolishness en masse, nothing will change.
Also, can we discuss the ridiculousness that is a 51% majority being able to make a drastic change to a state constitution? WTF?
@sgwhiteinfla
I think you've misunderstood who my proposed audience is. I'm not interested in "converting" people (black or otherwise) who have made up their mind on the basis of faith. I don't believe their position changed, either by rational argument, or by presenting more images of non-threatening lesbian women picniccing with their photogenic young children.
The question I have echoes a rather pointed critique that comes from the right, but still has the ring of truth to it.
Would you have all this equanimity if it were poor rural whites supporing, by an over 2 to 1 margin, a bill that re-segregated schools? Would you try to nuance their bigotry? Say that outreach is necessary, that anger is counter-productive? Minimize the efficacy of their votes? Blame the opponents of segregation for a badly-run campaign?
I do not think you would. You would berate them as ignorant, trailer-dwelling white trash, at least in private moments, and then use a somewhat more guarded language to describe them publicly. (That's what I would do, too.)
How would you respond to someone who, two days after such a re-segregation vote, tried to nuance the role of rural white voters?
....and yet all of these arguments continuously ignore those who are both black and gay. As usual, gay = white and black = homophobic. Yep, got it.
What some of you folks need to realize is that a lot of Black people don't see the GLBT community's struggle as analogous with the Black folks civil rights battle. Like someone said earlier this isn't about civil rights for a lot of Black folk it's about religion. I completely disagree & think it's very much about civil rights. I also do not think that you can equate it with what Black people went through. I think when most Black people think about the oppression of our people in this country interracial marriage would not be one of the top ten things mentioned. That's where the correlation between the two groups are. To compare Black folks' struggle with that of GLBT folks is pretty off base to me. GLBT folks have never had to deal with the scale of oppression of Black people in America & they never will.
Not much to say on this. The fact is though, 70% of the black community, particularly those older than 30, voted for this amendment. And yes, exit polls are crap, but they usually are crap in a liberal direction. So it might be higher, for all one knows.
Now - does this make the "black community" more homophobic than say the Mormon community, who bankrolled this sh*t?
No.
Does this make the black community more responsible than other who voted yes?
No.
But let's not avoid the fact that, yes, 70% voted yes on this.
Now, you can break this out in different ways. For example, has there been a breakdown based on religious affiliation? Protestants? Catholics? (We know that Mormons would go 95% for this.)
Most likely, the more salient fact is that 90% of traditional churchgoers - black, white, or otherwise - voted for this in CA.
One of the lessons to be drawn then, is to place gay marriage in a positive religious context. Otherwise, this will remain a point of contention forever.
What are THOSE arguments?
Rob, don't be fatuous. Of course, 30% of African Americans opposed Prop 8, and there are black gay men and women. Likewise, there were white Alabamans who opposed segregation. We could still characterize Alabama in the 1960s as a very racist society. Same here.
There's nothing wrong with white people noting that black people are disproportionally hostile to gay rights. What matters is the attitude after. It's the difference between "you've got work to do" and "we've got work to do."
@sgwhiteinfla
I think you've misunderstood who my proposed audience is. I'm not interested in "converting" people (black or otherwise) who have made up their mind on the basis of faith. I don't believe their position changed, either by rational argument, or by presenting more images of non-threatening lesbian women picniccing with their photogenic young children.
Posted by Tony Comstock | November 7, 2008 12:07 PM
Here is why I again respectfully disagree. You want to know what issue MIGHT be analagous to gay marriage to religious folks in my mind??? Abortion. Abortion is seen as a wedge issue in every election but still Obama received a portion of support from evangelicals even though most of them are against abortion. Why is that you think? Might it have something to do with pro choice people taking the time out to convince some of those evangelicals that having abortion legal is a lot more preferrable to having women going into back alleys for home made abortions? Might it be because the pro choice people have successfully convinced most Americans that it is unreasonable to demand that a victim of rape or incest be made to carry the product of those encounters to term? Might it be because instead of demonizing people who are against abortion instead pro choice people made it into a human issue and about how outlawing abortion would hurt certain segments of the population? It is and has been a HUGE mistake for people to just accept that religious folks will never change their minds on any given issue. And its that defeatist attitude that will ensure that LGBT NEVER makes in roads with religious folks which will pretty much ensure that it will be a LONG time before there is enough support for overturing a ban on gay marriage. If you decided that you can't change the minds of the people who voted against you what exactly do you think is another viable option?
Lemmy Caution did you miss the part about the point of this post & some of the other commenters here No one is arguing that Black folks are right to vote for prop 8. The point is that to cast Black people as the sole reason this thing passed is way off base. It's just one of many factors but yet so far we a being scapegoated by many in the media & LGBT community as THE reason this passed.
Yes, blacks are being scapegoated. And yes, the problem will solve itself. But that's not enough for me. We need to articulate clearly why we want the word "marriage" to apply to same-sex partnerships. We need to change a few minds about this. And the only path to that I see is personalization.
It's not a "gay couple" in the abstract, it's Andrew and Martin and their adorable twin girls. It's George Takei and Brad Altman. It's Ellen Degeneres and Portia Di Rossi. It's Nikki and Jean, partnered 30 years.
Every mind I know that has been changed has been changed that way. Mine included.
One final point. Gays may have strongly supported Obama, but their support was down 11 points versus their support for John Kerry. In an election where Obama gained 8 points relative to Kerry in the population at large.
What some of you folks need to realize is that a lot of Black people don't see the GLBT community's struggle as analogous with the Black folks civil rights battle.
That couldn't be clearer, actually. As a Jew, I see it all too familiarly in the attitude many Jews have toward comparisons between historical oppression of Jews and Israel's treatment of Palestinians: they get very, very angry that you would dare to make the comparison.
Eddy, what you say is true. The math could really be read either way, but the passage of Prop 8 is not itself solely the responsibility of African-Americans. But again, if you learned that 70% of white gay men and women voted for re-segregation, would you take pains to observe that they weren't solely responsible? And more pointedly, how would you respond to language that focused on mitigating their responsibility?
What do you think would be the political result of a 70% re-segregation vote among gays and lesbians?
"Why is that you think?"
Why? To quote the first black president, "It's economy, stupid."
I believe that the 1:1 analogizing of LGTB civil liberty issues to racial civil liberty issues is both ineffective and counter productive. More over, I believe the wholesale acceptance that the racial civil liberties model as The One True Model both of what civil liberties are, and how those who have been denied civil liberties is wrong-headed. People of all races and religious beliefs know that the fight for LGTB civil liberties is not the same as the fight for racial equality, and without a framework for understanding why, although it might be a different fight it is still a just fight, those who are more conservative (in the traditional sense of the word) are going to vote to leave things the way they are.
Prop 8 was passes by a narrow margin. There are better places to go looking for the votes needed to repeal it than in the dens of religious intolerance.
Antid, that could cut both ways. A refusal to see analogous experiences for their similarities, rather than their differences, is a kind of insular obstinacy.
I would remind people just where the pink triangle symbol came from. And I would encourage people to look at hate crime statistics over the past several decades.
Actually the only major thing that thing that changed in the analysis was that the percentage of the yes votes went from 52% to 52.5% in the final numbers. Those additional votes meant that the differential of the black vote (69% yes compared to 50% yes for Hispanics and 45% yes from whites) was no longer enough to be the decisive factor.
Dan Savage's rant was wrong. From the narrow point of view of prop 8, it turns out that the difference in black opinion was enormous but not quite decisive.
From a broader view, it remains that 70% of black voters seem to dislike the idea of gay marriage compared to the approximately 50% of most other groups. (45% of white people in CA and 51% of Hispanics). Interestingly even among really obvious groups like evangelicals the percentage is only about 59%, and among Catholics it was 58%. I can't find anything on Mormons as a group.
This tentatively seems to support the general rumor that it is really hard to be a gay man in a black community (at least in California). My gay, black friends have always suggested that, but I didn't really understand the magnitude.
The blame game on Prop 8 isn't worth it, and just distracts attention from the other issues.
Lemmy: Yes, that's more or less what I was trying to say.
My language has not focused on mitigating Black folks responsibility. Lemmy, you said what I said was true then go right back to trying to lay it all at our feet. My answer to your question is yes by the way because the LGBT community wouldn't have been the biggest reason a measure like that passed. It's the same thing for Black people. Black people represented 7% of those who voted for prop 8 what about the other 44%? This argument, once again, is not about denying our part in the passing of this it's about denying that we were THE mitigating factor. Yes a large number of my people in Cali. fucked up but you can't place all the blame on us. As T-NC has said before about other issues this is about taking an American problem & turning it into a Black problem.
"Cue image of fallen gay soldier who served in Iraq, with his partner talking about how much he misses him and how proud he is of his service, with an American flag in the background."
Elegant solution, Breukelyne, but there's one problem. Something very similar has been tried and it has failed. There is a disabled Iraq veteran, Marine, lost a a leg to an IED,gay as the daisies. he has testifoed befroe congress. jhasn't helped a bit.
The probelm has been identified upthread. it is not ethnicity, it is religion. It is the religuion that has to be attacked and destroyed. Has the Black Church earned eternal gratitude and a glowing reputation for the indespensible role it played during the Civil rights Movement? Wonderful; I don't give a shit if it moved heaven and earth - it isn't good enough. It has fallen short of the glory of God. It is damned along with all the other religious organizations and "churches".
How to attack? Homophobia is a wonderfully powerful weapon and one that clergy especially are vulnerable to. Outing will either destroy the churches' leadership or credibility of the weapon. Destroying the credibility of the weapon will weaken homophobia itself. It will become old news.
Some useful data from Pollster:
Sebastian, counter to what you say above, pollster seems to indicate:
When comparing the findings from The Field Poll's final pre-election survey of likely voters (n-966) to the Edison Media Research exit poll in California, the biggest differences relate to the turnout and preferences of frequent church-goers and Catholics. The Field Poll, completed one week before the election, had Catholics voting at about their registered voter population size (24% of the electorate) with voting preferences similar to those of the overall electorate, with 44% on the Yes side. However the network exit poll shows that they accounted for 30% of the CA electorate and had 64% of them voting Yes. Regular churchgoers showed a similar movement toward the Yes side. The pre-election Field Poll showed 72% of these voters voting Yes, while the exit poll showed that 84% of them voted Yes.
If both that 64% of Catholicss, and that 84% of "regular churchgoers" is accurate, then again, we have a religious problem, much more than a "black" problem.
The most bizarre aspect of the "teh blacks did us in!1" argument is the vast amount of cognitive dissonance it requires to translate the votes of what is increasingly shown to be a marginal percentage of the total vote into a greater force than the institutional effort by the usually apolitical Mormon Church (consisting of letters to congregations, Web videos, ground troops, and outreach efforts with the Protect Marriage Coalition that resulted in $14 million dollars in donations) to derail the Court's ruling. And yet, in the conversation waging on the internet, even the appeal to religion seems racially coded; it's not general religion people are pointing to, or the LDS church specifically, but those ever-powerful Black Baptist churches. While many jump to create parallels with interracial marriage, the Mormon Church has the same flashpoint, having been persecuted by US law for their marriage practices, and sometimes being forced to flee to Mexico. And yet, the condescending "Can I get a witness?" talk doesn't address the folks who bankrolled the whole operation. In this vein, there is much to be said about the failure of the "NO on 8" as a campaign. This is not to distract from the ethical and moral failure of those who voted for the propostion, of course, but there should be acknowledgement of what seemed to be complacency for what was, ultimately, a political fight. In the wake of our loss, people are now lamenting how we need to educate (which begs questions of mainstreaming and assilimilation and is the sort of rhetoric that pushed my views more on the Michael Warner than the Andrew Sullivan side of the marriage debate long ago). NO on 8 should have been able to mobilize the same sort energy that fueled the Obama ground game to canvass and fight for a right that an entire generation has little problem with (speaking of The One, I will add that Obama should have spoken up against the proposition much earlier and with much more force. Alas, politicking!). Lastly, and most obviously, it would do us all well to shun complicity in further erasing queer people of color, remembering that creating a gay-versus-black dichotomy assumes that there are not those who are both (we should, naturally, neither erase gay Mormons, or those who opposed Prop 8, and so on).
Some international perspective here, for what it's worth.
Over here in Holland we have gay marriage since 2001. It was one of the last legal bills the then Undersecretary of Justice worked on before he took on his new job as Mayor of Amsterdam, and a while later, after the bill had been passed and signed (by our Queen) and official blabla, he was the first offical to actually perform the first gay weddings. He was our President Johnson, if you allow me the comparison - I know it is deeply flawed.
Since then, Belgium and Spain have followed the Dutch example.
But is has not not an easy fight, not even in a liberal hotbed as the Netherlands. Many people on the conservative, religious right were very unhappy about it, and seven years later we are still sometimes bothered in a side-show discussion about the civil rights of municipal employees to abstain from performing as wedding registry officials at gay weddings, as the person doing the official deed, as it were. So far, the jury is still out on what those conscientious objectors can claim as their rights.
My point is: legal marriage rights are an uphill struggle for the GLBT community. I agree with Tessa this problem will disappear as the older generations disappear into the sunset, but that does not mean everybody should just wait around for twenty years.
The community has maybe been too timid.
You cannot wait for people who have very entrenched religious ideas about homosexuality to change their views. This needs to be pushed down the bigots' throats, the same way desegregation was ordered from above.
But without politicians to get their weight behind it, to put themselves on the line, who are willing to get it done, like our Mayor here in Amsterdam, it's not going to happen.
The GLBT community needs to get politicians to move this forward: not as a gay issue, not as a handout, but as a civil rights issue.
(Personally, I'm not that keen on marriage as an institution, straight or gay, but it should be available to all.)
If this thread were about Mormon participating in culture, Eddy, I'd be laying out the blame, too. But a 70% rate doesn't just contribute to the votes: it helps make the case for those people who claim that the struggle for equality for gays and lesbians is not a civil rights struggle.
Again, I ask you: if there were a vote to re-segregate, and gays and lesbians supported it at a 70% level, what would you be saying then? Would you say, "oh, really, we can't blame them - after all, the Catholics supported it by 51%"? Would you really? Why aren't you willing to follow along in this thought experiment?
Furthermore, the LGBT has every right to be angry with Blacks who voted against this measure. My main problem is a lot of their anger seems directed at ALL Black folk. I'm also just plain tired of being demonized for every damn problem in this country. We have a hand in this stupid thing passing but so do many others & the focus on putting the blame Black peoples backs in wrong. Plain & simple.
Prop 8 was passes by a narrow margin. There are better places to go looking for the votes needed to repeal it than in the dens of religious intolerance.
Posted by Tony Comstock | November 7, 2008 12:38 PM
Here is why that is a losing proposition. If you never change minds then whatever court victory you might find will always and forever be opposed by the same people who voted for Prop 8 and you will be locked in a struggle to keep those rights in perpetuity. The biggest evidence of this is of course Prop 8 itself. It is precisely because nobody tried to change people's mind that after granting gay people the right to marry those same people same people have now voted to take it away. But hey if you think thats the way to go so be it. I just don't think that will ever be a long term solution
.
As a p.s. in response to your "its the economy stupid" line I would remind you that many priests and pastors told their followers that a vote for Obama would get them a first class ticket to hell. It wasnt JUST the economy that made them buck their spiritual leaders. It was also the knowledge that abortion is more or less a necessary evil in this Country.
I appreciate what everyone is saying here but I think a few days ago, TNC made the point in arguing that we need to come up with an argument that is more than "yuck." And I'm black and I'm gay and I'm telling you all THAT is the largest reason people voted for this proposition. No one ACTUALLY believes what the Bible supposedly says about homosexuality. This proposition and this attitude about gay people does NOT amount to any lofty issues of "faith." It's really about people thinking that what gay people do in their bedrooms is gross. Saying it is about faith is a smokescreen because that would somehow imply that deep in your heart (where your emotions are), you think gay people getting married is bad for society and Jesus would not approve, or were it true, that gay marriage being taught in school is an essential part of Prop 8 and thus, bad for society and Jesus would not approve or any of the other lies they offered (to others but especially to THEMSELVES) as to why gay marriage should be banned and who it would protect. It's all about "a man is not supposed to be sticking his thang up another man's butt hole!" (something my very Baptist black mother once said to me years ago though true there are also white Mormons who are repulsed by gay sex in all its myriad forms). And so I think somehow we have to get evangelicals to rethink in a very public way this underlying disgust of gay sex (and sex in general) but also and maybe more importantly, to get them to see that not only do men who desire men or women who desire women not hurt them or their love for Jesus, it might also HELP raise the rolls on some of their membership if they embraced gay, lesbian, transgender, and questioning people (sexuality and ALL) and their desire to build lives and families together (whether they were LGBTQ people who believed in Jesus or any religious figure or not or whether they wanted to be married or not).
"If you never change minds then whatever court victory you might find will always and forever be opposed by the same people who voted for Prop 8 and you will be locked in a struggle to keep those rights in perpetuity."
Perpetuity? Look at the demographics of the yes vote. We need not worry about perpetuity.
The question is what can be done now to make it easier for gay men and lesbian women to live fully public lives right now. Their daily witness, as neighbors, teachers, colleagues -- not bucolic PSAs -- is what will change the minds and hearts of those who find strength for their bigotry in their faith. That witness and the arc of history will take care of perpetuity.
Lemmy I answered your question already. Maybe you're not getting this because you aren't actually reading what said. This is what I said above: 'My answer to your question is yes by the way because the LGBT community wouldn't have been the biggest reason a measure like that passed. It's the same thing for Black people."
My answer is still yes. As we can see from JC's comment above Catholics were 30% of the electorate & 64% of them voted for it. Now of course some of those Catholics (also my people) are Black but as others have said to focus on Blacks being the problem here is not just misguided but flat out wrong. When you focus on the race you make it that there's something inherent about Black folk that makes them homophobic which isnt the case.
As with your example even if 70% of gays voted for segregation I wouldn't think it was because they were gay. You seem to think Black people voted for prop 8 because they are Black & not because of other factors like religion.
"If you never change minds then whatever court victory you might find will always and forever be opposed by the same people who voted for Prop 8 and you will be locked in a struggle to keep those rights in perpetuity."
Perpetuity? Look at the demographics of the yes vote. We need not worry about perpetuity.
The question is what can be done now to make it easier for gay men and lesbian women to live fully public lives right now. Their daily witness, as neighbors, teachers, colleagues -- not bucolic PSAs -- is what will change the minds and hearts of those who find strength for their bigotry in their faith. That witness and the arc of history will take care of perpetuity.
Posted by Tony Comstock | November 7, 2008 1:09 PM
Maybe you didnt realize this but bans on gay marriage passed in at least 2 other states than just California. But again you have a right to your opinion that it will all just take care of itself. But I just happen to disagree.
I'd also like to say word about ballot Propositions. Is this really the most democratic way to decide issues, especially constitutional ammendments? I've been thinking about this question for over a week now, I've concluded, No.
Why? Because ballot measures are too easily politicized. That's why we rely on the jurisprudence of our courts...to prevent bias and prejudice. No? Then talk me down.
It's a heterosexual problem. When will heterosexuals stop moralizing homosexuality and stop lording over gay people and trying to dictate what gay people can or can't do?
I'm sure that the spread was quite high among Muslims and Arabs too, though I haven't seen that demographic broken out in a large enough sample. Then again, perhaps the position of Islam within the A-A community plays a role in its disproportionate homophobia. I wonder if polls show a similar disparity in Black men's views towards women's equality too.
With you there Tessa. Props are terrible. Leaving aside the actual issue this one is still especially heinous because the Cali constitution has been amended by a bare majority. That's ridiculous.
@ Tessa: that is precisely my point. In no state should a 51% majority be able to dictate what goes into the constitution. Such a slim margin can dictate the course of action for the entire state? Total joke.
Eddy, you're right up to a point. It would be ridiculous to blame blackness itself for this, or to extend "guilt by association" to people (many of whom, of course, are gay or lesbian themselves, or at least voted no on 8) to black people. What the anger is directed to is what is understood, mostly rightly, as a real cultural-political bloc that involves the black churches and other community groups as their guiding forces. There are "top-level" containers for political identity. They don't always map onto race, but in this case, I think they do. And to say it is a "religious" thing makes the mistake, I think, of eliding the singular role that black churches play.
I can't help but feel the long-term political fallout of a 70% pro-segregation vote among gays and lesbians, if it were out of sync with the rest of the populace, would be profound. But still, as Kenneth Tynan said, "it is not enough to praise: on must distinguish. It is not enough to criticize: one must diagnose."
The anger will eventually subside. But I also somewhat disagree with an approach that is too conciliatory or forgiving. Racism is now deeply embarrassing even to white people, and they will go to great pains to either avoid it or, at least, hide it. This turn of events did not occur because of friendly dialog. Racism became embarrassing because it was confronted, mocked, raged at, made fun of, ostracized, associated with stupidity and ignorance and backwardness. This is no different.
The problem is that a coalition of haters came together on this issue. So the following people/things are to blame:
1. The Mormon Church (oppressed becomes the oppressor, yay!)
2. 50% of white voters
3. Slightly more than 50% of Hispanic voters
4. Old people
5. Slightly less than 70% of black voters
6. All the people who claim to care about this but didn't bother to vote
7. The people, gay and straight, who thought "Hey, California loves the gay. This will be a cakewalk." and rested on their laurels.
8. The dumbass, easy to amend, 100 page CA constitution.
9. Religious leaders who claim to be Christians, but focus on Old Testament bullshit over Jesus's message of love and compassion.
That said, if there exists a black/white mixed race, spanish speaking mormon preacher over the age of 65, it should be ok to kick him in the nuts. Watch your back, Rev. Dontay "Chad" Gomez.
"With you there Tessa. Props are terrible. Leaving aside the actual issue this one is still especially heinous because the Cali constitution has been amended by a bare majority. That's ridiculous."
What do you want to bet that the people who wrote/approved the California considered themselves liberals with a deep concern for liberty, equality, and justice?
Lemmy, I agree with you up to a point. I understand that apparently an overwhelmingly majority of Blacks IN CALIFORNIA voted for this measure & therefore it kind of puts the spotlight on them but that still doesn't make them THE reason this passed. My question is why do you wish to focus only on Black people & not on the 44% of others who voted for this measure as well? It seems like all you care about.
You said "Racism is now deeply embarrassing even to white people, and they will go to great pains to either avoid it or, at least, hide it. This turn of events did not occur because of friendly dialog. Racism became embarrassing because it was confronted, mocked, raged at, made fun of, ostracized, associated with stupidity and ignorance and backwardness. This is no different."
It is different though because white people were the main ones responsible for racism. There were plenty of other types of people involved in racism against Black people too but to direct out anger at them would have been misguided. They didn't control things. That's why I said I wouldn't really be concerned about gays voting for segregation. Gays would not make up enough of the electorate for me to be son singularly angry at them.
"What do you want to bet that the people who wrote/approved the California considered themselves liberals with a deep concern for liberty, equality, and justice?"
Yeah Tony I bet they were a bunch of big libs back in 1849.
"What do you want to bet that the people who wrote/approved the California considered themselves liberals with a deep concern for liberty, equality, and justice?"
Since when are those bad things?
1849? Here's what Wiki has to say about who/when/why:
In 1910 Johnson won the gubernatorial election as a member of the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, a liberal Republican movement running on an anti-Southern Pacific Railroad platform. He toured the state in an open automobile. In office, Johnson was a populist who implemented many important reforms. Among them was the popular election of U.S. Senators, which stripped away the sole franchise of the California State Legislature to vote for federal Senators. Johnson's administration also pushed for women's suffrage and the ability of candidates to register in more than one political party, a reform that he believed would cripple the influence of what he viewed as a monolithic political establishment. In 1911, Johnson and the Progressives added initiative, referendum, and recall to the state government, giving California a degree of direct democracy unmatched by any other U.S. state.
Yeah Tony I bet they were a bunch of big libs back in 1849
Actually, Tony's more right than wrong here. The stupidity of the initiative system in California stems from the Progressive movement in the early 20th century (came in in 1911, IIRC), and was viewed as a way for the people to pry control of government out of the hands of a few corrupt industrialists (railroad barons, mostly, I understand).
Best of intentions, etc. etc.
It's not 70% of the Black community that voted Yes. It's 70% of whatever percentage of the black community is eligible to vote, registered to vote, and actually showed up to vote.
Not sure where your info came from Tony but this is what I was looking at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_constitution
"Best of intentions, etc, etc."
The event of the past couple of weeks have found me re-reading Federalist #10. This is my favorite quote from Madison:
That's why we are not a pure democracy. We are a representative democracy. Which is why this prop stuff is non-sense.
Please note that the argument that this is too big of a change to legislate by a 50%+1 majority is exactly the heart of the lawsuit to repeal this.
Second, to those of you who say it's not worth your effort to try to convince religious voters to vote against this next time, I assure you that it's very possible.
Jesus Christ promised a new covenant, with only one commandment. "Love one another, as I have loved you."
Second, ask them if they really want everybody to think that what the government says goes is also what a church says. There's good reason to separate the definitions of religious and civil marriage.
Ask them if they support rolling back no-fault divorce, a far bigger threat to religious marriage than gay marriage ever is.
If they bring up the Gavin Newsome thing, this next bit is especially valuable. Here's what he meant by "this is coming, whether you like it or not.":
Right now, gay men and gay women are forming lifelong bonds, having and adopting children, and building families together. When we deny them civil marriage, we don't stop them from forming these families. All we do is we put their own security and children at risk. What happens to the children of two women if their biological mother dies? What happens to her if she stayed home to take care of their children? In many cases, she can't properly inherit life insurance and social security. Putting these families on the street isn't christian.
Finally, ask them if they think that banning gay marriage drives gays and other young people away from the church, and what that means about the future of their church.
These are all techniques I've used. They're not quick conversations, but it's going to take work. We need to change 150,000 minds in two years.
"Second, ask them if they really want everybody to think that what the government says goes is also what a church says. There's good reason to separate the definitions of religious and civil marriage."
I'm not sure if you're saying this isn't already the case or not. It is. Churches don't have to marry gay people. That's one of things I've have never understood about religious opposition to gay marriage. It would not affect them in the least. My gf's brother had to go to numerous clergymen before finding someone willing to marry him & his hindu wife. Gay marriage would not force churches to marry gays. All marriage is civil marriage.
Is this country not 60-65% percent white? I mean compared to blacks, whites oppose gay marriage by a extremely large margin. The gay marriage ban went down in Florida, Arizona and Arkansas. The black community needs to address the gay marriage issue, that's true, but I believe the majority population needs to be persuaded the maximum. If there was a national vote on this, nothing blacks do would change a think if a majority of whites vote for a ban.
Also, do gays think that their vote for Obama means that blacks owe them something? Listen, gay marriage needs to be legal and everyone who is against should mind their own business and gays are entitled do their rights, but I don't owe anybody a damn thing.
Again, religion plays a huge part in this. This whole conversation about what blacks should because of what they went through is ridiculous. A lot of people take the bible VERY seriously. Breaking people away from that religious grip is hard as hell. Believe me, I know. My grandmother does not vote because she believes God will choose the right person. It takes hard work to convince people to get past this kind of thing. On the other hand, a lot of people are just bigoted and just simple can't support gay marriage. As a black person, I refuse to sit around while people blame blacks for this thing going down. Sorry, we are not the majority. We never have been. The black community needs to wake up on this, but so do ALOT of other people. We all need to find compromise with those we disagree with.
Also, do gays think that their vote for Obama means that blacks owe them something?
I don't think it's so much a quid pro quo thing (i.e. we'll vote for obama, if you vote against prop 8), but more of a "damn, we thought you guys were cool" sort of disappointment.
It's not 70% of the Black community that voted Yes. It's 70% of whatever percentage of the black community is eligible to vote, registered to vote, and actually showed up to vote.
Posted by bob smith | November 7, 2008 2:09 PM
And that was surveyed in the CNN exit poll.
I've only skimmed some of the comments above, so maybe someone's already mentioned this.
I'm not defending lashing-out against California's African-American voters in regards to Proposition 8, and find this whole idea of scape-goating any specific voting bloc distasteful and highly problematic. But I imagine that part of the bitterness on the part of some gay Americans comes from a feeling of having been stabbed in the back by a another group of Americans from whom perhaps they might have expected more empathy, having gone through an equal rights fight of their own not so very long ago.
YES on Prop 8 has got nada to do the numbers. And it has even less to do with religious superiority(a paradoxical morality that promotes exclusivity). Impure thoughts -sometimes referred to in the media as the "UGH!Factor"- are the reason Prop 8 passed. Studies have illustrated that otherwise intelligent people, even those without religious values, just can't seem to wrap their heads around WHAT same sex couples DO in the bedroom. Their prejudice stems from revulsion rather than religious convictions. This ideation, combined with these voters' woeful ignorance of both the spirit of the US and California constitutions, assured its passage.
FYI, here is a nice link to a breakdown of why Black folks can't be blamed for Prop 8 passing...
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/7/34645/1235/704/656272
It also debunks the 70% of Black people thing.
Lemmy Caution @ 12:09 PM:
You said, "Would you have all this equanimity if it were poor rural whites supporing, by an over 2 to 1 margin, a bill that re-segregated schools? Would you try to nuance their bigotry? Say that outreach is necessary, that anger is counter-productive? Minimize the efficacy of their votes? Blame the opponents of segregation for a badly-run campaign?"
Actually, a similar discussion took place on Matthew Yglesias' blog, when he posted about the fact that although McCain won 20 states, only 8 of them were redder in 2008 than they were in 2004. Two of them (Alaska and Arizona) had home-team advantages; one of them (Louisiana) is a much-whiter state demographically post-Katrina. The other five states, however, form an adjacent red slash across the southeastern/south central US: West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
The discussion was about why these five states in particular were redder in 2008, and at first, most commenters just talked about the racism of this region that encompasses much of Appalachia and the Ozarks.
But soon, some commenters, especially some who had grown up in the region, started bringing other factors into the discussion. They pointed out that this is a region with some of the highest poverty rates and lowest rates of higher education in the US. They talked about the fact that Jesse Jackson made a special point of campaigning in this area in 1984, and drew comparisons between the struggles of poor rural whites and poor urban blacks, and actually performed fairly well in this region as a result. They suggested that Obama spend time visiting this area and getting to know the people, and perhaps making it a focus of green jobs and economic revitalization. In doing so, they believe that this area might swinger more blue in 2012.
In other words, some (although not all) progressives on a progressive blog made exactly the points you said regarding apparent racism among poor whites: brought out nuance, showed equanimity, and suggested more outreach.
@sgwhiteinfla: I disagree with you. Prop 8 passed, while Prop 4 (the abortion prop) failed. Frankly, I do not buy that this is a result of patient, empathetic campaigning on the part of pro-choicers to change people's minds. The fact is that the one constant in the abortion battle has been that it should always be safe and available FOR ME.
Call me cynical, but it's that simple. The abortion bill affects me, and therefore fails. But it's always easy to strip others of their civil rights. This is sad and pathetic, but it's human and not restricted to the black community.
Look, the No on Prop 8 folks did not run an effective campaign. The black vote is not the sole reason it passed anymore than the LDS funding is the sole reason it passed. Anyone who argues that is incorrect. They're pissed off, as they should be, and it will pass.
But I have no problem pointing out these facts. People focus on the black community because they perceive a special irony there. I believe that's true and will not apologize for highlighting it.
There are already Mormons out there whining about being singled out for criticism. Well, I sure hate it for you. Vote for freedom and equality next time. I am more than happy to spread the blame far and wide:
1) If you are non-white and you voted for this abomination, then you have betrayed the ideals that give you equal rights and privileges in this country;
2) If you are a woman and you voted for this, then you have betrayed the ideals that have given you the right to cast that vote (another special irony that should be highlighted, early and often);
3) If you are a veteran and you voted for this, then you have betrayed the very constitution that you swore to defend.
The list goes on, and if they complain that their feelings get hurt, then I'll cry for them the when some other asshole comes to take away their rights.
This is a straight-up freedom issue and it should not be necessary to frame it in any other way, but I guess "equality for all" just doesn't sell in this country any more. It is so blatantly unconstitutional that there shouldn't even be any discussion required.
TNC was right to point out that there is no argument that doesn't boil down to "Yuck." Beyond that the only important distinction is religion. There are non-religious people who will support this discrimination based on "yuck" when presented with the opportunity, but they are not the ones pushing this. It is plainly obvious that it is religious groups that are the driving forces behind these efforts to strip people of their constitutional rights. This is a very important point.
Now mind you, they can't come out and say that, e.g. "This is wrong because my bible tells me so," because then they hit a much clearer constitutional tripwire. So they couch it in so much bullshit.
You can try to educate or minister to these people if you want, but what I want to see is a demand for recognition of constitutional rights to equality, justice, and freedom. The same laws that allow them to believe in the fantasy of their choice forbid them from imposing those beliefs on others. This gets tricky because peoples' morals, i.e. laws, often come from their religion. But here we have a clear case of a religiously-founded law being passed that DOES ACTUAL HARM to others. It doesn't get any more unconstitutional than that.
Frankly, I get pretty tired of people comparing the relative scope and validity of their oppression to that of others. We cannot change the past, and I do not give individuals a hard time about it because they all have their traumas to work through. But here I draw the line. The only solution going forward is to state loudly and clearly that we will not stand for this discrimination any more. From anyone.
California's prop system is idiotic, especially the fact that the constitution can be amended by a simple majority. Nothing more needs to be said about that, but clearly something needs to be done about it. Cuz what's next now that these yahoos feel emboldened?
The real question is to ask where the gov't gets off telling any consenting adult who they can and cannot marry. And yes, that means there is no real argument against polygamy or even incestuous marriages. I am the last person who wants to sound like Donald Rumsfeld, but sometimes freedom is messy.
I am extremely pissed off that I am unable to sufficiently enjoy the fact that we have finally elected our first black president because at the same time we are working to enshrine outright discrimination in our constitutions.
Note: I write something very similar over at www.dailykos.com, so this is a repeat.
Basically, you are right, but it is a poor truth.
Numerically, there is not a doubt that black people didn't single-handedly vote down Prop 8. No way, no chance, no how.
So I guess we're lucky that there aren't more African Americans in CA, or then it REALLY wouldn't have passed?
So now we are in a place where either we "can" pass equal rights for ALL, or we can have a large African American population.
It is a terrible dichotomy.
Let's make sure that we don't suffer from numerical stupidity AND forget the fact that if this Prop took place in a state with a large AA community, it probably would have gone over by a lead balloon.
Like I said, a rubbish choice.
Breukelyne,
I think your had would have backfired tremendously. As someone who actually studied what Jesus says, I don't think there is much issue with voting yes on 8 and being inline with his teaching. Obviously the millions of Christians who voted for it would agree with me (I'm not from Cali and didn't vote, but I was in the state a couple months before the election and did get to see that strange attempt at "election ad Art" of an election ad with the Woman trying to get married and kept having things get in her).
It does make me smile to see someone who doesn't have much of a clue about Christianity try to turn the tables on people who do by paraphrasing scriptures to them. Yes Jesus said to love your neighbor, love God, and not to cast the first stone. He also said to go they way and sin no more. And since Jesus, his ancestors, his disciples, and Christians today view homosexuality as a sin... well, turning to Christ as an excuse for your lifestyle is probably not going to work with a Christian. But it might score you some debate points with people who aren't Christian.
Since I gave this topic a kick a bit back, I thought I should weigh in against those that would assign blame for 8 passing.
Did black folks introduce Prop 8? No, it was primarily a bunch of white Mormons from Utah and a rich old white motherfucker with Tourettes that thinks anyone who is gay should be executed.
Prop 8 didn't arrive on the ballot by magic. Someone collected the 1.4 million signatures to put it on the ballot. Blame them.
sheeseh, must be too tired... that last post should read...
"I think your ad would have..."
and further on...
"having things get in her [way]"
I'm very late to this and didn't read every comment, but I'd like to point out one thing that definitely DIDN'T happen here:
A group of bigoted black people definitely DIDN'T come up with the idea for this legislation. They DIDN'T go out and collect signatures. They DIDN'T donate significant amounts of money to fund it. That was all done by bigoted white people.
The idea that this is black people's fault boils down to two misconceptions, neither of them based on the math. First, the misconception that passively checking the wrong box at the polls is exactly as bigoted as sponsoring the legislation. That is clearly untrue. The second is that, in something like this, it's possible to talk about "black people" as a monolithic group. The age statistics jump out at me much more than the racial ones. We're more likely to jump on black bigotry because white people have been shitting on them for so long that we're looking for any opportunity to even the score, but to say that this is somehow the fault of 'black people' (whatever that even means) is just silly.
It's not 70% of the Black community that voted Yes. It's 70% of whatever percentage of the black community is eligible to vote, registered to vote, and actually showed up to vote.
NO IT'S NOT.
I'm sorry for shouting, but this is driving me insane.
When I filled out my ballot (by mail), there was no box to check to state my ethnicity. When I stuck that ballot in the mailbox last Monday, nothing was triggered in the Elections Office to say "Warning! Black Person Voting!"
The 70% number comes from one poll of 2,240 people, and represents the percentage of black voters in that poll of 2,240 who told the pollster that they voted Yes on 8.
You know how many people that works out to?
157.
Extrapolating from that to make generalizations about all black people in California is about as useful as saying that because 3 of the 12 units in my apartment complex are occupied by gays or lesbians, then 25% of the population of Sacramento is gay.
Ta-Nehisi, thanks for the reply, but will you please take "yes" for an answer? I am agreeing with you, and not with Savage. I apologize for not making that clear. I also apologize for not responding until now, but things got busy at work.
Second, what I notice about these comments is that no-one here seems to bring up gay sex in the black community; it's all white gays who want to marry vs. church-going people -- black, mormon, whatever -- who think it's a sin.
Well, the HIV virus doesn't discriminate based on skin color. I can't help but think that the black attitude toward gay sex must have something to do with higher rates of HIV transmission in the black community. There was a reason the white gay community made a slogan "Silence = Death." Hopefully a discussion of gay rights in the black community can make people of everywhere choose safe sex, and that will be an improvement for everyone.
As for marriage, personally I agree with the middle-aged guy who held up a sign at a rally that read "End Gay Sex Legalize Gay Marriage." I firmly believe everyone should have an equal opportunity to spend a small fortune on divorce attorneys.
52.5% of Californians, (Californians!), voted to make a significant minority of that state's populace officially second-class citizens based on a genetic trait. That is reprehensible. It matters not whether those voters were Black, Mormon, White, Catholic, Green or Pagan. California has a lot to be ashamed of at this moment in time.
The point that Savage and others are making is that for those in minority communities, who have been the beneficiaries of civil rights expansion, to have voted for this betrayal of basic human rights is particularly reprehensible. There is no excuse for the African-American community to have voted for this by 70%. There is no excuse for the Latino community to have voted for it by 50%. Even the Mormons, who themselves have been the victims of civil rights abuse and ridicule, particularly on the issue of marriage, have no excuse for having funded this atrocity. For half a century, Gays have been at the forefront of the Civil Right movement, working to ensure that each of these groups becomes equal before the law -- and this is how we are they are repaid? Shameful.
While 52.5% of Californians are guilty, some are guiltier than others and will deservedly have particularly hot spots in hell waiting for them -- hopefully sooner than later.
I am not sure I am sold on the speculation, but man he was hot.
@Southpaw:
You shouldn't be surprised that San Diego voted for Proposition 8. It may be coastal, but that doesn't make it liberal (Orange County, for example, has some of the most beautiful coastline in the state, yet it is one of the most conservative counties in the country, partly represented in the U.S. House by Dana Rohrabacher). San Diego is very conservative and has a very large military presence. Remember Rep. Duke Cunningham?
L.A. on the other hand is so big and so weird (I mean that in a mostly good sense) that I'm not surprised it was so close. (The L.A. County numbers you posted, by the way, were wrong. It was 50.4% in favor and 49.6% against.) There is much more to L.A. County than the Westside of Los Angeles.
for Darkrose | November 7, 2008 8:28 PM
Thank you, that makes the point I was trying to get to even better.
Diana--homophobia and the closet go hand in hand. You're not going to see more people talking out until they feel it culturally safer or more acceptable to speak out. And as long as the community's intensely homophobic, well, silence is what you get, and all the attendant misery.
As mentioned earlier repeatedly, the problem is religious--but people sure pick their own religions. I've never met a Christian who wouldn't wear fabric of woven fibers, but those who oppose homosexuality do so because of a mistranslation of Leviticus. They could educate themselves or realize they don't follow Leviticus anyway, but they choose not to.
...on a more cultural note, what was that movie where a Black woman with a Black husband had to go talk to her church congregation because he was cheating on her with a man, and together they all realized the entire problem with their community was the gays? I can't remember the name, but it only came out about a year ago.
Darkrose:
That really shows a fundamental lack of understanding on your part about polling and sampling. And the consensus this year, despite Karl Rove's freakout, is that the exit polls were actually pretty good. So what if the numbers are right?
This is even cooler... A letter from the founder of the Black Panthers.
Sounds more sane to me than anything that I have heard from "moderates" back in the days. Then again, "moderate" is just another word for a sheep without opinion? (apologies to the non-human sheep..) The Golden Path is a hard struggle that has absolutely nothing to do with finding the medium or middle or being able to half something in two...
It is easier for those that voted for Prop 8, if you ask them to read any of the language of the Constitution and Obama's hopeful and wonderful speech at election night.. the following phrase... at the very end of each sentence that reflects on the changes, shifts of acceptance, rights now not banned by others if they add to each sentence...
"Our time has come, we will never go back... UNLESS YOUR GAY !
UNLESS YOUR GAY !
Our community must be kind to "others as we wish to be treated"... both sides of this argument need to grow up, face facts and go to COURT !
Now its truly your turn OBAMA !
NOW not tomorrow, NOW !
See ya all in Court, I will be the guy in the Pink outfit and tasteful shoes !
It is easier for those that voted for Prop 8, if you ask them to read any of the language of the Constitution and Obama's hopeful and wonderful speech at election night.. the following phrase... at the very end of each sentence that reflects on the changes, shifts of acceptance, rights now not banned by others if they add to each sentence...
"Our time has come, we will never go back... UNLESS YOUR GAY !
UNLESS YOUR GAY !
and we community be kind to "others as we wish to be treated"... both sides of this argument need to grow up, face facts and go to COURT !
Now its truly your turn OBAMA !
NOW not tomorrow, NOW !
See ya all in Court, I will be the guy in the Pink outfit and tasteful shoes !
"How to attack? Homophobia is a wonderfully powerful weapon and one that clergy especially are vulnerable to. Outing will either destroy the churches' leadership or credibility of the weapon. Destroying the credibility of the weapon will weaken homophobia itself. It will become old news."
Oh yeah, I like the sound of this. You might as well call for a civil war. A war that your side can only lose. Sheesh, people like you are already equating Mormons and evangelicals with the Taliban. So answer me this: what do you think will happen if they all wake up one morning and tell themselves, "Yeah, I guess I am just like the Taliban. And it feels really good."
Homophobia a "powerful weapon?" Maybe so...but it only works until your opponent no longer cares what you, or anyone else, thinks of them.
Mr. Coates,
Thanks for your thoughtful and compassionate analysis. To the African-American allies of gay people, you have my heartfelt thanks. To those who misunderstood what this is about, I offer patience. To the next conservative or African American who tells me my struggle is not about civil rights because civil rights is only about race, I offer a very tasteful shoe up your ass.
When African Americans were being set on by dogs and fire hoses, gays were subjected to castration, psycho-surgery, and "aversion therapy" that included bringing them to be brink of death using a paralytic drug called anectine. Anectine was used when gays were incarcerated by the state of California at Atascadero Hospital for the criminally insane. During the 50's and 60's California sent gays their for being gay.
(See http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/frames/244/eskrfram.html.)
Late to the party, but with an example. San Francisco used to have a huge Halloween party in the Castro (a predominately gay neighborhood), drawing hundreds of thousands of people. After a small amount of violence from 2003-2006, the party was canceled (streets no longer blocked off, etc...)
While the cancellation was being debated, you often heard from gay people in San Francisco the claim that the troublemakers were "out-of-town kids", "bridge-and-tunnelers", or getting a bit more to the point, "people from Oakland." The gist of the coded language was: "black teenagers are coming to San Francisco to gay-bash."
The Castro is very white. Many gay people are uncomfortable with seeing black people in their neighborhood. And now gay people are shocked that a community that they don't like doesn't like them.
Mark,
Many white people are uncomfortable with seeing black people in their neighborhoods. That is horrible. I am not one of them. I spent more than half of my life living in a black majority city and loving it. I have backed affirmative action, Obama, and various other black causes from the beginning. I did not consider myself an activist for black causes; it just seemed the reasonable thing to do.
After 70% Yes on 8 support among African Americans, I felt betrayed but I got over it.
The answer to the Castro Halloween party is to expand it rather than to halt it. Specifically invite African American groups to participate.
BTW, San Francisco does have a crime problem. A gay friend of my was attacked and beaten in Union Square in front of a large crowd. The thieves wanted his iPhone. I think part of the problem here is class warfare that has become associated with race and sexual orientation. I wonder how many African Americans are aware of the overwhelming support Obama got from gays? Perhaps, we can build bridges now.
I would like to point out one more thing here that makes me especially angry, and that I think makes this movement especially dangerous. That is the fact that they are amending our constitution to specifically discriminate against a group of citizens.
Someone here correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know throughout all the many dark years of suffering and struggle for civil rights in America (still ongoing, as a matter of fact), folks could always point to the constitution(s) as the law of the land guaranteeing them equal protection and justice.
As far as I know, nobody was ever bold enough to try to add "except for black people" explicitly to their constitution.
To me this is a huge deal. These are the founding documents, the basic laws of our societies, and they say it's okay then that's it.
Rather than "protecting" marriage, these stupid laws in fact do the exact opposite. Because what they actually do is highlight the fact the NO ONE has a fundamental right to marriage. Not you, not me. Not gays, not straights, not people of any color. Look for it in the US Constitution and you will not find it.
So now all marriages are up for grabs. When will they come to take yours away? Ask yourself these questions:
1) What really gives you the right to marry a foreigner, or who doesn't speak English?
2) What really gives you the right to marry a person of a different "race" (did you really believe that issue is settled for good?)
3) What really gives you the right to marry someone who is unable to have children?
4) What really gives you the right to marry someone who is disabled?
5) Listen close to what the so-called defenders of traditional marriage are saying and ask yourself what really gives you the right NOT to get married and procreate?
The answer to all of the above is that we only have those rights that we are willing to stand up and defend. That is why our constitutions are broad and vague and open-ended and beautiful and awesome. And I am incensed that bigots are sullying my constitution.
I believe that homophobia is a serious problem in this country, and I voted no on Prop 8.
But insisting to non-whites (and I'm not talking just about black people) that gay marriage, let alone ANY marriage, is a "civil right" is a self-defeating strategy. Homophobia in all communities notwithstanding, let me suggest why this strategy fails:
1) Many older Asians may ask themselves: when were gay people asked to move to internment centers for the duration of WWII, as was done to Japanese-Americans? This was a serious violation of civil rights. And that's putting it mildly.
2) When most nonwhites in this country hear the term "civil rights", the images that come to mind are: fire hoses turned on peaceful black demonstrators in the south, police dogs sinking their teeth into the legs of peaceful black demonstrators in the south, lynchings, the firebombing of a black church that killed four girls, THE POLL TAX, the literacy "tests" to qualify for blacks to vote in the south which were always rigged, and so on, and so on....
The aforementioned are life-and-death civil rights issues. Voting is a SERIOUS civil rights issue. Being allowed to stay in your home, instead of being moved to an internment center, is a SERIOUS civil rights issue.
Marriage? Not so much.
Why doesn't the gay community, which on the whole is usually so smart when it comes to semantics, understand why claiming gay marriage as a civil rights issue is going to alienate many non-whites, even those who are not religious? (Note: it appears you need non-white voter support on this issue?)
As a straight, UNMARRIED, bi-racial woman, I BEG the gay community to come to its senses on how they present the marriage issue.
It is not entirely an issue of homophobia, although that surely played a part in the small margin by which Prop 8 won.
The fact is that marriage, for most non-whites, is not viewed as a civil rights issue, and should probably not be sold as such. (Loving v. Virginia is not viewed by many non-whites as a "civil rights" issue, such as voting or the right to walk down the street unmolested by the KKK.)
Conflating marriage (one of the most loaded terms on record!) with civil rights (the other most loaded term on record!), whether right or wrong, is creating a DEEP disconnect, and not just with black people and other non-whites. But with white people, too.
BTW, why does everyone in my hometown of San Francisco find the idea of civil unions so disparaging? It works in France, for gay and straight couples; only the churches in France perform "marriages". We should be working to get the state out of the marriage business. Not the other way around. Separation of church and state, remember?
Extremists in the Christian community have sadly convinced their people that gay marriage is a threat to the tradition of marriage. Extremists in the gay community sadly convinced their people that civil unions conferred second-class status.
Marriage, schmarriage, Can we talk about the budget? An issue that will, in the end, impact our civil rights more than anyone can acknowledge at this point...
When African Americans were being set on by dogs and fire hoses, gays were subjected to castration, psycho-surgery, and "aversion therapy" that included bringing them to be brink of death using a paralytic drug called anectine. Anectine was used when gays were incarcerated by the state of California at Atascadero Hospital for the criminally insane. During the 50's and 60's California sent gays their for being gay.
(See http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/frames/244/eskrfram.html.)
Posted by Frank | November 8, 2008 12:00 PM
Frank,
Yes, those are serious violations of rights.
But I'm failing to understand how that vicious, abusive, savage treatment by the government somehow makes marriage a civil right?
You're talking about two separate things.
1) People's civil rights (and what happened at Atascadero was obvious a serious violation not only of civil rights but of patient rights and a violation of medical ethics)
and
2) marriage.
Like I said, let's work to get the state out of the marriage business ENTIRELY, just like it works in France. Your civil union, gay or straight, will come from the state. Your marriage will come from the churches.
I am glad to report that there are plenty of churches that are happy to marry gay couples. And those that don't, you wouldn't want to belong to anyway, RIGHT?
I mourn the fact that extremists in the gay community convinced people that marriage was a must-have, rather than a nice-to-have, when the same rights could be granted with a less loaded term - civil unions.
Eva,
You're being obtuse.
Marriage is a civil right. It's a contract to protect rights and to assume responsibilities. It's not different from the right to own property if you can afford it or the right to vote. According to the Government Accountability Office, there are more than 1000 rights accruing to couples with marriage licenses. Some of these rights, like the ability to make medical decisions for a partner are all but unassailable if the couple is married (the Schiavo case being the notable exception) but are routinely voided in domestic partnerships. These rights are life and death matters.
Churches have no business issuing marriage licenses. To empower them to do so is an establishment of religion. Even among early Christians the custom was to let the Roman government perform marriages.
Hannah Arendt, one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century said
"The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs."
Eva,
Why not just call the pro-marriage gays terrorists?
@Eva:
I will disagree with you about distinctions between civil rights and other rights. Call 'em what you want, "civil rights" "human rights" "inalienable rights... endowed by their creator" -- they're all the same to me.
I will however agree with you wholeheartedly that the state should get out of the "marriage" business. Would you kindly post some links where we can go to support that effort?
Until then, I will continue to work for the rights of all US citizens guaranteed under the constitution.
If you want to talk strategy, we have to stop allowing anyone to pretend that "activist judges" are "creating laws" or "inventing/discovering a right to gay marriage". That is not what happened.
The CA Supreme Court ruled (correctly) that:
a) the constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law;
b) the law forbids discrimination based on race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation;
c) a "separate but equal" system of marriage vs. civil union violates the equal protection clause;
d) therefore the state cannot deny a resident a marriage license based solely on their sexual orientation.
That's it. It's that simple, and it is right and correct.
The United States of America does not do "separate but equal". It has been tried and struck down. Really, we have seen this movie before and we know how this turns out. Has the American Dream really been reduced to childish semantic games?
So I agree, for the very reasons put forward by the CA Supreme Court, that the state has no business deciding who can marry whom. That is the only real answer in a free country. I am not aware of any effort to make that a reality. If you know of one, please forward it. Perhaps you and I can start one.
BTW: If you are in San Diego, there is a march today at noon in Hillcrest. See you there...
Frank,
If I'm being obtuse, why then do civil unions for gay and straight couples work so seamlessly in France, but gay marriage continues (and I mean CONTINUES) to be a stumbling block here?
Your point seems to be that civil unions don't provide the same protections - and yet they do in Europe. So instead of sticking our thumbs in the eyes of the religious right with gay marriage (never recommended, IMO, and the recent election just proves it) perhaps it's more useful, more efficacious, and more practical to push for expanded and fully protected rights provided by civil unions. This would help ALL of us, by protecting the separation of church and state.
But making a comment like this just doesn't further your goals:
"Eva,
Why not just call the pro-marriage gays terrorists?
Posted by Frank | November 8, 2008 2:17 PM"
Frank, I know you feel upset about the vote, a lot of people do. But maybe it's worthwhile, later on if not now, to think about why Prop 8 passed, and how we can find a common ground solution that will give you all the rights you desire, but will allow the other side to embrace this as well.
I think that way is civil unions. And I think that, if we had civil unions in 25 states, gay marriage would not be far behind. But in the meantime, you'd have all the protections and goodies that currently accrue (somewhat unfairly as regards the tax break, IMO) to married straight couples.
Live by the collectivist sword, die by the collectivist sword.
Prop 8 failed in large part because Leftists are simply not credible advocates for individual rights, as hostile as they are to that very concept. Gay marriage is an individual right.
Prop 8, on the other hand, is DEMOCRACY IN ACTION, which the Left (at least the American version) loves to trumpet when it stomps on any individual right they do not find politically expedient -- which is usually all of them.
So what do we get? Instead of pulling the knife out of their backs and repudiating the Left and its collectivist BS, gays cling to it instead, and start putting knives in black backs instead.
There is hardly a right winger to be seen, these are both the Left's constituencies -- and yet nothing but the N- word and the F- word all over the place in West Hollywood?
Welcome to the Left's end-of-road. Brothers, you asked for it!
I opposed Prop 8, but as soon as I saw the Yes campaign's approach, I knew the contradictions on the No side would put it over the top.
kaykuri,
I commend you in your fight, and in fact joined you in that fight by voting no on 8 this past week.
I feel strongly that people should have the necessary rights that accrue to couples. Hospital visitation and participation in medical decisions is an obvious one.
As an aside, on marriage/civil unions benefits in general, I have questions about why we are providing a tax break to married/civil union'd couples, gay or straight, period. It's ludicrous in the midst of a 10.5 trillion federal deficit (and that's a lowball estimate on our federal deficit.)
I can understand a tax break if, gay or straight, you have children that you are raising. I don't have any questions about providing a tax break to parents. Especially parents who adopt. But coupledom/marriage, as we all know, does not necessarily include raising children.
About your question: I heard last night that there is a movement to replace state-sanctioned marriage, and to replace it with civil unions (yes, just like in France), and that a petition is being circulated locally.
I am not agnostic about the separation of church and state - I am a full believer that they should be separate. I like my church, and I like my state. But separate. I will be signing the petition, as soon as I can find it, and will provide a link here.
I also understand that such a petition is problematic, mostly because of a perceived reversal. I think Andrew Sullivan pointed out that once you've insisted that gay marriage sanctioned by the state is essential, you can't then say that marriage by the state is non-essential.
But it is the right thing to do. I have respect for religious fundamentalists, but I do not want them making more decisions about our individual lives. My support for the separation of church and state is essential toward that goal.
As for the fallacy of "activist" judges, I agree with you. But I myself never brought that up... my point was simply that calling gay marriage a civil right is, in part, to "blame" in the stats you see for non-white voters going for Prop 8.
I think homophobia in the black community - and the dislike and distrust between the black community and the gay community is most dangerous when you think of it in terms of HIV/AIDS.
Of the roughly 1 million people estimated to be living with HIV in the United States, 47 percent are black, according to CDC statistics for 2005, the most recent year for which numbers are available. Though blacks represent only about 13 percent of the U.S. population, 56 percent of the newly diagnosed cases in 2005 were blacks.
I think homophobia impedes the black community from addressing HIV/AIDS effectively because of perceptions that it is a gay disease. Add that to the fact that much of the knowledge of how to campaign effectively against this disease resides in the gay community - and its a recipe for disaster.
Good point, leelu.
So maybe there is a possibility here...
Given the stats you offer, maybe the route to getting blacks to vote in support of gay marriage is for the gay community to demonstrate greater support for education within the black community about HIV/AIDS.
I know this type of outreach is already being done, but the efforts can be greatly enhanced, and better publicized.
And with medical benefits being slashed, this is a great time to merge outreach/volunteer efforts - to make the point that we have a common cause.
Enhanced outreach could have a cascade of other positive benefits, e.g., better relations between the two groups.
Let's admit that bigotry isn't one-sided - there's a good deal of racism against blacks and other non-whites within the gay community - just as there is in every community.
It's a cliche, but in crisis... opportunity.
This is what Obama, I think, has been talking about. Let's not be partisan, but find a way that will work for everyone - and in the process, enhance our overall relations with other groups.
eva,
my issue with your comparison to france (you asked why san franciscans oppose civil unions so strongly when france makes them work) is that so far no govt/group of politicians has seriously proposed replacing all govt 'marriage' with civil unions, and then marriage ceremonies afterwards if people choose.
Instead, they suggest letting straight people have govt sponsored marriage, but the gays get civil unions.
The situation you describe in france treats gays and straights equally under the law. The latter situation doesn't. It singles out gays to get 'civil unions', while straights get govt marriage.
So while I appreciate your point about the govt doing civil unions and leaving marriage to the religious, that isn't the conversation that is happening in America right now. When 60% of people say they support gay civil unions, they're not thinking about Uncle Sam replacing all govt marriage with civil unions, just giving it to the gays.
Furthermore, one issue I have with separating 'civil unions' and 'marriage' is the assumption that marriage would be only a church thing, with church's licensed to do this. I don't have a problem with that, so long as the non-religious are also allowed to have ceremonies that are called 'marriage', just like the religious.
Whatever religious origins marriage may have had, the word itself signifies something that all of society recognises, so many non-religious people, like my parents, use the word as well, and it has importance to them.
I'm not religious at all, but when I get married, I want to say 'this is my husband', 'when I got married', 'at our wedding'. Which is why ultimately I'm perfectly happy with the govt being in the 'marriage' business, as opposed to just a 'civil unions' business, because whether christians like it or not, marriage is the word that christians, atheists, muslims, pretty much everybody uses to describe a committed relationship of that sort (although there are a growing number of people like ta-nehisi who don't get married, and I'm cool with that too).
Marriage is sometihng that christians do, and that has meaning for them (for most mainline christians- one man, one womnan, one priest), but it's also something for the rest of us, which is why I find the idea that anti-gay christians think they should get to own the word marriage ignorant and arrogant.
Kate,
You're right in so many respects.
Unfortunately, the insistence on moving straight from zero to gay marriage has set gay rights back in some significant ways. It just wasn't the most effective strategy, and it polarized people on both side. (I'm thinking specifically about the referendums passed in 2004 in several states in the wake of the court rulings and Newsom weddings that banned civil unions outright.) At the same time, that slim margin by which Prop 8 passed can also be seen as a silver lining for gay marriage - and a real sign of how much farther everyone has come than they might feel at this exact moment.
I'm merely suggesting that there is a more pragmatic, if less emotionally satisfying, route, and that is civil unions. (Then again, the slim margin may simply mean that this needs only a few more election cycles and you're home...)
I also think you may have misunderstood my post about the French model, I support eliminating state-supported "marriages" for gay and straight couples, and in its place we can have the state provide CIVIL UNIONS FOR ALL. The churches provide marriage.
This is in fact the French model. It's a smart one, and one that honors the separation of church and state.
Look, I don't know if I'm right or wrong on any of this. But I do think it's worth taking a look at what went wrong in this election as regards Prop 8.
It's the W's of the world who refuse to look at the mechanics of their defeats, right? But I don't think that those fighting for gay marriage should view that slim margin as a defeat for gay rights. That slim margin represents the ill-considered semantics - and not homophobia.
@Ron Wilton: The numbers may be right, and as I've said over and over and over and over, there is a problem that needs to be addressed with homophobia in the black community.
HOWEVER.
The poll methodology as described on CNN's website is fundamentally flawed, particularly in a state with California's demographics. Just to give one example: they show black voters as 10% of the total sample. In order for black voters in California to comprise 10% of total voters, using the most generous assumptions of eligibility, then there would have been more black voters in this election than there are black adults in the state of California.
Eva,
thanks for your reply. Your explanation of the french system was what I understood it to be- and I'd be fine with it as a compromise (except for the marriages left to the churches- it would have to be 'marriage left to the churches and whatever the nonreligious want to do' to make me happy).
My objection was that this isn't an option that is being seriously pursued in America right now (not that this isn't something gay rights advocates should look at).
But from a pragmatic point, taking civil unions just for gays would be sensible, given the hang-ups many christians have about the word marriage. The objection to that is that civil unions aren't equal to marriages, for various technicaly lawyerly reasons,(e.g. health insurers automatically extend benefits to married couples, but in some states with civil unions, haven't done that for those gay couples).
I definitely think that looking at what went wrong and how to change it is the best idea. Although, I am a little bit skeptical of the 'shoulda gone through the legislature not the courts' claims. I think in california, what got the legislature thinking seriously about the idea was that Newsome provoked the issue, and the legal challenges kept it on the agenda. And the prop 8 folks were collecting signatures before the court handed down its decision.
I think that however this issue was broached, it would have caused controversy, and provoked a strong reaction. And I think the courts were always going to be faster than the legislature. If we'd had to wait for the first legislature to legalise gay marriage, I think we'd still be waiting.
But the closeness of prop 8 is encouraging, and given some of the criticisms of the way the No campaign was run, I think with a bit more nous and competent management, it could be won in 2,4 or 6 years time. Even without that, 4 years worth of old people dying and new people coming of age and gay people coming out to their families is going to be enough.
I think in a decade we'll have marriage/civil unions in most of the blue states, and some of the red, and barring a supreme court decision, it'll take maybe up to 20 yrs to get it in all states, but we'll get there eventually.
Gavin Newsome was annoying, but right- it's coming, whether we like it or not.
Marriages vs Civil Unions
Supposing civil unions were constructed to be absolutely equivalent to marriages, As someone pointed out, there's no difference between sitting at the front of the bus or at the back of the bus, either way you get where you want to go. Yeah yeah, I hear you, the comparison is offensive to some people who were attacked with fire hoses and dogs. Welcome to the victimhood pissing contest.
But neverminding that, what gives some churches, especially the LDS of all denominations, the right to dictate how all churches view marriage. Right now today there are mainstream christian denominations that recognized the sanctity of unions between same-sex couples. Someone explain to me how the First Amendment allows the recognition by the state of the marriages performed in some churches as binding under civil law, but not others.
Kate,
Right on.
I think you're right about legislature v. courts. That's not where the problem is. The problem is an inability on the part those pushing for gay marriage to articulate why this is important enough for religiously moderate/conservative people to vote AGAINST their more conservative religious convictions. I've outlined some possible ways in earlier posts. And don't forget demographics... those minority groups who voted against civil unions are expanding demographically at a faster rate than enlightened liberals.
As for the problem you brought up with civil unions not having ALL the benefits, that's only a problem if you fail to expand the right provided under the banner of civil unions.
Once the benefits coming with civil unions are expanded, there really should be no argument from EITHER SIDE. And those who want to complain will have to answer to the vast majority - people on both sides who are looking for compromise. And trust me, they are indeed looking for compromise, if only so that they don't have to hear these arguments anymore. (When can we start talking about the budget deficit?)
As for Newsom, I'd like him run out of town on a rail. He's a joke. He had no real interest in gay rights - it's just that it's a very powerful community here, and he has used them. They've earned the power they currently hold, but they made a poor friend in Newsom.
As for "whether we like it or not" - and to be fair, Newsom's line was "whether YOU like it or not" - the possibility is that this thing may indeed have passed if it had not been for comments like that. With friends like Newsom, who needs, er, stumbling blocks?
Obama is right, I think, in suggesting that we CAN find a way to work with the other side, without saying arrogant things like Newsom did. And that's the only way we'll do it - again, the people who voted FOR Prop 8 are those minority groups whose demographics are EXPANDING. (It's like that joke about support for abortion - the people who would have inherited the pro-choice mantle may in fact have been aborted, meanwhile the religious right breeds like rabbits.)
Last word on Newsom: don't forget that it was Barney Frank - a man who had been fighting for gay rights for 30 years in one of the most homophobic towns in the US - Washington, D.C., who begged Gavin in 2003/4 not to go through with marrying couples at City Hall, because it would be a step backwards in terms of overall gains for gay rights. He was sadly correct, if you look at the referendums passed in other states against domestic partnerships/civil unions.
So like I said, we ignore the needs of the other side at our own peril...
In the 2004 election, 360,000 San Francisco voters, around 75% of registered, voted.
2008 was predicted to have similar or higher turnout in SF. However, San Francisco ended up with only 50% turnout, 240,000 San Francisco voters! 1/3 less than in 2004.
In comparison, turnout was 64% for Santa Clara county, 55% in San Mateo county, 69% in Santa Cruz county, 63% in LA, 66% in San Diego. Nationally turnout was 64% and in California it was 60%, far below estimates of 70-80% that the Field Poll predicted.
What happened? I suspect that many Californians thought that the election (esp. Obama v McCain) was already won, and didn't bother to vote. This sort of mentality is more common the younger the voter, and the younger the voter, the more likely the were to vote No. The greatest amount of blame for Prop 8's passage should lie with the people who opposed Prop 8 but didn't bother to show up to the polls. I couldn't find a single story in the media or blogs mentioning how poor turnout in CA turned out to be.
Ironically, if Obama had run a closer race, I think Prop 8 would have been rejected
As long as the gay community (which is overwhelming white - and apparently privileged) continues to compare their very legitimate struggle to the Civil Right Movement, their support in the black community will ALWAYS be nominal. There's simply no way around that. Personally, if something I pitched was rejected by 70% of a certain group, I'd sit back and wonder where I went wrong. I would especially listen to the members of that group who have been telling me for years and years that comparing my message to the Civil Rights Movement isn't going to endear myself to said group. But why do that when we can all sit around and talk about those uppity, even colored folks who want to get back at Whitey?
I love how all this concern about black homophobia is an issue now that it's directly affected white people. Raise your hand if you've been addressing this lonnnnnng before now, please.
Tony: re-reading my second post I may have implied I didn't think there was a diff between civil unions/marriage apart from legalities. I didn't mean that at all. Symbolism is important.
Speaking of that, one thing that is frustrating is that it's always framed as a generic christian objection, without mentioning that most of the people who voted no on Prop 8 would have been christian.
Eva, I agree, we need to be able to articulate that better. The exit polls didn't provide a breakdown between race/age, but polls I've seen show more support among minority youths than elders for gay marriage, although the difference isn't as big as for whites, so it's not all too bad.
Jennifer- I read your comment and your linked post. Sure the gay/black civil rights comparison gets black people shirty. I get that they're completely different struggles in some ways. But the similarities that do exist can also be striking. Gay people are going to keep using that loaded phrase 'separate but equal' about civil unions, because, well, they are separate but equal.
The point isn't to say civil unions = segregation. That would be absurd. But there are enough similarities in that, and in loving v virginia and the state of marriage today, that people will make those analogies.
You said it yourself in your post- you changed your views on gay people after meeting gay people. Well, when humans make imperfect analogies, it's an attempt to get at that process of realising 'hey, we have more in common than we have dividing us', by provoking empathy. They can come across a bit as saying the situations are identical, because the whole point of an analogy is to emphasise the similarities, but that doesn't mean that gay people think both causes are identical.
And I think one point you missed, about why black people respond so negatively to the comparison, is not just because they see lack of civil unions/marriage as less harmful to gays than slavery/segregation was to blacks, but also because of religion. They reject the comparison because many black people don't want gays to have any rights at all. Because they believe gays are immoral/deviants.
And the upshot is they're going to respond even more negatively to a gay/black civil rights comparison than they would if they simply thought the gays were taking things a bit out of proportion.
Comparing gay people to rosa parks and her bus is not seen as an imperfect analogy, it's seen as completely the opposite- how dare those gays compare their (wrong) struggle to our (right) one. So some of the outrage is not just the gays fault for not being able to claim as much victimhood as blacks, but also because many blacks reject the notion that gays are victims at all.
Kate,
Thanks for the reply. I enjoy reading your ideas. I do have to disagree with this:
"And I think one point you missed, about why black people respond so negatively to the comparison, is not just because they see lack of civil unions/marriage as less harmful to gays than slavery/segregation was to blacks, but also because of religion. They reject the comparison because many black people don't want gays to have any rights at all. Because they believe gays are immoral/deviants."
I honestly believe the greater issue for non-white minorities isn't homophobia, but the insistence of a community demanding that marriage rights are on the level of voting rights.
Jennifer made the point that if she were trying to sell an idea to a particular community, and a whopping 70% of them rejected that idea, she might reconsider how she's selling it.
It's not about self-righteousness. (and I don't think you're being self-righteous.) It's about WHAT ROUTE IS GOING TO GET US THERE?
The movement keeps getting slapped down with the civil rights pitch. They can keep insisting on that pitch, or find a pitch that works. I got a pitch that will bring it around, not just with AA's, but with other non-white minorities and whites themselves. If we're asking for CIVIL RIGHTS from THE STATE, ask for CIVIL UNIONS for EVERYONE.
It's so simple. And I can't understand why it's so offensive to so many in the gay community to be pragmatic - especially when it can lead to better relations between gays and other groups, and civil unions are arguably a FASTER, if indirect, route to gay marriage.
This article talks about the black vote being 10% of the total (more than the 7% of population), the figure Ta-Nehisi says was needed to make a difference; and the latino vote being 18% of the total (versus 13% of the population)...
http://www.sacbee.com/walters/story/1387029.html