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.
James Withers, PLEASE STOP talking to these racist. The damage is done and can never be repaired. We, gays of colour, now know who they are and their words are in print. We know what they think about us and it is not very good. Let them fight for “their rights and ignore other minorities”, and see how far they get without us. The line is drawn, the nation is watching and they have fucked themselves…again!
This Saturday take a sign against racism to the protests. PLEASE! We must stop the fanning of the flames of division.
Calm down?!?!?! Are you f*cking stupid and retarded?!?! We need to harness the justified rage and anger at this very moment and summon the spirit of Stonewall. People like you, who keep telling justifiably angry, gay people that we need to calm down and slow down are the very reason our community is being bypassed at the speed of light by every other nation on earth!!
If anything we need to get madder, angrier, we need to drop the civility, the kumbaya my lord b*llshit and we need to stop singing and start swinging!!
Yes, we need to calm down. And put a real strategy in place. One that will have impact over the years, instead of being a “tipping point”. Yes, TPs have value, but oftentimes TPs are negative reactions, not positive ones.
We must always remember that just as we are not going to merely go away, our real enemy, the Christofascist Right will not go away either. Read the latest Tony Perkins piece in Family Research Council’s newsletter. It’s more than a “we will prevail” article; it calls for some serious action in Washington. And the rhetoric used is very inflammatory. And remember the kind of crowd FRC caters to: a group that looks like it just came from a Sarah Palin rally – or for a more visual effect, the village mob scene from FRANKENSTEIN!
Take a tip from Mel White’s Soulforce rides: quiet and unobtrusive, but to the point. Soulforce rides are mainly for college campuses. But they should also be for inner cities.
In any case, a knee-jerk reaction is fine as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.
Frankly, I think it’s time to take the streets a la Stonewall. “They” think they can kick us around? When the streets start burning they may not call us pansies any more. We can call this ActUp-Plus!
The toothpaste is out of the tube. We must stay on the streets, in the courts and out of the businesses and service providers that supported prop 8.
You can get a list of contributers at http://www.sffate.com, put in your State, City and zip and if you patient you can see which persons own business in your town or provide services by clicking on “details.”
Sure, stop blaming anyone but keep your own truth, but get moving forward and keep fighting this injustice.
Here’s proof of Mason’s statement. We can quote her on our signs this weekend.
Posted 3/24/04
Coretta Scott King gives her support to gay marriage
POMONA, N.J. (AP) — The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. called gay marriage a civil rights issue, denouncing a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban it.
Constitutional amendments should be used to expand freedom, not restrict it, Coretta Scott King said Tuesday.
“Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union,” she said. “A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.”
Mark,
It’s never a good idea to quote myself, but here are some words from me in three different posts:
1. 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 (from today).
2. Everyone here has suggested, rightfully of course, that homophobia in the black community needs to be talked about and defeated. No argument from me (Nov. 10).
3. You want to talk about black homophobia? Let’s go at it, but let’s also point out that it is part of the same thinking that made marriage rights face defeats in Arizona and Florida (Nov. 6).
Can you please point out what I’m not accepting?
Sincerely,
James
I wish Coretta King was still alive today. I’m sure her influence could have helped relieve some of the tension on both sides of this argument. She was in support of gay marriage and believed in the similarities of the African American and LGBT civil rights movements. If only we were aware of the impact that the African American community would have on the ballot, we could have reminded them of that.
Come on Withers, I know it most be difficult to accept but anti gay bigotry in the black community played an important role in the passage of this law.
No one is saying that African Americans were solely responsible for the Yes on H8te ban to go through but they did play a part on making it happen and their rejection of such a hateful law would’ve made the difference.
The numbers don’t lie, the responses that black women gave to pollsters don’t lie, the black preachers and community organizers who have been appearing on TV supporting the Yes vote ever since the protests erupted don’t lie, I mean at one point you just need to face the ugly reality in front of you.
It’s tough, I myself don’t like it and it makes me feel more than sad, I’m ashamed even though I voted against it but my vote was cancelled by the many other black votes who voted for it. I know family members who voted for it. It’s hard to accept Withers but it happened.
I’m sorry, but I am 45 years old… I remember Harvey Milks murder… I was part of the ActUp generation. If anything I have learned is now is NOT the time to back up and take a breath…Now IS the time time to fight. If not now when ?? We MUST elect our own and not depend on others to “do the right thing”… If you let them get away with this they won’t stop. They never will. Neither can we.
JIM WEBBER SAID: “exit polls showed that 80% of the persons who voted for Prop 8, voted for McCain. That says it all.”
That can’t be right. 90+ percent of African Americans voted for Obama; 70+ percent voted for Prop H8.
The African-American and Latino communities are hard nuts to crack as far as LGBT and AIDS education is concerned. The black community winks at bisexual men on the “down-low;” the Latino community believes that only the passive partner in gay male sex is gay, OR likely to get AIDS. Somehow, the “macho” penetrator imagines himself immune. Also, conservative black preachers have reinforced the myth that homosexuality is “the white man’s disease.” We’ve seen instances of that kind of nonsense throughout history. Syphilis was called “the French disease” by non-French people. Conservative black Anglicans and Romans in Africa have supported draconian laws against GLBT people, up to and including the death penalty.
I was STUNNED by African-American support for Prop H8; but then again, I’m also stunned when ultra-Orthodox rebbes, many of them Holocaust survivors, scream the loudest against LGBT people when civil rights for US come up.
Bud Burgoon-Clark
San Diego
2nd class citizen, no thanks to a bunch of IGNORANT RELIGIOUS FANATICS OF *WHATEVER* RACE!
I agree, Wayne. Hate and anger will get us nowhere. Let’s pick it up again when things cool down.
Just like some times bad people do good things; sometimes good people do bad things. Give them time.
The gay community needs to increase the crowds that disturb the calm of the religious bigots that felt that they had the right to impose their beliefs and superstions on others in direct opposition to the rights and protections garanteed by the United States and California constitutions. Christianity is not the law of the land. If it were we would not have a democracy but a theocracy like that in Iran.
There is plenty of blame to go around and now is certainly not the time to calm down. The anger that’s being taken to the streets in the form of protests is wonderful and necessary. What needs to happen in addition to the protest is political action. Get angry! It’s time to make the system work for us instead of against us.