UPDATE #2: Bolded for emphasis. Hopefully it clarifies things some.
UPDATE #3: Closing comments. This isn't going anywhere. Part of that is probably the tenor of my post. I don't know. I think, on this blog, the whole subject could use a lengthy time-out.
I wanted to pull the following comment out because I think it says a lot. It comes from the Hank Johnson/John Lewis thread below:
I have repeatedly argued against the whole "the blacks stabbed us in the back" narrative. Like buying a present because you want one in return, I find it narcissistic and dishonorable. But more than that I find that it is logic hinged on a kind of quasi-racism, which does not so much see black people as human, which does not see them as one my see the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the white Southerners, the evangelicals, but as one sees an android programmed by simply by two buttons labeled "Oppression" and "Righteousness."I do not approach this topic from a religious standpoint but as one of the Black Yes on 8 voters from LA County I simply disagree with everyone here....
People make the argument that a stable gay relationship is just as good as a stable heterosexual one. I can see that argument. However...
I think children growing up in a gay household is as harmful to their sensibilities (i.e. - thinking that it is acceptable and normal) as children growing up in a household where the parents are swingers or the hetero parent has a different man or woman in their bed every week.
Courts take away parental rights for that kind of behavior... But we are supposed to think that children growing up in a gay household is ok?
Black people know first hand how dysfunctional family units can destroy a community. If we redefine marriage as being between essentially between anyone and anyone, what further damage do we want to do to an institution already on the decline in this country?
I shouldn't make this about race, because truly the same shit is at work with people who lampoon poor whites for voting "against their interest." Nevertheless, here is the thing. People who tend not to have actual conversations with black people, think that most black folks thing having kids out of wedlock is cool. Like we have rallies and shit celebrating the latest mother on welfare who's had her tenth kid. What they don't understand is the intense, intense shame and insecurity black people feel, a sense that history has robbed us--and that we now rob ourselves--of some essential part of the American Dream. That being the ability to marry someone and raise some kids, and then be around other people doing the same.
Negroes, you know the drill--this goes back to slavery when they'd split the fam and sell every member to a different plantation. It runs through Jim Crow when whites intentionally refused to hire black men, and terrorists actively sought to undermine the black middle class. It runs through Roosevelt and the New Deal, and Southern senators cutting blacks out of the windfall. And now here we are, trying to pick up the pieces, hiding our heads in shame over that bogus 70 percent stat. These aren't so much the reasons for black marriage rates, as they are the specters hanging overhead, the ghosts that wake you up at night. I'd submit that people who are, themselves, insecure about the institution of marriage itself, will require the most work to become advocates of its expansion.
There is a way of reading this as unfair to gay people. Frankly, being the Malcomite I've always been, if I were white and gay, I might be one to say "Leave the niggers be." It's true--I feel weak even writing this. But I would be wrong and hears why. There are people who will tell you that the past doesn't matter, like people weren't saying that during the Red Summer of 1919, like they weren't saying it while folks were covering up Tuskegee. Like they don't cookout on the Fourth of July. This hostility that black folks feel toward gay marriage is, in some sense a product of who we are--southern, religious, disproportionately poor, disproportionately uneducated. Yet in another sense, I feel it's a product of what was taken from us and what we labor to reclaim.
I don't mean to say that black insecurity over marriage and gender roles, justifies the opposition. But it explains a lot of it. It's not right that gays--black and white--should bear the brunt of this. But the New York Draft riots were wrong on a similar level--what had we ever done to the Irish? In Phillip Dray's book, At The Hands of Person's Unknown, he recounts the direct ties between lynchings, and white women starting to work outside the home. Basically, Southern working class and poor white men fearing an erosion of economic power, took out their rage on innocent blacks. It does me no good to not understand that. The maddening, inescapable fact is that anger's targets aren't fair--it's usually kick-the-dogism writ large. But anger can be rationally confronted and defused. Pain can be healed.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I sense ambivalence in you, young Jedi.
I read this post a couple of times and I'm still not sure what point you are trying to get at here. I'm sure the commenters will straighten me out as we go.
There is a reason that blacks don't support gay marriage. You might think that it's because of homophobia but you'd only be half right, if that. What a lot of conservatives don't know about progressive blacks (or ex-progressives like myself) is that we appreciate black lesbians and gays because they are transgressive in the extreme. Or at least we like to think so.
As far as blacks and marriage is concerned, I think that going back to Roosevelt and the New Deal and Jim Crow is just bullshit. The simple fact is that people who call themselves niggas everyday are simply dysfunctional, it's as simple as that. Marriage is hard work and a whole lot of humanity is simply not up to the task. Excuse making has become a paying profession.
I think children growing up in a gay household is as harmful to their sensibilities (i.e. - thinking that it is acceptable and normal) as children growing up in a household where the parents are swingers or the hetero parent has a different man or woman in their bed every week.
Courts take away parental rights for that kind of behavior... But we are supposed to think that children growing up in a gay household is ok?
This comment is bone stupid, and there's no other way to put it. There is nothing inherently harmful about raising a child in a same-sex household, and I've got a kid to prove it. My ex-wife has been with her partner Jane for eight years now, the same amount of time I've been with my girlfriend Amy, and my now 18 year old daughter spent significant time with both of us over the 14 years we've been divorced. She graduated from high school with honors and is now a freshman at Southern Miss on a scholarship. And best of all, she's a well-adjusted, intelligent, healthy young woman, and she's far from alone. Children raised by same-sex couples are no more likely to be fucked up than by those raised by hetero couples.
Meh, I'm ambivalent because I understand the sentiment to tell people who want to deny you a basic right to fuck off. In fact, I believed that myself for many years. The emotional pull is strong. But. It doesn't make it right, smart or moral. Who amongst us is truly clean?
Something that I am struggling with:
I support gay marriage. I have gay uncles who are the sweetest things you'd ever want to meet. I think that gay marriage isn't perfectly analagous to interracial marriage, but the opposition to it sure as hell is. I am confounded by how people even friggin' care. So two dudes want to get married. So what? How in the hell can you generate any emotion stronger than "man, I hope I don't have to go to the wedding because then I'll have to buy something and you just know that they'll have a cash bar instead of an open bar and it'll be yet another Saturday shot to hell unless the food is really, really good and it might be... they're gay, after all."
But the attitude that the people who disagree with me are either ignorant, misguided, venial, or downright hateful is an attitude that I am trying to overcome.
It's not because I don't support gay marriage that I am rethinking how I argue for it and against the people who argue against it... but because there is such a huge disconnect between my position and the position held by oh-so-very many (dude, they couldn't overcome Prop 8 in MOTHERLOVING *CALIFORNIA*).
I guess there's not a real point to this post aside from "what has been attempted doesn't work."
I wish I knew what would.
Here's the main problem I have with the comment:
"thinking that it is acceptable and normal" - This is used in a highly negative tone. As in, if we allow gay marriage, this very bad consequence will come to pass.
As in, the commentor clearly thinks that gay people living together, raising families, or perhaps even being gay is not acceptable or normal.
I don't know how to respond to that. I really don't. I guess it comes from religion, and mostly that just makes me hate religion.
It doesn't matter how much history and context and parallels you lay out. There will always be people who refuse to believe that the past has an effect on the present, simply because they've chosen to block out any past that isn't convenient to their cause. And that goes for both sides of the argument.
Yeah...I'm going to have to go with excuse making here as well. This reasoning ignores the fact that it's not just Black Americans...Overall, most of the over arching Black diaspora cultures are not gay friendly and the only way to change that, is to try and change that. And since no one seems serious about outreach and discussion on all issues regarding sex, including and especially HIV, I don't see attittudes changing and gay marriage getting much love.
I get where you're coming from, TNC, but where's the part about getting more black folks up front in the gay rights movement? I was talking to a gay friend a over some post-turkey Glenfiddich when the subject turned to this. I asked him "Who is the most prominent Gay Black American?" After a slew of Oprah and Gayle jokes, he had to admit he couldn't really name one, as I refused to accept Rupaul as an answer. Wanda Sykes, Keith Boykin, and Daryl Stephens can't do it alone. If the No on 8 movement wants to gain ground within the Black community, it's time for them to learn from their past mistakes.
And since no one seems serious about outreach and discussion on all issues regarding sex, including and especially HIV, I don't see attittudes changing and gay marriage getting much love.
All the numbers I've seen about this issue in general suggest that the real lines of demarcation are age-based--the older the group, the more opposed to same-sex marriage and everything related to it. I'd be interested in seeing some of the breakdowns inside the African-American community to see if there's any difference between that community and the population as a whole. I suspect that any difference will be marginal, if the students I deal with every week are any indication.
Any oppressed group that seeks its own liberation needs, first of all, to stand up together, proudly, and declare their own validity and solidarity. Name any liberation movement -- by class, gender, sexual orientation, race, national group, religion -- they all have needed to accomplish this.
But it's challenging to stand up in solidarity and pride without treating those who hate you with hostility, anger, and even your own hatred. As the momentarily-wise Richard Nixon said in his goodbye speech, "Remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them back -- and then, you destroy yourself."
The genius of Gandhian satyagraha is that it accomplishes this. But it's damn hard to do, both organizationally and individually, and we need to forgive people and movements who trip up and succumb to the natural urge to get angry at those who oppress.
I can see arguable points throughout the comment you pulled out, except for the primary point: gay = promiscuous and therefor gay = wrong.
That's just ridiculous. It's the smear of choice for gays, equivalent to saying black = violent or jew = greedy.
Incertus
I hate to have to do this, but I do have a personal experience that shows that in at least that situation there was likely some confusion and some emotional harm done to a child who had a gay couple raising them. This is going to come off as very convuluted but try to follow the story line. I dated a woman who had previously been in a monogamous gay relationship for many years. I can't speak to her motivation but for most of her life she lived as a straight woman and had two kids. Some time after she broke up with her kids' father she started a long term gay relationship. Now I don't know if this is a factor or not but her daughter grew up for about the first 5 years of her life living in a household with her dad and my ex. After that at age 7 my ex's lover moved in together for the next 8 years. Well by age 15 my ex's daughter was pregnant and had been having sex behind her mother's back with different boys for over a year. (this was some years before I met her) My ex tried to be supportive and she helped her out with the baby but her daughter just got more and more out of control and it was always all about sneaking off to have sex. Now at this time my ex was still off and on in her gay relationship. Fast forward to 4 years later, when I met her my ex's daughter was 19 with 2 kids and one on the way at that point. She and my ex were at war constantly because her daughter just had such an "I will do what I want to do" attitude while my ex just couldn't understand why her daughter kept getting pregnant and kept sleepign around even though she knew the risks AND my ex had tried every approach you could think of. Tough love check, Spoiling, check, Best friend, check, Enlisting the Grandmother, check. Still nothing seemed to make a difference. Well I kept saying they should go to counselling or at least my ex should pay for her daughter to go. Well eventually after my ex and I had stopped seeing each other she called and we had a long talk. Her daughter was in therapy and she was doing a lot better. But my ex was crushed. You see from where she was sitting her daughter and her ex girlfriend got along great. And her daughter never ever voiced any objection to her gay lifestyle or did anything that made my ex think she didnt approve. But in therapy her daughter evidently revealed that she had in fact been confused about it and bigger than that she had been teased about it at school. Come to find out basically her first sexual experiences were because of the little boys teasing her that she was gay too. So of course she felt she had to "show" them. Then later as she got older and her mom and her ex were kind of on and off the daughter used sex as a kind of statement if not to other people, to herself that she wasn't gay. I honestly didn't know what to say to my ex and I also didn't see that coming. My ex is now still living a straight life and she seems happy and the most recent time I talked to her the daughter was doing a lot better but still with a long way to go. I have no reason to believe that her case is indicative of all cases, most cases or even more than a few cases. But I can say that in at least one case, having a gay parenting household did in fact cause the child a great deal of confusion and at least according to the daughter and a therapist, some emotional damage. Take from that what you will.
TNC,
I agree with KevDog. I have read this post twice and I still don't get what you are trying to say.
I mean, seriously, what am I supposed to say to my gay/lesbian friends who have been together for several years (I have a few gay/lesbian co-workers who has been in a relationships for over 20 years)? What am I supposed to say to my gay/lesbian friends who do have children and are raising them with love? What am I supposed to say to the children of my gay/lesbian friends who have had no problem growing up with gay parents whatsoever?
I actually don't think that the comment you cite makes any sense at all. Sure, I might not agree with "Swinging Parents," or "hetero parents with a different man or woman in their bed every week." But the thing is, these people CAN get married in our society. The state CAN recognize their relationships. Whereas, the state does not recognize committed gay/lesbian couples who have been together for decades.
Another thing I want to point out from that comment is something that does not make any sense to me. I have never been married, but I have been in long term relationships. It's hard work, and I acknowledge that I am not a relationship expert. However, just because I have had problems with relationships doesn't mean that I am going to deny others the right to have relationships.
TNC - I understand the point of your post, but it would mean a lot more if you had been willing to call out the blatant homophobia in your commenter's post. I mean, statements about it being unacceptable and not normal... Sure, we have a lot to learn about how to talk to minority communities (not just Blacks, but Latinos, Asians, etc.) about gay rights, but it doesn't help that you hold this up as a great example of how we are all wrong without taking the writer to task for what he got wrong.
Sorry for the rant - I generally really love what you've got to say.
This post seems like a thought experiment, and I've played that game a time or two before. I've tried to think, what might really make a person racist? Because usually people feel what they feel for a reason, even if these reasons are illogical.
So, I understand why you're laboring to determine what might be at the root of black opposition to gay marriage. It's true that, for a group of people who don't tend to get married that much, black folks seem to have almost a delirious reverence for for marriage. I can tell you that as a black woman, we are HAMMERED about how marriage (to a good black man, hopefully!) is the ULTIMATE goal, the pinnacle of our lives. You only have to watch a few Tyler Perry movies to figure that out.
So, the thought experiment is useful -- it does not make anti-gay marriage rhetoric any more coherent, but it is useful to know where people are coming from so that you can adequately explain yourself to them.
Personally, my own reverence for marriage is one of the reasons I would like to see it extended to gay people. Maybe there's a way to build outreach around that idea.
Wow, Ta-Nehisi, these are some of the best thoughts you've laid down. Brutal honesty has a way of stripping us naked scared, scared of revealing what lays in the collective conscience but often untold out of fear, or other emotions, that tells us to keep it to ourselves. So thanks for putting it out there.
The only thing that I'm not sure you're right on about is "People who tend not to have actual conversations with black people, think that most black folks thing having kids out of wedlock is cool." Okay, I'm sure the kind of people who watch Jerry Springer hold this viewpoint, but I think the majority realize that black people don't find it "cool". Everyone has family shit, so I think we realize how messy and fucked up it can be. We know people who have it better, and worse. We would never wish a dysfuntional family on anyone, or think they themselves would wish for one. This is the how Hank or John (?) is approaching it...he wants a stable environment for children, always. But he's also presuming that gay is dysfuntional. That's where it begins. The marriage thing overlays that. And if, like you said, you have all these other hidden emotions about marriage, then gay marriage just becomes all the more problematic. But that's beside the point of thinking gays are dysfuntional. Where does *that* come from? Where is *that* rooted?
What the quoted comment shows to me is something I've believed to be at the heart of the anti-gay marriage movement for quite some time:
The inherently, at the very base level, homosexuality is a dysfunction. It isn't a reasonable choice or biological predilection, but a disorder caused by some trauma or another, and any children spawned from a union between two "broken" individuals will inevitably result in another dysfunctional being.
So for many supporters of prop 8, whether it is through a religious, societal, personal, etc. lens, they're not *just* seeing marriage between man and man or woman and woman, but marriage between two damage individuals that's breaking the already-pretty-damn-broken institution of marriage.
So regardless of whether someone is black, hispanic, catholic, muslim, a Cowboy's fan (OH HAI THAR) its the mindset that same-sex romantic love is inherently flawed is what first must be overcome. And this mindset is pervasive in the black community for a whole host of reasons that would take a blog unto itself to detail.
(And if I need to qualify myself for whatever reason: Yes I am black, no I am not gay, neither am I religious, I've some college education but no degree (yet anyway) and I support gay marriage)
@ sgwhiteinfla --
You usually have some tremendously thoughtful things to add to these discussions. But, it's very hard to read your posts if there are no paragraph breaks. Make it easy on my tired eyes!
Love,
A fan :-)
Prop on 8 was driven by religion not race.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/04/poll-prop-8-voting-driven_n_148379.html
While I respect that you possess insight into the issue far more directly than I do, I have to say that your accounting of black opposition to gay marriage rings very false to me.
You seem to be maintaining that many African Americans resent the expansion of marriage rights to gays and lesbians because AAs' access to that same right has been/is restricted or otherwise attenuated. You're a bit unclear about why this breeds resentment toward the expansion of marriage, but hint at two possibilities:
1) Black people feel that homosexuality is perverse, and therefore undermines a right they've fought hard to secure. But this is question-begging. Really, it's just irrational homophobia and explains nothing. So let's move on to...
2) Black people feel that widening the pool of people with access to a right they've fought hard to secure somehow diminishes the value of that right and/or their achievement. Broadly, any effort to improve the fortunes of a disadvantaged minority group should produce the same psychological effect. This is also a fairly ugly sentiment, but it has a bit more explanatory power than (1). It's possible to imagine and perhaps even find examples of AA opposition to such initiatives: expanding the criteria that make one eligible for affirmative action programs and naturalization of illegal immigrants come to mind as possible examples. But while it may be possible to find some instances in which the AA community (such as it exists as a monolithic whole) expresses sentiments that are aligned with this idea, those sentiments seem to be much less deeply held than opposition to gay marriage. Why is that? I don't have an answer.
So I'm inclined to come back to (1). But that doesn't explain anything at all -- not really. All you've done is cloak bigotry in a mantle of victimhood. You note that that doesn't excuse the bigotry -- but if you really believe that, why did you bother writing this post?
sfwhiteinfla, sounds to me that what caused the girl so much damage was the kids in school being hateful little homophobes, along with our culture's standard dose of misogyny and general pathologies about sex.
I'm Jewish. If someone starts messing with my kids at school because their dad is a Jew, and it screws them up psychologically, I'm blaming the little anti-semites, not Judaism.
"Courts take away parental rights for that kind of behavior... But we are supposed to think that children growing up in a gay household is ok?"
Actually no they don't.
I've devoted the past several years to being a professional evangelist for sexual liberty. My own sex life is quite bland, but I know far more than I'd really care to know about where and when the state takes it upon itself to intrude in the sex lives of it's citizens. This assertion is so far off base it's hard to know where to start.
Stop hiding your hate behind other people's children. As TNC might say, man-up. Own it. This isn't about your imagined damage to other people's children. It's about the damage in your own soul.
these are interesting discussions and I admit that some of andrew's comments on the voting records of blacks on prop 8 a little discomforting. i don't think singling out the black community is an effective strategy for changing overall trend. it's not effective to take a group of people who historically have been marginalized and isolated and then throw stones at them because of some other issue. Doesn't that just make them more isolated?
i think the gay marriage movement needs to really think about the way they go forward. you don't win hearts and minds by yelling in someone's face "you are a homophobe!." you win them by showing them that what they are afraid of is not true.
But we are supposed to think that children growing up in a gay household is ok?
Am I supposed to think that children growing up in a black household is ok?
I mean, I do think it's ok, even though I could point to the difference in life outcomes between the average black kid with black parents and the average black kid adopted and raised by white parents. Are we going to expect black parents to hand their kids over to white folks the way this guy seems to think that gay couples are going to pass theirs off to straights?
And I could make my argument with evidence.Those differences exist because of economic class issues that, in our country, draw approximately along racial lines. This commenter's position is supported only by his assumption that two men or two women must be worse parents than a hetero couple, when the strongest known negative in those families is that their children are more likely the target of bullying.
That's it. Children of gay couples turn out just the same as the rest of us. Oh, except for one thing - they're more tolerant of gay couples. (To the religious right, of course, that's tantamount to brain damage.)
The point here - and I'm sorry to have started it off with racism - is that nobody's going to get rid of their kids simply because they can't marry their partner. Black people didn't do it when they couldn't marry; gay people aren't going to do it now. And if this moron really wants to act in the interest of the children of gay couples, he'd be doing whatever he could to address the legal ambiguities that exist for gay couples trying to raise children. (Imagine having one of your parents die, and the other legally barred from continuing as your parent, all because he or she couldn't have legally married their partner.)
"Well by age 15 my ex's daughter was pregnant and had been having sex behind her mother's back with different boys for over a year."
@ sgwhiteinfla
I've seen lots of cases where women in unsuccessful long-term relationships with men enter into same-sex relationships--especially if kids are involved. And the kids are fine.
Your post made no mention of you ex's husband being involved in the parenting of his child. As a child from a single-mother home. Her promiscuity probably has a lot more to do with an absentee father then some sort of "gay misidentification" problem.
"But this is question-begging. Really, it's just irrational homophobia and explains nothing."
Maybe the negroes will change their minds if we just explain how stupid they are being to them just a little more slowly and loudly.
There are a lot of generalizations here. No one polled me or interviewed me. So now a vote by a less than 6% of California's population represents my perspective. Well I am AA and it does not. Again there are a lot of assumptions being made and people who assume make arses of themselves.
Btw, I like to spend a special thanks to the Black People Police for speaking FOR ME when I thought I had my own voice.
TNC, I'm with KevDog and Fighting Words--I see what you're saying, but I'm not seeing how it relates to the comment you start the post with.
I, like others, have a hard time getting past the commenter's statement that bringing up a child in a home with same-sex parents is the equivalent of child abuse. How is that related to your eloquent point about blacks in America having been robbed of an essential part of the American Dream? I'm not saying that to cut: I honestly don't see the connection, and would be grateful for clarification.
I suspect, much as the discussion on interracial marriage was much more civil and open-minded than I'd expected, that if you actually polled white Americans you'd find that there's no majority for thinking "black folks find having children out of wedlock is cool." But maybe I think that because I am not one of the people who's never talked to black folk. I still think, however, that that's not a useful premise to build an argument on. I think that there is widespread information out there on the African-American community's concerns and focus on the nuclear family.
But how is that nuclear family different from the kind that the gays want?
Seriously--I hope you revisit this in the comments, or in an update, because I'm feeling stupid for not getting the connection.
How about this (admittedly very provocative) theory to partially (and I stress "partially") explain the existence of purported black homophobia: It doesn't matter which ethnic/racial group you belong to, someone's always got to be the "nigger".
I'm paraphrasing that last sentence and wish I remember who originally said it.
Karen,
Focus on the last part of his comment:
"Black people know first hand how dysfunctional family units can destroy a community. If we redefine marriage as being between essentially between anyone and anyone, what further damage do we want to do to an institution already on the decline in this country?"
I'll bold it for emphasis.
Jaybird says:
I support gay marriage. I have gay uncles who are the sweetest things you'd ever want to meet. I think that gay marriage isn't perfectly analagous to interracial marriage, but the opposition to it sure as hell is. I am confounded by how people even friggin' care. So two dudes want to get married. So what? How in the hell can you generate any emotion stronger than "man, I hope I don't have to go to the wedding because then I'll have to buy something and you just know that they'll have a cash bar instead of an open bar and it'll be yet another Saturday shot to hell unless the food is really, really good and it might be... they're gay, after all."
Greatest comment ever.
@sgwhiteinfla:
That's a pretty terrible story, to be sure, but anecode != data. Lots of stuff parents do can confuse children. Heterosexual parents have raised out-of-control daughters and sons since time immemorial, and same-sex couples have raised sterling, well-behaved offspring in the decades they've been allowed to do so. And what about the children? I pity the poor child who gets mocked by his or her peers for having parents who are different, but what about the kid who gets beat up because his parents are the only Jews in town? Or the kid who gets confused and acts out because all the other kids have Christmas trees, and he or she has to light stupid Hannukah candles and be different than everybody else. Do we outlaw Jewish marriage because in this one case a child got hurt and confused? Being Jewish, after all, is a choice, is it not?
"...what further damage do we want to do to an institution already on the decline in this country?"
This is a key point. Marriage - traditional marriage - is in decline. Could that be because at least 10% of the population can't get married or are in sham marriages that (inevitably) end?
TNC,
Re the last part of the comment:
I get the point he's making, but he's making it through his previously stated assertions that "thinking that it is acceptable and normal" is a very bad thing for children to experience.
He wants to protect families and marriage, and thus gay marriage is bad because *gays are bad*. Seriously. You do see that in his comment right? It has nothing to do with any other harmful effects of kids growing up in gay families; the harmful effects he claims is specifically kids being *more tolerant to gays*.
At the very least, you should call out the blatant anti-homosexual rhetoric there before psychoanalyzing it, because that's the basic of his comment, not the whole marriage protection thing.
@asb:
You beat me to it! Perhaps my parents shouldn't have had me and my sister because we were the only Asian family (with strange customs to boot, because my parents were recent immigrants) in a Southeastern Virginia town which was almost 100% white and black. We were constantly teased and bullied (by all)and my sister had a real rough time of it. She discovered that some of the guys would appear to show her "positive" attention if she put out and she got herself into a lot of trouble. Luckily, our family pulled together and my sister pulled out of it without irreversibly damaging her life.
My point is that, saying gay marriage is tantamount to child abuse because society is filled with hateful assholes and the children will suffer, is essentially surrendering to that hate.
Also, now that I think about it, the commenter's logic is really wholly circular.
His goal is to protect marriage and families. He believes that gay marriage is harmful to marriage and families. His logic for this is because gay marriage would encourage more people to be tolerant of gay marriage, which is harmful to marriage and families because it would encourage tolerance of gay marriage.
The only statement that makes this logic make any sense whatsoever is the implicit assertion that being gay, having gay relationships, and raising children as a gay person is immoral. Obviously, anyone who believes that would oppose gay marriage. All his family justification is just window dressing trying to justify his core beliefs.
"Black people know first hand how dysfunctional family units can destroy a community. If we redefine marriage as being between essentially between anyone and anyone, what further damage do we want to do to an institution already on the decline in this country?"
That assumes one big fact not in evidence, namely that allowing same-sex marriage would damage the institution. There's a strong possibility that the effect of allowing it would either strengthen marriage or have no effect at all--I lean toward the latter--but it's by no means a foregone conclusion that allowing it will damage an institution that, from my perspective, is pretty messed up in the first place.
and people who've never talked to a gay person before think we're just promiscuous advocates of hedonism and perversion who want to corrupt children (when we're not lusting after them or trying to recruit them) and bring down the fundamentals of society. they don't understand that we're just as normal as anybody else and we want only what the constitution says we are entitled to as american citizens: equal citizenship under the law.
you would think black folks would be empathetic to that.
this argument really bothers me. Taking away my right to marry somehow re-affirms, or allows you to "reclaim" something that's been taken from you?
Not only is that a bs way of "reclaiming" what you've been robbed of, but its also a dangerous rationale. Where does it end? You take away my marriage rights because you never got your 40 acres and a mule. Then you take away my citizenship because you had to sit on the back of the bus?
Maybe, since now, i have been robbed of my rights, i should start taking other people's rights away to make up for it.
"Maybe, since now, i have been robbed of my rights, i should start taking other people's rights away to make up for it."
I recommend the Mormons.
Freaktown,
If you're looking for an argument for why its justifiable for black people, or anyone, to be anti-gay marriage, you're on the wrong board. If you're at all interested in a guy trying to understand the flawed, flawed, flawed psychology at work then this is your post.
How about this? Let's collectively find a new scapegoat to blame all of our collective problems on and render this entire conversation - or any other conversation related to prejudice, sexuality, gender and inequality, because...well, we'll have a scapegoat! Let's also be sure to find a group so small and insignificant (at least here in the US) that they can't really fight back.
I say we blame the Basques, or bartenders who charge for soda when you're the designated driver.
I don't think race has much to do with this: it sounds like exactly the same dynamic that exists for lots of socially conservative white folks of mostly lower socio-economic status. This is partially why hostility to gay marriage seems concentrated in places where statistics would suggest that people are less respectful of the institution of marriage (i.e. MA has the lowest divorce rate in the country and lots of socially conservative Southern states have high divorce rates).
2 points,
It's just wrong. Sullivan's made his point...and then some. The problem is that a LOT of the people that need to be convinced aren't participating in the exchange of ideas that is the blogosphere. Anyway...
1. I think that if gay marriage was restricted to women only, i.e, women could marry either men or women, but men could not marry men...that there would be a whole lot less opposition to it. I'm not sure why, but I think a lot of the fight comes from the thought of two guys being married. I'm not trying to turn it into a gender war, but there's a much higher penalty for not living up to the "masculine" ideal for a male than a woman not living up to the "feminine" ideal. For black men especially, this penalty is far, far worse.
2. I think that a lot of people are underestimating the amount of people that don't make the distinction between civil and religious marriage. Many, many people don't see the difference and assume that their churches will have to marry homosexuals against their will. That fallacy needs to be corrected.
3. (sorry, got carried away),
I STILL don't see anyone arguing against no-fault divorce. If marriage is so sacred, should be a lot harder to get out of one. It should be a hell of a lot harder to get into one, for EVERYONE, for that matter...
my bad.
i thought this was supposed to be a discussion not a psychology class.
@ikl
I think the class angle has a lot of merit. I'd like to see a statistical breakdown of African American votes in support of Prop8 and see if there is a correlation. Could it be that (and if I'm wrong about this next statement, I would appreciate being corrected so I'm not running around citing bogus statistics)since a disproportionate amount of the African American community (at least in urban areas) is relatively poor, that this is the real factor at play here?
I have no idea if this has any merit, but it certainly is a compelling argument.
@ freaktown
If I have to hear one more time how black people should be empathetic/understand/be sympathetic, I am going to scream. The gay community has consistently made the face of the marriage movement white, ignoring black members of its own community. Combine that with the precious little done to even attempt to have a dialogue with the black community...
I was trying hard not to believe Kalbi For Lunch's paraphrasing that "somebody has to be the nigger."
Statements like yours are not helping.
Okay, that I understand. I don't agree with you, but I understand.
If the implication is that a person, group, cohort, whatever, has to be 'clean' in order to criticize, then no one is permitted that right. Just as all those who take on Israel are not anti-Semitic, not all those who take on Black homophobia are racist.
I would argue that not only is it moral to call out the Black community on this, it is imperative to do so. As of yet, I can't buy the argument that because Black families have been torn apart through history they are against gay marriage because it will make things worse. I just don't see the linkage.
My parent's divorce was, to be blunt, fucked up. It took decades before my Mom stopped referring to my Dad as shithead. In fact, it took him being on his deathbed to accomplish that. My experience was particular, personal, and horrific. Yet I don't hold it against gays that they want to get married and I don't think that has anything to do with me being White.
In the end, I agree with you that the other cultural factors of education, poverty and religion were probably more at work in the Black community. The first two are definitely society's burden to correct and places at least part of the blame on all of us for not doing more.
But the nagging thing in the back of my mind is this quote:
This seems to me as a kind of emotional absolution, a sense of "don't blame us for the way we feel, look what was done to us" which I am probably incapable of grokking fully but seems dodgy nonetheless.
"If we just tell them that their culture is wrong and they need to be more open-minded like us, they'll eventually be grateful."
Was this quote said about African-Americans regarding gay marriage or about Iraqis regarding the overthrow of Saddam?
"you would think black folks would be empathetic to that."
Why? Because we have a special folk wisdom/spirituality/insight? Guess what- black people are human- they have the same qualities and frailities that everyone else does. Think of all the white people that you know, at their personalities, and I can guarantee you that there are black people with those same qualities. The sooner everyone understands that, the sooner we can work towards a solution, in fact race relations in general would benefit.
"i thought this was supposed to be a discussion not a psychology class."
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Furthermore, it's neither. It's a blog.
Kev:
"This seems to me as a kind of emotional absolution, a sense of "don't blame us for the way we feel, look what was done to us" which I am probably incapable of grokking fully but seems dodgy nonetheless."
Of course it is. The point isn't justification, it's understanding the logic and attacking. Look at the parallels I offered? It's not worth knowing the psychology of lynchers? And if you try to get at it, does that mean you approve of it?
"Okay, that I understand. I don't agree with you, but I understand.
If the implication is that a person, group, cohort, whatever, has to be 'clean' in order to criticize, then no one is permitted that right. Just as all those who take on Israel are not anti-Semitic, not all those who take on Black homophobia are racist."
And come on Kev, do you really think I'm saying no one has the right to criticize black homophobia? Have we not been talking about this for over a month now?
Cool. I'm with you now.
@KevDog
The first two are definitely society's burden to correct and places at least part of the blame on all of us for not doing more.
I think you've raised another compelling point. I would posit when we stop and examine the uglier aspects of our society (and we're ALL guilty of this, particularly in western countries where individualism is king) there is a tendency to want to absolve ourselves of any responsibility and not acknowledge our collective failure. We do this by blaming others.
No, but I do think you got a little sloppy there :)
This notion that any non-hetero upbringing is automatically a problem is wrong-headed. That is the real problem. Children raised in non-traditional home environment that is stable are "screwed up" because of societal stigma and scorn. This idea that we shouldn't have kids raised by gay folks because what will they say to people or what will they think has nothing to do with gay folks' capability to raise children and everything to do with making sure that small-minded people's point of view maintains dominance in our national understanding of what "family" is. To my mind, a bit more relativity in our understanding of what is a healthy, stable environment would be good here.
I also take issue with this dominant narrative that without a father present children are doomed, especially black children. It inherently overvalues the role fathers traditionally have actually played nad completely obscures the role mothers have traditionally played.
Look - black women, in particular, have been doing a bang up job (all things considered) raising children. I would argue that the fact that single households have fewer resources and mothers (or even single fathers) have far less time with their kids as they'd like. Those things don't automatically change with another parent.
There are lot of factors that are ruining black communities. Single parenting alone is not one of them. The issue is that you have babies raising babies. I've seen 18 year old kids who had a good time, made a baby, got married and raised little fuckin' monsters. Why? Because they weren't ready.
Two parents can screw up children too (and often do).
Ok let me address a few of the comments about my previous post
1. My personal story was just that, it wasn't meant to be some kind of case study against gay adoption or gay marriage it just was what it was.
2. Christina, I apologize for no paragraph breaks. I was in a hurry but I wanted to finish the story so I didnt go back and proof read.
3. I understand that all kinds of things that happen in heterosexual couples/marriages also damage kids like abuse, drinking etc. But the purpose of me telling my story again wasn't to make it seem like gay couples mess kids up worse or anything like that. It just illustrated to me that there is potential for there to be some affect on the kids in a gay marriage or gay adoption such as was in the case of my ex.
4. For everybody trying to psychoanalyze my ex's daughter please save it. What I am telling you came from the girl herself and from her therapist through my ex. Some how I don't think my ex was repeating something like that unless it was pretty much on solid footing because she is not ashamed of her gay relationship and in fact she and her ex are still friends. It was devasting for her. So if you want her daughter's promiscuity to have come from some other reason, more power to you. I am sure my ex wishes it did also. But like I said before, it is what it is.
5. As for the question about the father, yes he actually was involved with the daughter pretty regularly until after she had the first child. And then she stopped wanting to spend time with him not the other way around. This is second hand information of course but I am pretty sure its accurate.
6 As for the comment about it being about the kids who teased her at school first I would say NEWSFLASH kids are mean to other kids. Same way kids would make fun of another kid whose parent was poor or was a drug addict or was ghetto etc. So to my mind to just say "oh well it wasnt the gay relationship it was the kids making fun of it" is very very very disnegnuous. I hope to see the day in America where every school will be filled with children who are all past racism, homophobia, and classism. But we aint there yet and I don't think its on the horizon any time soon.
Second of all in order for a parent to get involved when as you said a kid makes fun of their father being jewish, the kid who was made fun of has to tell their parents. Now if the kid is proud of their jewish heritage more than likely they will tell the parents and then the parents can take appropriate action. But if the kid is confused or ashamed about the situation they are being teased about whether it be the parent is poor, ghetto, or gay, then I think its going to be more likely that the kid will internalize it and not tell their parents about it. I know when I was teased as a child about my dad being "crazy" thats what i did because my dad while brilliant in a book sense, has a lot of quirks that were embarrassing to me.
A request for any and all of you:
Please never use the word "grok" ever again.
Thanks.
Jaybird
OK, enough with the serious talk; there's an NFL game tonight, so can we have a football thread!
For example, which division this year is worst: NFC West or AFC West?
Discuss...
Wow, if grammar were the Twin Towers, my previous post was the plan which just crashed into them.
"This notion that any non-hetero upbringing is automatically a problem is wrong-headed. That is the real problem. "
Actually it's not the real problem. This so called concern for children of gay couples is a fig leaf. Gays could collectively renounce wanting to have children and the folks now saying "I'm only thinking about their children," would find someone else's children to worry about. "I'm worried about teh children living next to a married gay couple," or "I'm worried about children reading about a gay couple getting married."
It's bullshit and should be called out as bullshit.
Plane, I mean. Fuck, I did it again. Preview button Jae-hoon, preview button...
Let me also say - I apologize for all the typos in my comment.
Brilliant, TNC. Thanks for letting the rest of us into the complex, not-afraid-of-ambiguities landscape of your thinking. It's just not simple, even when it is.
And Jack T: The JointheImpact rally in Philadelphia on the 15th was *led* by young African-Americans and Latinos. It's shameful that the gay activist you talked to couldn't name Boykin or Jewelle Gomez, or at least reach back to James Baldwin (or my old hobbyhorse Bayard Rustin.) But I think I saw some of the leadership you're yearning for in Dilworth Plaza that day. Long arc of history and all.
You spend way too much time explaining yourself. You should disregard the comments, let your work stand on its own. It's not your responsibility to explain yourself to people who misunderstand you.
Frankly, being the Malcomite I've always been, if I were white and gay, I might be one to say "Leave the niggers be."
Yeah, I tried to assert that this was the correct strategy. Using slightly modified language, natch.
It seems a lot easier to peel off white religious folks who don't have to carry all the crap around about masculinity, fatherhood and family that black survivors of the multi-generational injuries from slavery, Jim Crow and present-day racism are carrying. For Black religious voters, not only does the preacher say 'that ain't natural', not only does the gospel choir write a song about it, but that church's role in the social and political life of the family is central. My view is, Haven't these people who really, truly believe that Jesus wants them to hate on me, been through enough at the hands of white people?
Plus, pragmatically, why do I need to move that mountain of shit in order to get my family equal rights?
Oddly, a whole bunch of white gay men, folks who unlike me have no social or political relationships with actual Black people, called me a racist for suggesting that we ignore the Black church and the voters it drives.
They explained that it would be wrong for us to take an easier path, because we have to be inclusive and actively anti-racist. Why and how this became a priority, to the exclusion of achieving the stated goals of our movement, has not been explained to me.
So now I'm being racist to determine that the folks who say this shit right out in the fucking open--he wants straight people to raise my kid because she might grow up to think it's acceptable to be gay, which outweighs every good thing we can give her as parents--are so attached to the premise 'homosexuality is wrong and bad and inferior', they're not worth trying to reason with.
You have to give these bigots credit in comparison to their white counterparts, for honesty. He just put it right out there: Gay people need to be discriminated against because the alternative is that they will be treated as equal and that is inherently a threat to my understanding of what 'family' means.
It's very, very difficult to get white people to say this directly, despite the fact that it's what they're thinking. So in that regard, these might be the easiest hearts to change. They're being honest.
It's not that I'm sympathetic to the plight of this chucklehead because he's been through some shit. I'm not suggesting that we leave him alone in his bigotry when he brings the fight to us. (I think that the appropriate response is to refute the lies he's telling and then leave him alone, which is what I do real regularly.) All I'm suggesting is that I don't need to get a majority on the hardest road possible on some principle that makes me a racist if I don't.
Long comment to say, Yes, TNC, someone DID think of that.
@Jaybird
Hate to say it, but in my world (software engineering) 'grok' is still used a lot. We're nerds that way.
I'd like to go back to Cliff's comment, which I think gets at the root of this. Everything that I've read suggests that there is a major correlation between support for gay rights (including gay marriage) and the belief that homosexuality is an inherent condition. (In fact, where an individual stands on this issue tends in some studies to be the biggest predictor of his/her feelings on gay marriage.)
In other words, people who think individuals are "born" gay are far more likely to support gay marriage, civil protections for gay men and women, etc.; people who think homosexuality is a choice or "lifestyle" tend to oppose gay marriage. And several different studies show that black people polled by the researcher are more likely to see homosexuality as a choice or lifestyle than an inherent or "born" condition.
(Again, not this isn't 100% thing, much like any other belief. There are plenty of whites who see homosexuality as a choice, and plenty of blacks who don't. But blacks as a group are significantly more likely than whites to see it as a choice, closely followed by Latinos.)
I bring this up because, like Cliff, I see this as the heart of the commentator's point. Comparing gay relationships to swinging or bed-hopping promiscuity seems to assume homosexuality *is* a choice. (Heterosexuals can choose to be monogamous, after all.) The same is true about denigrating the idea that being gay is acceptable or normal. Being gay isn't "normal" only in a very narrow statistical sense that most people aren't gay. But then, being blue eyed and left handed (which I am), isn't "normal" either, since most people aren't left handed and blue eyed. That fact doesn't make left handedness unacceptable, however; people pretty much assume that I was born that way. I deviate from the statistical norm without being a deviant, so to speak.
There are a lot of threads woven into the commentator's point, as well as the different arguments here. I think the choice/inborn thread is an important one to pull out. It's hard for me to see a large group of people who think homosexuality is a choice ever supporting gay marriage. Likewise, I think it is more likely that people who view it as something you're born will support gay marriage.
Just my two cents; I thought this would be worth discussing at greater depth.
"All I'm suggesting is that I don't need to get a majority on the hardest road possible on some principle that makes me a racist if I don't."
I don't begrudge that one bit. You don't have to answer for someone else's ignorance.
TNC, I think your attempt to understand black opposition to gay marriage in terms of insecurity about gender roles and marriage has some merit, except that I'm not sure it's really separable from religion. Why is so much religious teaching opposed to homosexuality (much less gay marriage)? Probably insecurity over roles.
It's still prejudice, though, and I think it has solidified well beyond concern over marriage and family roles. The commenter seems clearly to feel that even a stable gay relationship, married or not, is not acceptable. So it isn't just about marriage: it's about being gay being wrong.
I don't think the commenter can actually see the argument that "a stable gay relationship is as good as a stable heterosexual one" as claimed.
"Black people know first hand how dysfunctional family units can destroy a community."
The commenter to me has a clear bias against being gay. How else can you assume a gay marriage/family unit is dysfunctional?
This sounds to me like a lot of rationalization of the "ick" factor. And it's a stretch in my mind to tie the "ick" factor to concern over the erosion of traditional roles.
I think the point everyone needs to take away from this is that we're all human beings and, therefore, flawed. We're all a little bit racist and we all have our own contradictions and moral failings. We're also naturally defensive when another group (particularly if that group has been a source of discrimination and oppression) calls us you for it. I'm Korean and we can be quite prejudiced, but if a Japanese ever calls me out for it; I'll turn beet red and adopt a defensive posture so quick, it will make your head spin.
I think we see some of that going on here.
Judging a whole group of people (I won't even say a community bc AA's are not as communal as they once were)by the action of some is just stupid. That would be like lumping together young college educated white ppl in Seattle, and saying they have the same hangup as older non college educated white ppl in Dixie!
W/that said rights should never be up for popular vote! The GLBT movement should divorce its self from the gradual states rights crowd (Log Cabin Republicans). I believe a state does not have the right to be a tyrant over the individual.
Just as there are homophobic black ppl, there are also racists gay ppl (notice John McCain's numbers). Wait, there are also gays who don't like transgendered ppl! Ppl are weird like that.
I had a roommate who was transgendered and he would get lots of haterade from the Lesbians on our campus.
Typically, animosity comes from when ppl believe one group is getting special/undeserved treatment. Some ppl don't like the fact that transgendered ppl (post op) can get married.
So anyways b4 ppl point fingers, they need to look in the mirror.
"This sounds to me like a lot of rationalization of the "ick" factor."
How many people thought "ick!" when they first learn about the mechanics of straight sex? I'm seeing a lot of hand go up.
The "ick factor", in black and others, is merely a subset of generalized erotophobia. Run some statical regression against religion with that.
I always thought the black animus was 2 fold
1) the ewww factor
2) And some folks don't like the idea that being gay is the same as being 'black', because you can't hide blackness like you can hide gayness.
There's a lot more shit in the Bible about divorce and adultery than there is about gay sex. People need to get serious.
@Stacy:
As others have pointed out countless times; it is common to see those who most vociferously oppose gay marriage, never utter a word about no fault divorce or the general mockery of marriage that hetro couples display all the time (see Brittany Spears' 3-day Vegas marriage).
Hey T-NC, post a football thread or I'm going to become the new Fred and your web site will become the bridge under which all internet trolls live!
Kalbi,
Get your own blog if you want to discuss American Football. TNC bows to no blog requests.
Read it again. "Black people know first hand how dysfunctional family units can destroy a community."
A community. There it is. If you're not a part of a community that reflects the American dream being advertised, then you probably do feel robbed. All this shit being brought down on the black community, for so long, and you wind up with some family/marriage dysfunction. I guess that would fuck up your view on marriage. But what about the homophobia? Or is it even homophobia?
Is being gay just one too many things to endure? Being black is hard enough, so being black and gay is too much to bear? Scared shitless that could be you: black and gay. Can't bear the thought, and the homophobia creeps in. Is that it? And now here come the gays, wanting to marry, wanting to raise kids. Oh it's just too much. We're still fighting for the nuclear family. And now this mess. Too much to think about it. Too much to bear. Is that it?
@TNC's Bodyguard: Rough me up in you will, just don't touch the hair.
Yeah....I just wonder if that root is even deeper than Black Americans' experience alone would dictate.
That gift analogy is really pretty rude, TNC.
Us fags haven't supported blacks on the expectation that haha, one day, they'll owe us and we'll make 'em pay up good. As a social survival gambit most of us need to open up society as much as possible, and lots of us actually believe in equality and understand it to contribute to the greater public good. The idea that we demand the "gift" of equality back is pretty sick, and makes me mad at you.
In terms of thoughts, there's Donna Brazile's comment about Barack the night of the Iowa Caucus: "African Americans have always lifted up the Democratic Party, it's time for the Democratic Party to lift up an African American" we could easily get "Gays and Lesbians have always lifted up African American's civil rights, it's time for African Americans to lift up LGBTQ Civil Rights."
I grew up in Hyde Park, and that's one reason that I joined the Obama campaign. The other was that I was rather certain that a Black President would do more for gay rights than HRC would. Mostly because I'm a white gay, I figure I'll become less threatening in America given hangups in the US about black men and sex. But more importantly, Barack came out to his white Kansan Family as a Black Man, which is just about as bad as coming out gay to your black parents--and he went to college in NYC in the eighties.
I get that the Democratic Party is a big coalition, but the problem with being gay in it is that we're always told to wait til next year, and are constantly screwed over by the party at large makes me angry and tired. I'm and I'm 23; Stonewall was long enough ago that this should be settled.
What bothers me, aside from other people, is this: LBJ twisted and broke arms and the Warren Court saved black people's civil rights. Every time us queers get a half step forward, we get forced to have our rights voted on by the public at large; if the public at large had voted on the Voting Rights Act, John Lewis wouldn't be in Congress (I love you John Lewis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEp_nsTmr7A)
So part of this is about me being jealous of the black Civil Rights movement as part of an American tradition of expanding liberty being handled like women's rights, etc. and wanting the same treatment, and about the African American community getting up in our grill about their civil rights movement being special and undermining our use of 'civil rights' in reference to marriage and hate crimes protections, trying to pull a Clarence Thomas on us--having gotten to the top of the heap, it's time to pull the ladder up behind you and laugh at those suckers left below. It sucks because it supports Huckabee's ascertion that not enough gay skulls have been cracked for us to 'earn' our rights, and it sucks because it lends credence to the idea that taking away my natural rights is a cultural/religious issue, rather than just being a dickwad.
Because there's a strong pop cultural affiliation between 'civil rights' and 'bigot' straight to Bull Connor. Winning means painting the Beehive and Dobson not only as harmless hatemongers but as people who would taser your children if they were gay (we should note that the Beehive and Dobson also hate minorities. Hell, the Beehive didn't give black people Mormon souls until 1978.) But having the African American Community pretend that they're the only civil rights movement ever and its oh-so-preciously only theirs is obnoxiously stupid--the term isn't patented. Meanwhile, I actually got fired from a job because when asked what I did on my weekend, I said "date with my boyfriend," so this is pretty lame.
Why most of us are mad, and why team tax fraud in funny underpants fought so hard, is that had we won California, we'd have picked up New Jersey and New York and thus had about a third to a quarter of the Republic's population safe, as well as pushing private employers to broadly recognize gay marriage and basically wrap this whole mess up nationally in ten years. Because the Supreme Court is unreliable for another 30 years, we have to inch our way forward in the separate states, which is really too slow--wait means never.
All the queers my age want to get married and buy that house in the suburbs get a Labrador and have 2.5 kids who go to public school and join the PTA. Because before we know we're gay, we're all conditioned to want marriage and home ownership.
So, the least the black community could do for us is to stop actively undermining us when we just want to be left alone.
The black community in CA, had it voted like the socially conservative Latinos and Asians, would not have passed prop 8. Prop 8 will get overturned. Meanwhile, stick to it to the folks who also like stealing the souls of holocaust victims.
I think if we really want to change black attitudes about gays, Jack T. it isn't just about prominent black Americans now, it would be important to remind the Af-Am Community that many of the best of the Civil Rights leaders were out and active gays and lesbians, and by restoring Bayard Ruskin and others to memory. maybe.
i go away for a lil while and every one jumps up and down on my head.
so i guess some folks are taking issue with me implying that one oppressed group would be empathetic with another oppressed group.
didn't realize that was a racist thing for me to say. i just figured you know, the two groups have something in common, that they've both been oppressed and discriminated against and that, knowing what its like, they wouldn't want to impose that on anybody else.
@Luke
I agree that Mr. Ruskin's legacy needs to be acknowledged by the community at large. But nothing can replace someone live and in person, shaking hands and confronting fears head on. Gay rights weren't even on my radar until two of my longtime friends came out, and I think a lot of other folks need the issue to hit home like that. If I were talking to Star Trek fans about the issue, I'd say "Vote No on Prop 8 so Mr. Sulu can get married."
Coates: I was watching the Congressional Black Caucus footage, and what struck me is that both of the Congressmen from Georgia were both very, very clear in their opposition to Prop 8. The Congresswoman from Los Angeles was very, very ambivalent.
And then I noticed that one of the Georgians referenced the fact that the anti-miscegenation laws in Georgia were still present in the 1960s, in his lifetime. And I suddenly remembered that the last anti-miscegenation law in California had been struck down in 1948.
So this attempt to link gay marriage to anti-miscegenation laws (and I say this at my peril) may have fallen flat simply because the Californian black community doesn't have the same history of fighting hard for civil rights in their generation--for them, the gaps in society are really caused by /economic/ discrimination--poor education, hiring practices, etc.
So, part of understanding the "black" sentiment, as it were, is understanding the "Californian black" history, and how it stands apart from the rest of the country. I mean, Barack Obama is an inspirational figure for African Americans, but he has a very different history than blacks in the South, blacks in Los Angeles, blacks in Chiago.
I'm an Israeli-born Jew from Southern California. I don't understand Jews from Brooklyn or Jews from South Florida as much as one might assume.
"I think if we really want to change black attitudes about gays, Jack T. it isn't just about prominent black Americans now, it would be important to remind the Af-Am Community that many of the best of the Civil Rights leaders were out and active gays and lesbians, and by restoring Bayard Ruskin and others to memory."
Go for it Luke. Lemme know how that works out for you.
"I grew up in Hyde Park, and that's one reason that I joined the Obama campaign. The other was that I was rather certain that a Black President would do more for gay rights than HRC would. Mostly because I'm a white gay, I figure I'll become less threatening in America given hangups in the US about black men and sex. But more importantly, Barack came out to his white Kansan Family as a Black Man, which is just about as bad as coming out gay to your black parents--and he went to college in NYC in the eighties."
How does one "come out" as a black man? Obama has been black since the day he was born in the U.S. And please stop assuming that black people are immune to human nature, including closed mindedness.
"I get that the Democratic Party is a big coalition, but the problem with being gay in it is that we're always told to wait til next year, and are constantly screwed over by the party at large makes me angry and tired. I'm and I'm 23; Stonewall was long enough ago that this should be settled."
40 years is a relative blink of the eye when it comes to human history. Do you realize how long it took for blacks and women to get equal rights in this country? Don't you realize that there many setbacks for every victory? Gays lost one battle in California, the point is to keep fighting until equal rights are achieved under the law. Even then, just like racism and sexism, homophobia will never completely disappear.