With Liberty And Justice For Some

Black voter turnout was crucial to getting Barack Obama elected...but it was also crucial for passing California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage.

Cheryl Weston once attended a wedding ceremony for gay friends, but on Election Day, she voted for a constitutional amendment to declare marriage in California as only between a man and a woman.

"It was called a holy union, but I don't know how holy it was," said Weston, a Sacramento barber.

Weston, 44, is one of an overwhelming number – 70 percent – of black voters in California who voted for Proposition 8 and helped secure its passage, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

African Americans, energized by Barack Obama's presidential bid, boosted their numbers at the polls this year to 10 percent of the state's electorate, up from 6 percent in 2004.

"The Obama people were thrilled to turn out high percentages of African Americans, but (Proposition 8) literally wouldn't have passed without those voters," said Gary Dietrich, president of Citizen Voice, a nonpartisan voter awareness organization.

Latinos were 18 percent of California's voters, and through sheer numbers also contributed to Proposition 8's success. But 53 percent of Latino voters supported the measure, a much lower percentage than black voters. Among white and Asian voters, 49 percent voted for the measure.

Opponents of Proposition 8 appealed to voters to reject the measure as discriminatory and unconstitutional.

But messages that opponents hoped would strike a chord with minority voters – and remind them that interracial marriage once was banned – collided with traditional religious views.

"You listen to the African American pastors, they do not buy that argument," Dietrich said. "They do not believe at all that there is a correlation between civil rights vis-à-vis blacks and rights for gays."

Gay rights is a major, major problem in the black community. Appealing to it as a civil rights issue doesn't fly in black churches, plain and simple. Two of the bloggers I regularly read, Terrance at The Republic of T and Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend can explain the dissonance of black folk and homosexuality far better than I can. I'm not gay, so I can't speak to that experience like Terrance (a black gay father of two from GA) and Pam (a black lesbian from NC) can. But I am bi-racial, so I can speak to the argument that interracial marriage being illegal thirty years ago was just as pointlessly stupid as gay marriage being illegal today. It's a civil rights issue. Period. It's discrimination, and the only reason to oppose same-sex marriage is to discriminate.

Obama has said as much in his many stump speeches...but he's also quietly held the the belief that marriage is "one man, one woman" as many Americans do. I don't buy that. It's either civil rights for all Americans, or it's hypocrisy, cut and dried. I have a problem with Obama's support for banning gay marriage. You can't have a message of change and hope and then say "but not for you." Obama can't go with political expediency over basic rights.

Pam in particular has a great set of articles on Prop 8 and the response to it, well worth reading. Terrance should have something up today, I'll update with his response.

You can't have civil rights for "most" Americans. You must work for all Americans as President there, Barry. It's time to take a stand on this.