Prop 8 Hate

Yesterday I talked about the disturbing evidence that California's Prop 8 banning gay marriage passed due in no small part to African-Americans and Latinos who voted overwhelmingly for the ban. Today, the situation keeps getting worse as Pam Spaulding explains.

The backlash is upon us, and it's going to get uglier unless our organizations step forward and say something. The desire to scapegoat blacks for Prop 8's defeat has exposed the now not-so-latent racism in our movement.

I have already blogged a lot about why the lack of effective communication (and I'm not even talking about outreach on gay issues to socially conservative blacks) between white people in general and people of color. That dearth of understanding and mutual respect for difference, and lack of desire to seek common ground through personal relationships ultimately leads to what we are seeing here.

On the matter of the blame game, Alex Blaze has an excellent post over at Bilerico that tries to poke at the anger directed at the black community (as you read above, it didn't matter if you were black and gay -- it was hurled at him because he represented The Other regardless of his allegiance to the gay community).

But I'm wondering why these folks are so caught up in the black voters, who obviously can't ever be persuaded on this issue because... well, because. There are so many other groups in the exit polling that voted for Prop 8 overwhelmingly (as in, more than 60%):

* The elderly (65+)
* Republicans
* Conservatives
* People who decided for whom to vote in October (but not within the week before the election)
* People who were contacted by the McCain campaign
* Protestants
* Catholics
* White Protestants
* Those who attend church weekly
* Married people
* People with children under 18
* Gun owners
* Bush voters
* Offshore drilling supporters
* People who are afraid of a terrorist attack
* People who thought their family finances were better now than 4 years ago
* Supporters of the war against Iraq
* People who didn't care about the age of the candidates
* Anti-choicers
* People who are from the "Inland/Valley" region of California
* McCain voters

Some of these groups supported Prop 8 far more than African Americans did, which makes me wonder why we're focused so much on race instead of any of these factors. In terms of predictive value, religion, political ideology, and being married with children tell us much more about how someone voted on Prop 8 than race does.

From which we can infer three things. First, breaking the statistics just along racial lines is an overly simplistic way to look at the results. Black people, like white people, are not a monolithic group, and LGBT people can make inroads by reaching out to African Americans if we try. Flapping our mouths about how we're not PC, how all blacks are homophobic, and how there's no use in reaching out to African Americans doesn't endear people to us, and there is work to be done here that hasn't been done.

Second, religion is the overwhelming factor in Prop 8's win, in terms of organizing, funding, and voting. Since it's not going anywhere, we have to take a more serious approach to religious voters. And, yes, their leaders make bank off homophobia, but we're going to have to be more creative. No writing off fundies as idiots allowed - they get votes too.

It saddens me that there is so much work to do to heal these wounds on both sides. As I've said, being a triple minority is a challenge because we are often rendered invisible by each tribe we belong to when our existence becomes inconvenient or challenges their biases.

Amen to all of that. The Wingnuts are gleefully cheering and pointing, saying that this is proof that the Left is about to come apart thanks to Obama.

Let's remember who the real merchants of hatred and division are, folks. Alex Blaze's final line there: "No writing off fundies as idiots allowed - they get votes too" is the heart of this. Writing off the other side as idiots (and let's face it, I am the king of that) is not going to work here.

I do it out of sarcasm. But doing it out of hatred and division creates far more problems. As Alex says...they get votes too. And they count just as much as my vote individually.

There is certainly an opportunity here for Obama to show leadership on this issue. It would go a long way for people on both sides of this issue if he could step in and cool things down somewhat.