Gays, Race, and Prop 8

As I've been looking into how race affected the results of Prop 8, I have been struck by the history of the uneasy and schizophrenic relationship between sexuality and race.

In March of 2007, Keith Boykin wrote the article "Why Are Whites So Homophobic?" In it, he writes:

Every time a Tim Hardaway or an Isaiah Washington or an unknown black preacher makes an anti-gay comment, reporters call me up and ask why are black people so homophobic. But when high-profile white people make homophobic remarks, nobody ever asks why are white people so homophobic. They should, because the answers to the two questions are related. African Americans are homophobic because white Americans are homophobic. We all live in the same homophobic society, and in this case the prejudice starts from the president on down.

And in January of this year, Obama gave one of his most remarkable speeches. On the day before Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, At one of the premier black American churches where King used to preach, long before he was the Democratic nominee and even longer before he was President-elect, Senator Barack Obama told 2000 worshippers:

If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.[Politico]

Just this weekend, on 365Gay.com, Wayne Besen wrote:

I can understand why white gay people are angry. I certainly am. But let’s take a step back and look at this dispassionately. I believe our failure with the African American vote (70 percent voted in favor of Prop. has more to do with education levels than race. In general, people with lower levels of education - of any race - do not vote for gay rights. White people are twice as likely to graduate college as black people. This accounts for the difference by race on Prop. 8.

And then on The Daily Voice Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes:

"No surprise that blacks tipped the scale for California's gay marriage ban" - The painful truth is that Proposition 8 would have gone down to flaming defeat if blacks hadn't backed it in droves. Proposition 8 was the ballot initiative that defines marriage as strictly between a man and a woman and embeds that in the California state constitution.

Just one month before the election most polls showed that a majority of Californians rejected the measure. But then something happened. A slew of Yes on 8 signs and stickers popped up overnight on lawns in my neighborhood in the predominantly black Crenshaw area near South Los Angeles. The week before that a well-heeled core of preachers who head fundamentalist leaning, mega and medium sized black churches held a rally and then took to their pulpits and bible thumped their congregations to pass the initiative. It worked. Associated Press exit polls found that seven in 10 blacks voted in favor of the proposition, while Latinos marginally supported it and whites were split.

No one seems to have the complete answer, and everything I try to write to sum all of this up sounds . . . not quite right. We're not going to agree with everyone or even each other, necessarily, but we can, and should, arm ourselves with our shared histories. That's, at least, a place to start.