Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Prop 8, tensions, and why we all need to calm down
Anyone remember Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”? I loved Samuel Jackson’s character Mister Senor Love Daddy. A dj from the old school, Senor Daddy was a Greek chorus, commenting on the scenes and making cogent arguments when people lost their minds.
This was never clearer when the movie’s characters look into the camera and start spitting out racial slurs. Mister Senor Daddy breaks the game up and tells everyone to take a time out.
Where is our Love Daddy? The Prop 8 debate shows we all need a time out, a breather, a little time to collect our thoughts. Accusations and counter accusations have been heated and have been based on silly assumptions.
Now I know how the game is played. Right now someone is about to type a response that will say stop making excuses for black homophobia. I’m not. Never have. What I have argued is that the defeat of Prop 8 is based on multiple factors and to reduce it only to race is to smooth out the edges on a rather complex problem.
Here are some numbers by the folk over at 538.com and they make the persuasive case that Prop 8’s demise was more generational than racial.
To repeat myself: these numbers give no one a pass but the only way there will be progress is when we stop turning dense issues into simplistic slogans and rhetoric. Making black Californians the sole reason why Prop 8 failed is a memo that needs to be dropped.
Blacks????? Most gay anger in the post Prop 8 debate has been directed toward the Mormon Church, the chief organizer and funder of Prop 8. I have seen many signs at demonstrations railing against the Mormon Church and not a single one against Blacks. The polls show that Prop 8 picked up the most converts on the Sunday before election day when Catholics, fundamentalists and Mormons delivered political ads disguised as sermons. Before that Sunday, polls showed a slim lead for No on Prop 8. Also, exit polls showed that 80% of the persons who voted for Prop 8, voted for McCain. That says it all.
Hey Mike,
First off, many of us in California have paid close attention to everything going on with this civil rights struggle in every state. I’ve watched with frustration as the South and Midwest in particular have continually passed worse and worse anti-gay legislation. I know we have more favorable laws in CA than in virtually all those other states. But, to me, this is still different for a few reasons:
1. Yes, for those of us in California, this hits closer to home than what’s happened in other states. I bet what’s happened in Michigan is closest for you. If you get angry at people for caring most what happens in their own states, you’re going to spend most of your life angry.
2. We actually had SSM in California. My friends and colleagues who are in relationships were routinely getting married. Every week at SF City Hall I bumped into some couple I knew who had been together for years tying the knot. I’m from Virginia, and I grieved when that state passed a constitutional amendment against SSM. But that only made “more illegal” what was already illegal to begin with. What happened last week took away a constitutional RIGHT of marriage, and directly threw into question the marriages of people I know. This feels different and personal in a way that the bans in other states (which never had marriage to begin with) do not, regardless of my connections to other states. (That said, in practical terms you’re right that it’s far worse in states without civil unions or domestic partnerships. I get that.)
3. You know the drill – as California goes, so goes the nation. Legalization of SSM in California would’ve served as a beacon to the rest of the nation, far more so than MA or CT. We in California are protesting and rallying because this was done in OUR state, but the rest of the country is rallying because they understand the symbolic importance of equality here in California. You are free to organize and attend demonstrations concerning your state, and if a demonstration exists in California to protest unjust laws in Michigan, I’d happily attend.
70% – work around that one. I don’t care what color you are – if you voted to take someone’s rights away – shame on you. My question to Mr. WIthers is – what are you doing to end black homophobia yourself?
I think it’s clear that asking people nicely for our rights please thank you very much is never going to work. We need to stop trying to convince people to like us. Ain’t going to happen. This is a right. Period! No more voting on the rights of the minorities.
Agreed, but I think the focus on California is based on two things. For one thing, the gay marriage ban here is qualitatively different than it is in any other state, because Californians voted not merely to ban gay marriage in the first place but to eradicate the gay marriages that were already legal. As far as I know, it is the first time in our nation’s history when voters have voted to take away existing minority rights. Secondly, there’s a heightened focus on the black vote because we feel a tremendous sense of betrayal. From the beginning, gays were on the front lines of the fight for equal rights and civil rights for the African American community because we understood that when one minority doesn’t have rights, nobody does. It really hurts.
you can calm down if you choose to do so, mr. withers. frankly, my animosity has no limit! you better believe that anyone who supported this travesty will be feeling the pain along with the rest of us. there will be no passes for race, religion, or sex, don’t forget all the women who voted for this abomination.
how many years were women denied their rights, before they took matters into their own hands? it doesn’t matter to me what color you are, if you voted for it, you are are evil manifested.
Did anyone read the 538.com review and notice the statistics? They attributed the success of CA Prop 8, and I am sure, Florida Prop 2 to the OLD PEOPLE.
Yes, the old people are worried about getting to their pleasant, song-filled, wonderful, crown-adorned, angelic-winged after-life. So, in their desire to be a better person, they believe all the propaganda spewed by their power-hungry and greedy ministers/clerics/priests, and forget to think for themselves. They easily “just pushed a button” (or “filled out an oval”) and force their ill-begotten ideas on the rest of the people, and specifically a “suspect minority”. And yes, we are a suspect minority, albeit, some of us cannot cover up our outwardly gayness while some can “act and look straight” and hide accordingly.
They forgot about what all the fighting was for in 1776, 1812, 1860, WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam (and other recent skirmishes). They gave away our personal liberties and the U.S. Constitution to a corrupt political party, and an idiot of the highest degree.
You young people might just be surprised at what the fear of death and an UNCERTAIN after-life will do to one’s brain and actions when you are old.
While 538.com said in a few years the old bigots will die off, and be replaced with new younger more progressive voters, they failed to realize that the old who die off will be replaced with another group of old people who will begin to have the same concerns and doubts and will probably change their “younger vote” for a fearful, scared, doubtful “old fart vote”.
I don’t think we can ever count on the “old vote” to come over to the LGBTIQ side. People “get conservative”, like they “get religion” in their old age, and their vote will change accordingly. After all, the brain fails just like other parts of the body, and I think they become jealous of the virile abilities of the younger and they “just want to get back at them young-uns”, no matter where the fault lies.
Our only hope is the court, NOW AND LATER. Better NOW THAN LATER, I say.
There is a time for breathing and a time for reexamination. Like the defeated Republican Party, we as gay Americans need to go “into the wilderness” and work together with gay allies and come up with a stronger strategy aimed not at the grand gesture but at actually securing rights for G/L families. To many times we reach for the brass ring and miss it. This isn’t the first time we have lost. It is just he first time we lost something we actually won in a while. And do we forget we won in Arizona 2 years ago only to lose this year? Instead of demonizing and examining our opponents reasons and faults and organization, shouldn’t we be looking in the mirror and asking “what did we do?” Then ask what CAN we do to turn this around. Were our efforts worth the pyrric victory we are claiming? Lambda Legal seems to be hitting it out of the park most of the time, where are our other “national” and state organizations taking us after the lawsuit is done?
Mike in Detroit, the reason why it is so huge in California is the simple fact that California sets a standard. If it can happen here, it can happen elsewhere, and it would have. That is why the church’s fought so hard to have the Yes ON 8. If you are gay, and you are fighting for your rights, then dont go after us, we are not just protesting for ourselves, we are protesting for us as a whole.
As for us blaming the black community? Mr. Withers, you couldnt be more wrong. We have a lot of people to blame for what has happened, and I am not sure of the people your hanging out with that gives you that impression, but clearly you should leave your living room and come out and join us. We are also blamming ourselves for letting this happen. We have sat back for far too long thinking people will do the right thing. It took loosing on prop 8 to wake us up and for the first time ever, come together as a group for something other than a pride parade or a circuit party.
We have enough people on the outside trying to steal our thunder and make us look bad. Lets try not to do it from within our own group.
Mike in Detroit,
The problem is that California is one of the largest states in the nation, sort of seen as a progressive symbol in the nation. And it wasn’t just that the right to marriage was denied, it was taken away after it already existed. As far as I am aware of this hasn’t happened before anywhere else in the nation.
“Making black Californians the sole reason why Prop 8 failed is a memo that needs to be dropped.”
I don’t think that is what people are thinking. What has bothered so many gay people is the fact that another minority group which has been subject to the exact same kind of discrimination within the lifetime of many people today, as a majority, moved to enforce that same kind of discrimination onto another group, gay people.
It is painfully ironic and many gay people feel betrayed especially when they’ve been supportive of other minorities and their rights.
That’s the problem. And it’s worsened by the minority groups involved that downplay it and don’t own up to what has been exposed through the voting process. It’s just making people even more upset.
I disagree. It’s pretty obvious that winning the hearts and minds of our friends and neighbors has not worked. It hasn’t worked for decades. It’s time to get far more insistent, and perhaps extreme. Passivity is not doing the job.
Slightly off topic, but it’s strange that when marriage rights are denied in California the whole gay world goes off into protest marches, activism, and screams of “we woz robbed!”. However, similar, and exponentially more hateful and restrictive measures pass year after year in flyover states with hardly a second glance. So, California gays… welcome to what the rest of us have been putting up with and fighting against. We out in the hinterlands dont have civil unions, domestic partnerships, state protections or even simple hate crimes legislation in places like Michigan. Thanks for finally taking notice. Pardon me if I dont really give a shit whether or not ignorance won on Prop 8. If any of you had been paying attention, you’d have known this was coming.
Wayne,
Link is fixed. Thanks.
Sincerely,
James
I don’t think most people have implied that “black Californians [are] the sole reason why Prop 8 failed”. The Mormon Church and it’s role in this debacle has been discussed at great length (There are even calls to boycott Utah). But you seem particularly averse to speaking about the topic of anti-gay bigotry and homophobia within the African American community and it’s pivotal role in the passage of prop 8.
ps. It may just be me, but your “Accusations and counter accusations” link doesn’t seem to work.