Subscribe to Breaking NewsVanasco: Blame religion, not race
Researchers, in conjunction with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, released a report today that said that people who voted against gay marriage in California had four things in common:
1. They attended religious services weekly
2. They were Republicans
3. They were conservatives
4. They were born before World War II
It is these factors, rather than race or gender, that made the difference - the researchers say that no more than 58 percent of African-Americans voted yes on Prop 8, putting them in line with all other ethnic groups.
We’ll have a news story on this with more details later (and a link to the report), but I thought this was important, and that we should get something up about it quickly.
There was a long conversation on the call about what the next steps might be. One interesting discovery - the vote wasn’t influenced by whether someone knew a gay person. One researcher made the point that opposition to gay marriage isn’t personal - it’s partsian. If you’re Republican, religious, conservative, you will be against it, no matter how many gay people you wave to at the grocery store.
Nevertheless, folks at the Task Force thinks that LGBT Christians should try outreach in their own churches. They say that substantial conversations may have an impact. And they say we need to make stronger, better, more frequent arguments to religious leaders about how it is a moral good to support all families, not just straight ones.
Your thoughts?
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is one of those organizations which pays far far more attention to issues(abortion, affirmative action, social security, immigration reform) which don’t effect, or only nominally effect LGBT Americans. This group takes enormous pains to form alliances with other groups, such as NARAL, NAACP, National Council of La Raza all of which don’t give two sh*ts about gay and lesbian issues.
Race had just as much to do with the passage of Prop 8 as did religion. In fact black women, who we gay people expect more from, considering their adversity, were the ones who voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8.
Gay people cannot be faulted for not reaching out to African Americans and other racial minorities. In regard to African-Americans gay people expected that given their history of oppression, that black people would be the FIRST to understand. However, black people contrary to what the NGLTF and NAACP would have us believe, are just as capable of being bigots as white people.
“Your thoughts?”
My thoughts are our civil rights should not be dependent on making a case to people morally opposed to homosexuality due to their religious beliefs. Even if we won rights doing so it still does not work because it makes determining civil rights based on pandering to a majority and hoping they approve instead of the idea that civil rights are something more inherent to being human that should be protected regardless of what a majority might think, especially for religious reasons.
And it’s appalling that 58% of blacks supported such a proposition that took away the right for a fellow minority that they too once were denied from less than 50 years ago..
I’m glad this was published. We need to stop the racial fingerpointing. The only connection with race this has is that African Americans tend to be more religious. I’ve been on other messageboards where the back and forth is nonstop. What I learned from those are that people who are for Prop 8 (and arguing on message boards) are super conservative, religious and will never waver in their beliefs because in their mind homosexuality is a sin. But like the study shows, not even knowing a gay person will change their minds.
“Gay people cannot be faulted for not reaching out to African Americans and other racial minorities.”
Of course we can. If we aren’t willing to even do such a simple thing, who are we to complain when such groups don’t vote in our favor. To expect such a thing because of some false sense of commonality is hypocritical. In general the “gay” community isn’t that open to racial minorities, so who are we to get upset when those same groups don’t vote in our favor.
The 58% figure that is stated in this article is the lowest percentage that I’ve seen so far. It would have been nice to know who the “researchers” are, and why their numbers appear so skewed.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that “no more than 58 percent of African-Americans voted yes on Prop 8″, however. After all, that mirrors the results from my own “progressive” (haha) state’s similar Constitutional Amendment in 2004….when 59% of the AA population helped vote bigotry into our state Constitution.
That was five years ago. I really wasn’t surprised at the outcome in California. The precedent had already been set.
How can we take this article seriously? Just recently, I heard D. L. Hughley talking about how calling our movement a civil rights movement is not right. That we have four hundred years and a few bus rides before we can call it a civil rights movement. A reverend agreed with him.
If we aren’t even seen as a civil rights movement, then what are we doing? And we get told by our President Elect it is okay to have a difference of opinion on the marriage issue.
It is okay to have a difference of opinion when it comes to gays.
Hating a group is okay because it is a difference of opinion.
Hating us is okay as part of a normal discourse.
Hating us is an intellectual exercise between people of differing views.
IT IS NOT OKAY TO HATE US. IT IS NOT OKAY TO BE HOMOPREJUDICE .
No other group would allow that kind of representation or symbol about themselves. But we are supposed to be the good fairies and dykes that just fix their hair and make their clothes and shut up.
NO. I WON’T GO QUIETLY. I WILL NOT PRETEND THAT OUR FRIENDS HAVE HARMED US. OUR ENEMIES I EXPECT.
The Mormons and Rick Warren are not on the side of Progressives. Never have been. We have not as a consistent force voted with the Mormons. But the African American community? We have. To try and make this racial is dirty. This was homophobic, religious persecution and conservative juxtaposition. But race? Are we to ignore that vast number of certain ethnic groups voted en masse for a candidate? And in doing something that has never been done to that degree influenced a vote against us? Are we to ignore that a group that is supposedly in the progressive wing for so many issues which we as a group have traditionally supported, has gone against us when given a unequivocal chance?
Trying to call people racist is a form of fascism. We are under attack and we are to pretend that we were not betrayed. That is a fatal position to take. Don’t get me wrong; we need to take on the Religious institutions that came after us. But they were never our friends. But the other groups were were purported to be. Et tu Brute?
Little Earth said:
“… people who are for Prop 8 (and arguing on message boards) are super conservative, religious and will never waver in their beliefs because in their mind homosexuality is a sin … like the study shows, not even knowing a gay person will change their minds.”
That’s exactly right.
It’s a waste of time, energy, money, and other resources to attempt to “reach out” to religious bigots who would have to change their CORE DOCTRINES (and supposedly endanger their “hope of heaven” in the process) in order to accept GLBTQA people OR marriage equality.
Mormons are taught that only Mormons who procreate in a heterosexual “temple” marriage can reach the highest level of heaven.
According to their teachings, God and Mrs. God “boink” on the Planet Kolob in order to create souls (!), so to them heterosexual intercourse is essential in both an earthly AND a heavenly sense.
Somebody recently unearthed a statement by a previous pope that sex is ONLY to be used for procreation in a heterosexual marriage, and that to use it for PLEASURE (heaven forfend!) is a MORTAL SIN.
We don’t need to go into the hypocrisy of the kraven konservative kristianist kultist krazies (KKKKK for short); Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, et alia are on display for all to see, along with Senator “Wide Stance” Craig.
Has it every occurred to anyone that they WANT to keep gaysex a dirty little secret because it’s more EXCITING that way?
Danger IS an aphrodisiac .
By all means network with the NAACP, La Raza, etc., but don’t waste your time trying to “convert” individual homophobic kristianists.
It’s not going to happen.
In the same way, the Kristianist Reich can’t give you a list of reasons why heterosexual marriages are being destroyed because of homosexual marriages becoming legal … because there ARE no logical reasons, and it’s NOT HAPPENING.
Massachusetts has continued to have one of the lowest divorce rates in the nation AFTER same-sex marriage became legal.
Go figure .
Cheers,
Bud Burgoon-Clark
San Diego CA USA
happily “recovering” Christian
happily gay
happily married to my HUSBAND
I’s time we all congregate in one location. Instead of “Gay Day” at Disney World where hundreds of thousands or us meet to play and show a few businesses the power of the Gay Dollar over the course of a few days - we should meet in Washington. Why not mirror the Red t-shirts of Gay Day and march on the streets of our country’s capitol to show this country just how large of a group we are. Think about it. We are many - yet we are dispersed throughout making it appear that we are few. If a group of people can have such a dramatic impact in “taking over Disney World” then imagine the impact we could have with a fully organized showing of th GLBT community in full force in Washington!! Talk about a Gay Pride Parade…
Where is this friendship and betrayal that you speak of when it comes it the gay community and racial minorities? In reality the gay community doesn’t do anything for racial minorities so who are we to complain when they don’t do something in our favor? Before anyone says that we helped to bring in Obama, most of us did that because we didn’t want a republican in office, not because he was black.
Also calling someone racist is just as fascist as calling someone a homophobe.
The LGBT community was deeply hurt by the passage of Prop 8 and interpreted this as “hate” and “homophobia” and “bigotry” and a lot of other words, which I would agree with in theory. On the other hand, many supporters of Prop 8, including many minorities genuinely did not see it that way and simply saw their vote as an affirmation of their own values (which, incidentally just “happen” to be discriminatory). But certainly, in their minds, it was not done out of “malice” or “hate” for LGBT people. Now, I think they’re wrong, but here’s the issue:
Why is it that you want people to take your claims of “hate” at face-value, but when people of color within your own community isolate a problem and call it “racism,” they are ignored and disbelieved? The very fact that almost all the ads against Prop 8 were lily-white is ITSELF a symptom of racism among LGBTs, but people will go through backflips to deny this.
Instead of using this disaster as an opportunity to reexamine ourselves and how we too act in ways that adversely affect other groups, far too many would rather deflect, deflect, deflect and engage in a one-directional blame of people of color. But why should anyone listen to LGBT cries of “bigotry!” and “hate!” when we won’t listen to the cry of the oppressed in our own community?
Gays and lesbians often ask far more of straight people than they are willing to give to oppressed people in their own communities (trans people, people of color, the poor, etc) then have the nerve to ask, how could people of color “betray” them.
Where did that 58% come from? CNN and the other news services said it was much higher, closer to 75%. The other factors listed in the article may have made the difference but there is still no excuse for the majority of African American voters to try to take away our civil rights. No other minority voted like that and that is indisputable.
58 %. That’s a lot. And you say the correlates were religion, Republican affiliation, conservative values, and age. So, these 58% of African Americans were conservative Republicans, or at least a significant number of them were? That just doesn’t jibe with the numbers in which they voted for the Democratic candidate for president.
Help me understand this. The majority of the 58% of African Americans who voted for Prop 8 were older, born before WWII folks? Does that mean that the younger African Americans voted against Prop 8?
I’m sure there’s more to the story, as you acknowledge. I couldn’t participate in the call today, but I hope the entire text will be posted. These numbers sound a little hinky, and I hope they weren’t conveniently manufactured as another poster suggested.
I understand our desire to thwart the splitting of blacks and gays. Lord knows, none of us will achieve equality as long as we are preoccupied with knocking each other down. At the same time, many of us know intuitively what the CNN poll numbers suggested: African Americans are way behind whites in accepting gays. Black churches and black leaders have not embraced equality for LGBT people, many arguing instead that it’s a sin and a choice. We know this is a problem. No, we don’t want to split, but we really do need to understand this issue, confront it, and see if we can find a way to bring ALL communities along on our quest for equality.
Interracial marriage is a choice, lets ban it!
Organized religion is the root of the vast majority of homophobia. People who are so fully inculcated (brainwashed) into theeir religion and who have no compelling reason to question their dogma are almost certainly not going to be changing their minds. That is an exercise in futility.
What we need to do is spend more time supporting religious leaders and institutions that support us in return. We also need to confront religious homo-ignorant types at every turn - from the Pope to Rick Warren. We need to expose the ignorance and hypocrisy that is their lifeblood.
Unfortunately, we may not get much further until the old folks simply die off and the younger ones, who have grown up with GLBT people more openly, have their time.
That people who voted for Prop 8 TENDED to be older, religious, conservative and Republican shouldn’t have been news to anyone. It’s nice that NGLTF wanted to corroborate this with a study, but unless some new insight was gained, why spend the money?
As for the stated percentages of AA pro Prop 8 voters (58% vs. >70% from a CNN exit poll), what do you expect from an exit poll conducted at a few polling places? If you want to suspect anyone, suspect CNN. Oh, but the media are objective and unbiased? Right. The NGLTF study is probably based on actual voting data. CNN’s poll also showed 27% of gay voters voting for McCain. Gosh, are more than a quarter of ALL GLBT voters Republican, older, conservative or religious? Or just racist?
And as for reaching out to religious communities, I’ll leave that to other gay folks who actually go to church. It’s their congregation, not mine. Atheists can’t get no respect in churches. I would hope our next campaign highlights equality before the law for all Americans, not further internicene doctrinal squabbles.