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Loading ...Analysis: Gay rights in a post modern world
12.01.2008 8:32am EST
(New York City) Gay is the new black, say the protest signs and magazine covers, casting the gay marriage battle as the last frontier of equal rights for all.
Gay marriage is not a civil right, opponents counter, insisting that minority status comes from who you are rather than what you do.The gay rights movement entered a new era when Barack Obama was elected the first black president the same day that voters in California and Florida passed referendums to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying, while Arizonans turned down civil unions and Arkansans said no to adoptions by same-sex couples.
Racism was defanged by Obama’s triumph, leaving gays as perhaps the last group of Americans claiming that their basic rights are being systematically denied.
“Black people are equal now, and gay people aren’t,” said Emil Wilbekin, a black gay man and the editor of Giant magazine. “I always have this discussion with my friends: What’s worse, being a black man or a black gay man?”
“Civil rights have come much further than gay rights,” he said. “A lot of people in the gay community have been condemned for their lifestyle and promiscuity and drugs and sex, so it’s odd that when they want to conform and model themselves after straight people and have the same rights for marriage and domestic partnership and adoption, they’re being blocked.”
In a cover story for the Advocate magazine titled “Gay is the New Black,” Michael Joseph Gross wrote, “These past few years we’ve made so much progress that we’d begun to think everybody saw us as we see ourselves. Suddenly we were faced with the reality that a majority of voters don’t like us, don’t think we’re normal, don’t believe our lives and loves count as much or are worth as much as theirs.”
Yet even some gay leaders are reluctant to directly tie their fight to the African-American legacy. They acknowledge significant differences in the experiences of gays and blacks, ranging from slavery to the relative affluence of white gay men to the choice made by some gays to conceal their sexual orientation, which is not an option for those with darker skin.
“I believe we are very much in a modern-day civil rights struggle,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization.
“We liken some of the experiences that we have had and will have to the (black) civil rights struggle. We also are enormously respectful of the differences,” he said. “What we are best served doing is when we take lessons from the civil rights experience and apply them to our work.”
Complicating the issue is the domination of minority politics by blacks and Latinos, who can be less than friendly to gay issues.
In the vote on Proposition 8 in California, which repealed gay marriage, about 70 percent of blacks favored the ban, according to an exit poll; Latinos’ close vote may have favored it, though the poll’s small sample left some uncertainty. In Florida, 71 percent of blacks and 64 percent of Latinos favored a similar ban.
Opposition to gay rights often has a religious basis, and blacks and Latinos are more churchgoing than society at large. Twenty-six percent of blacks attend religious services more than once per week, compared with 16 percent of Latinos and 14 percent of whites, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
“I do not consider (gays) to be a minority in legal and adjudicated terms, the same way people who only like to eat broccoli with butter aren’t a minority,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “We can’t categorize things according to behavior. It’s based on ethnicity, on who we are rather than what we do.”
“Who am I to say that you weren’t born that way … (but) sexual activity, what you do, who you sleep with, is your business,” Rodriguez said. “That’s between you, your lover, and the good God Almighty in heaven. I don’t want to know. Let’s leave sexual activity in the bedroom. The government shouldn’t be legislating what we do behind closed doors between two consenting adults. And to compare it to the African-American struggle, to me that’s an abomination.”
So is gay the new black, or did the election define a new and unique set of gay challenges?
“The gay fight for marriage has its own integrity, its own background,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. “The experience of blacks in the United States is very different. … I don’t think it helps the fight for equality to make that claim.”
Cherlin says that fight began in the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic unfolded. Gay partners had few rights to help their ailing loved ones, visit them in hospitals or inherit their property, which led to the push for civil unions.
Today, only Connecticut and Massachusetts permit gay marriage, and a few states allow civil unions or domestic partnerships that grant some rights of marriage. Galvanized by the stinging Nov. 4 defeat in liberal California, the marriage movement is now as much symbolic as practical.
“There was a shift in the ’90s, from rights to the symbolism of being married,” Cherlin said. “This is not primarily a battle about rights now. If it was, all you’d be hearing about is domestic partnerships. Now it’s at two levels simultaneously. One is the level of rights; the second is the level of symbols.”
One symbol that some see missing from the gay rights movement is a figurehead. There are famous people who are out and proud, such as Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., or Ellen DeGeneres. But “we don’t have our Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Barack Obama,” Wilbekin said.
Yet the nature of activism has changed since the days when King proposed the idea of a mass march on Washington. The recent nationwide gay protests were instigated by a Seattle blogger who set up a Web page three days after the California vote.
And in some ways, gays see Obama himself as a symbol of gay progress – even though he opposes gay marriage.
Obama is in favor of civil unions, and during his victory speech, when he included gays in his description of America, it made them feel part of the historic racial milestone.
Solmonese said that the election defeats of Nov. 4 have inspired a level of gay activism not seen since the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
“That is buoyed by equal parts anger and rage about Proposition 8,” he said, “but also hope and inspiration about doing something that for a long time we didn’t think possible – like electing Barack Obama as our president.”
Both black rights and gay rights are CIVIL RIGHTS. The differences between the struggles for black rights and gay rights are superficial and DO NOT change the fact that both are CIVIL RIGHTS.
Anyone who disagrees with that can just go back to their sadomasochistic threesome with Jesus and Malcolm X.
The comparison was triggered at the beginning by anti-gay spokepersons, whose arguments against equal rights for gays were disturbingly similar to arguments that have been used against racial equality since way back when. There’s no way to answer those arguments other than to point out the fact that to say they hold water now, would be arguing against the advances that were made then.
Blacks and whites in the US have an endogenous mating pattern that is unique in the world. No where else does a minority racial group native to the country not assimilated into the mainstream culture after awhile through intermarriage. It is only in the US, and only with blacks – even after 400 years. Blacks are still mostly separate, and thus not equal in the US. It is 2 cultures, coexisting in the same place. So, LGBT and black as not so similar in this regards. White LGBT people are still part of the whole. It is different.
I hate the word morality in the hands of a morally corrupt individual, because they seem to exploit the meaning. To the people who say that we have a choice, well, we dont. And the proof is: affection. Its an uncontrollable occurance. We cannot control the fact that we have a crush on someone. Homosexuality is an uncontrollable process, and this is to be acknowledged by the world population in order to stop the inequalities this minority group has been forced upon. For now I can say that we have merely taken a few steps toward equality in all minority groups. Homosexuality is a majorly unequal group.
The inequality between blacks and whites in the past is no different to the inequality between gays and lesbians, face today, and to a lesser extent women in general. Its who we are as a person, who we have accepted to become, and who we wish to be for the future that counts. And if people cannot see that than it’ll be a couple more thousand miles before we see the equality in front of us
Sara,
I just can’t wait till the day when civil unions instead of marriage for gay couples are recognized by my government.
xman,
Look a little bit harder in United States Patent and Trademark Office. I’m sure AA’s have a patent on civil rights, they most certainly act like they do.
Discrimination is discrimination. Bottom line. It doesn’t matter if it’s white on black, black on white, or straight on gay. No matter how you look at it, it’s all unpleasant and unnecessary. The ignorant folks keeping this alive are the EXACT same individuals who all want to live as though this country should still be segregated, with seperate washrooms/drinking fountains, and designated seating on buses and trains. They point their judgmental fingers at me, a gay man in a loving 16 year monagamous relationship, and foolishly claim that I am the one who is destroying the so-called “moral” fabric of society. These are the same self-righteous villains who beat, maim, and murder scores of gay men and women throughout this nation–all in the name of God, of course–and then dare to imply that my community’s struggle for equality is “not a civil right.”
Why should I, an American citizen, have to fight for something my friends and neighbors are already guaranteed by virtue of their orientation? Why should common people have the right to vote on the privileges they feel I should or should not have? That’s hypocrisy at its most pathetic! I hold a professional job, contribute to society, and pay yearly taxes just like everybody else. Why, then, am I not entitled to legally marry the one man I love more than anything on this earth? I have yet to hear one intelligent response to that question. The only tired defense those who fought and scratched to get PROP 8 passed have at their disposal is misinformed fear and outdated biblical refrences written by men thousands of years dead in their graves.
Well, you wanna’ know something? I’m sick of that. I’m 37 years old, and I shouldn’t have to justify my life to a bunch of biased bible-thumping strangers who are NEVER going to be an integral part of my day-to-day existence. I couldn’t care less how these regressive people live, either, because it’s plain and simply NONE OF MY BUSINESS. “Live and let live.” Does nobody understand that old addage anymore?
Folks, gay rights ARE civil rights….not “like” civil rights, not black rights…not anything else. Gay rights should have nothing to do with what we do in or out of our bedrooms…..lord knows if everything that goes on in “straight” bedrooms got a full airing they’d lose they’re “civil” rights too, I guess. All civilizations have suffered under the whip of slavery and oppression for thousands upon thousands of years in one form or another. For all of those years gays have suffered within all those civilizations. Blacks have not suffered oppressoin for just 500 years and gays have not suffered just since the 60s, 70s and 80s. It has been literally thousands of years. As many have said, “we are born gay”. Out of the 37+ years I have been with my partner only a small…make that tiny, part of that time has been spent in bed having sex. Being gay is much, much bigger than just sex….and THAT is what we have to get the rest of society to understand before we will ever win this fight.
In early 1900s and before that, the majority didn’t view and support the women rights as the civil rights. In 1950s, the majority did not view and support Black rights as the civil rights. Now the majority still do not view gay rights including gay marriage as the civil rights. Worst of all, the very large majority of the Blacks do not view gay rights as the civil rights. I predict that from now and on Blacks WILL suffer more hidden and invisible discriminations in different aspects of their daily lives (e.g. decline to have a private contract with a black person, request for a non-black server / doctor, avoiding them, not inviting them and many more that the federal and state governments couldn’t prove and enforce). Very unfortunately they will rollback their civil rights. It is because not only that 70% of them voted against the gay marriage, but 95% (of the Blacks) instead of 52% (the percentage of popular vote went for Obama) voted for Obama. Obviously the very large % of them voted for Obama as based on the color of skin, not on the issues. Seemingly many of them have forgotten that Obama is a half black man, and his mentality, values and soul still are very much white through his white mother and grandparent. Obama truly is an Oreo cookie. Furthermore they seemed to forget that if the majority vote on anti-black amendments to the state constitions in 1950s, many of them would have been passed easily as a hot knife slicing through a butter. It was the Supreme Court who saved the Blacks from the tyranny of majority. Some whites including some Obama voters and other minorities have said they will remember that unfairness demonstrated by the Black majority toward McCain, Republicans and gay people when they are voting again in 2010, 2012 and future elections. I as the minority and Obama voter was so heartbroken by the 70% of blacks voting against the gay marriage as one of the civil rights for gay people.
“Gay is the new Black” while it is true that there are similarities between the two struggles for equal rights. The headline should of read “Black is the new White”
Ken Black people vote for Democrats in great number anyway. There is pride that he is an African American, at least in name. But as you say he is related more to American white people more than American blacks. Kenya is not US black. Just like Sweden is not Italy. He is biracial anyway. Half white, half black. It is that silly one drop rule that makes people think of him as black. Obviously, more people voted for him because they liked him or his party or whatever better. Don’t lay a guilt trip on black because of Obama. For AAs in CA prop8 – ok. But Obama – No. – He is just a politician.
The strategy we seem to be taking with the “Gay is the new Black” is to make blacks feel ashamed for being anti-gay. And I’m not sure that it’s going to work. Blacks have fought the oppression of shame the same way gays have. Black Pride is about as penetrable as Gay Pride. We use pride as a defense mechanism.
Nevertheless, we are right to tie our rights to civil rights, because that’s what they are. If you actually read the Civil Rights act, you can see that it was not just passed for the benefit of blacks. It prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. We are simply seeking to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list.
If we weren’t so caught up in marriage right now, I would say we should be marching to amend the Civil Rights Act.
Reverend Rodriguez is off his rocker with his comment: “I do not consider (gays) to be a minority in legal and adjudicated terms, the same way people who only like to eat broccoli with butter aren’t a minority.”
If this country was depriving peanut-and-broccoli eaters of THEIR civil rights, I’d be offended by that as well.
The bottom line is that people should not be persecuted or disenfranchised based on innocuous behaviors such as being gay or eating broccoli with peanut butter.
Hello?
I most definitely think we should compare the Black civil rights struggle to the Gay civil rights struggle. No more can someone choose the colour of their skin can they also choose the orientation of their sexuality. The only difference is, and remains, is the fact that sexual orientation encompasses all races, all languages, no matter what one’s stature in life is. And it is for the fact of who we are, and what we cannot choose, that we fight for our dignity, pride and equal rights.
Civil Rights are those rights belonging to citizens. No one group has a lock on them. It is just one more way to diminish our struggle by saying it isn’t a civil rights issue.
Lets look at heterosexuals for a minute. I would not put us in the same ballpark with their lifestyle number one. They have made a mockery of marrage, the amount of sexual misconduct they are responsible for is off the chart. And they have the nerve to insinuate anything about our lifestyle. They would rather take a baby from a drug addicted mother and adopt it to “married couple” that has a worse drug problem than the birthmother ever thought of having. They invented the word “pre-nump”. Now these are the same people that decide what is best for others. I would not even want to know what happens in their house when they pull their curtains. YIKES! Yet they are obsessed with what they think goes on in our bedrooms. That is even more scarey. It really does take one to know one. They just dont get caught. I think we will wake up one morning with alot of heterosexuals grumpy. They will get over it once they realize their vote will no longer count.Then they can get mad about something else. As they will do. I like to look at our rights as equal rights. not special rights. Barack will rock. Watch and see.