Comments on: Equality for All

By: Lidon

Lidon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:09:13 +0000

V: “…while the NO folks either failed to see it or naively took for granted that they’d be allies…which is condescending and racist in itself…”

Well, if the gay community expected me, as a woman, to be able to relate with them and to vote no on Prop 8, I wouldn’t find that sexist. Being that homophobia is inherently sexist, one would hope that I would get a clue and be able to relate with second class status in some way or another. I wouldn’t toss around the word “racist” too often, it gets watered down and loses meaning. That context you mentioned refers to *experience* as a result of race (or minority status), not simply *race* itself.

And call me naive, but I would be surprised if the gay community voted against civil rights for other groups. And I would call that hypocritical.

And white Christians are hypocritical too! All Christians that judge everything that moves are hypocritical. And you don’t have to be on the highest pedestal to be a hypocrite, that would just make you an even bigger one.

Although I think all of this is beside the point, and we should be focusing our energies to reach out to everyone, ultimately. I’m calling a spade a spade, but I’m not going to convince others of hypocrisy. It’s a pointless argument.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:34:39 +0000

Thank you Warren!

By: NancyP

NancyP — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:24:41 +0000

Pointing fingers is a useless and harmful exercise. A long-term outreach strategy is needed, from white gays to black gays, from black gays to their family members (potential allies) and later, communities, from gay-affirming black ministers to gay-rejecting black ministers. Furthermore, white gays need to familiarize themselves with basic facts about the black experience – item one being the fact that “the black church” is a much more important social organisation than white churches. Plus, white gays need to be willing to help black political and charitable initiatives. Be a friend to make a friend.

We also need some loud-mouthed LDS (Mormon) and Catholic parents to publicly ream out their churches for meddling.

By: V

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:26:42 +0000

I’m surprised no one has mentioned Bayard Rustin, and his lifelong soulsearching about having to choose one identity and civil rights struggle (the black civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s) over another (his homosexuality and the emergent gay rights movement and consciousness). As it was, he remained a key strategist but always behind the scenes, just in case he should be publicly outed… His story — and why he made the choices he did — are still painfully relevant today.

We should be building bridges right now, not burning them. The African-American community was a key constituency in the Prop 8 fight — something the YES side recognized and acted on with extremely effective church-based organizing — while the NO folks either failed to see it or naively took for granted that they’d be allies…which is condescending and racist in itself…

By: Mel

Mel — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:24:45 +0000

Incidentally, Anonymous Coward, that margin of error only applies if the sample was selected evenly and randomly across the entire state. It wasn’t–several precincts were selected randomly, and there is no guarantee that those precincts demographically represented the state as a whole. Then the sample was selected randomly from within those precincts. That should raise the margin of error quite a bit.

There’s some good discussion of exit poll issues at FiveThirtyEight.com:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/ten-reasons-why-you-should-ignore-exit.html

By: Mel

Mel — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:17:50 +0000

The individual anecdotes are very sad and hurtful, absolutely, but I wish people would stop quoting the goddamn CNN exit poll to justify generalizing beyond individual anecdotes to decide those people represent whole communities. That exit poll has a vast margin of error and absolutely NO guarantee of being representative of California as a whole–in fact, it’s very unlikely that it is. Looking at their Colorado exit poll, I KNOW it’s unrepresentative of Colorado’s voting demographics (the CO sample includes no Latinos and no one under 30, both large chunks of the voting populace), and I see no reason to think the CA poll — done with the same methodology — is any better.

Are some black people homophobic? Yes. But we have NO REAL EVIDENCE to think that it’s more common than in any other demographic group.

By: meagan dixon

meagan dixon — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:20:50 +0000

Our history is littered with the denials of basic human rights – and people fighting to achieve them. Most notably for me is the woman’s suffrage movement, and the ratification of the 19th Amendment to include women in the right to vote – an amendment I thank God for every election day. For it’s only been 88 years now that women have been able to vote – and there are people alive today who remember when they could not. Women fought for and won their right to vote in the War of Roses – members of Congress and supporters of suffrage wore yellow roses to show their support, and the opposition wore red roses to show theirs. I would like to take a note from those brave women’s hands.

For complete article go here

By: Cecca

Cecca — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:16:50 +0000

Every time I see someone surprised at the percentage of black voters who supposedly voted for Prop 8 (I say “supposedly” because one exit poll does not an adequate measure make), I have to wonder if that person has any familiarity with the African-American community at all. Blacks in this country are overwhelmingly religious. Not all of us, but a great deal. Blacks tend to be fiscally liberal because we’re so over-represented in the lower class, but socially conservative because of the prevalence of the conservative Christian viewpoint. Combine that with Yes on 8′s fearmongering, and No on 8 would have needed to do a lot of minority church outreach to woo black voters. This isn’t rocket science. This is just something I know from having grown up black in this country for the past 21 years. It’s also something any decent campaign manager should have known and worked with.

By: transgenmom

transgenmom — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:13:26 +0000

It is bigotry, this idea that black people have some special spiritual obligation to recognize the basic rights of others because small groups of certain others have occasionally done the same for them, even when it was not in their immediate self-interest. It is bigotry, the idea that those people should know better when most people don’t.
Hopefully more people realize this because of this.

And the thing is that I am sure that the black people who voted against this weren’t too happy with Obama. They were probably like Jesse Jackson and had serious issues with the fact that he was raised by white socially liberal people. Obama was never the black cultural candidate. Culturally he has more in common with the stereotypical gay person.

By: woland

woland — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:03:48 +0000

I’m dismayed too, both by the racism and by the blame that’s been directed at the No campaign and the gay community in general. Why blame the person who’s just been stabbed in the gut for not fighting back hard enough? Blame the bigots of all races who campaigned and voted for the disgusting thing. If there are lessons to be learned from the failure, learn them, but do it without attacking the victim.

I suspect, too, that many of the activists – gay and straight – who could have been working to defeat the proposition were campaigning for Obama. I hope he shows more leadership than he has to date on this issue, keeps his promise to repeal DOMA, and gets rid of DADT. It’s time for the political leaders who have benefited from the work of the LGBTQ community and our allies to finally come out and say that writing anti-gay marriage amendments into constitutions is wrong. Enough. No more forgiving the Donny McClurkin incidents or tolerating the tepid opposition to 8 that came from so many politicians.