There has been so much energy surrounding this new direction for equal rights for us gays, and I have found it, well, exhilirating. I have felt a little bad, though, for not being able to join in unequivocally. I've been saying that we need to examine ourselves and our leaders for our failures. And I've been saying that we were too focused on blaming Mormons. And I've been saying that racism has played its part in the gay community for too long now. I've brought these issues up because I really do believe that now is the time to fix these problems (let's just call them that because that's what they are), but, honestly, I've felt a little like I've been somehow betraying my own community for pointing out its flaws. I've felt a little alone in thinking these things.

But, today, there two opinions in The Gay City News that make me feel a little less . . . isolated in this thinking. Herndon L. Davis writes:

My advice to the LGBT community, the organizers of No on Prop 8, the many different LGBT funders, and the remaining members of the Gay Mafia is that they take seriously the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors of black and people of color communities as they endeavor further in the marriage equality quest.

. . . In some corners of our diverse LGBT community, there is a blatant disregard for culture, religion, and the oppression of other racial and ethnic groups. Many working class blacks and Latinos are struggling to pay rent, put food on the table, and, yes, dodge bullets; their first instinct is not to lift their eyes up from their burdens to see the connection to the white- faced, seemingly privileged LGBT leadership that would move them to support marriage equality.

These are big chunks of truth that the LGBT community seems ill-prepared to accept, never mind tackle. In this new age of Obama, a much deeper conversation concerning LGBT race relations lies ahead, one that for now the community seems eager to shy away from.

And Eliyanna Kaiser and Gary Parker write:

Like everyone else in our community, we are upset about the passage of Proposition 8 in California. At a time when the country is celebrating the election of the first African-American president, the LGBT community suffered one of its biggest civil rights setbacks in recent history. And make no mistake about it, we are angry.

Unfortunately, some of the anger our community feels is being directed in unproductive and questionable ways, like the protest being held on Wednesday, November 12, outside the Manhattan Mormon Temple on Columbus Avenue.

There have been numerous media reports about how individual Mormons gave mega millions to the Yes to Prop 8 campaign at the encouragement of Church leadership. Unfortunately, many Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests, Pentecostal ministers, and Baptist preachers have done the same, not just in California but in other states' anti-gay ballot initiatives, or to help elect anti-gay candidates here in New York.

This is why I really liked the call to action by Dustin Lance Black and Cleve Jones -- it asks each of us what we can do to advance all civil rights:"There are rare moments in human history when, suddenly and unexpectedly, the opportunity for great change and progress becomes possible. Barack Obama has shown us the power of hope and the urgency of seizing that moment. Harvey Milk has shown us the power we possess when we make our voices heard."

For my money, the best and most clear-headed take on last night's protest and the entire Prop 8 response is from Andy Humm over at Gay City News. In the article he posted last night after the protest march, he writes:

No speeches. No leaders. But lots of anger.

Mobilized through social networking sites, an estimated 10,000 people turned out Wednesday night at the Mormon Temple near Lincoln Center in New York to protest the passage of the California amendment eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry and the fact that most of the money for the Yes on Prop 8 campaign came from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - the Mormons.

Corey Johnson, one of the key organizers with Mike Signorile and Ann Northrop, said the turnout "was a tremendous outpouring of grassroots energy and support." He hoped that energy can be harnessed to win marriage equality in New York.

Signorile said, "It's about a right that was taken away, not just marriage." He wants those energized to demand all of our civil rights and that Mormon-owned companies such as Marriott "stop giving money to the Church."

Civil rights attorney Norman Siegel said, "The spirit of ACT UP is in the air."

After the jump, how the religous vote really broke.

The biggest last minute change in how people polled and how they voted, DiCamillo wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, was among Catholics, who are about 24 of the electorate and whom late polls showed going 44 percent for the measure.

"However," he wrote, "the network polls showed that they accounted for 30 percent of the California electorate and 64 percent of them voted 'yes.' Regular churchgoers showed a similar movement toward the 'yes' side," growing from 74 percent yes in a pre-election poll to 84 percent yes in the exit poll.

Notably, the pre-election poll showed that 58 percent of Catholics understood that voting yes would not take away the full domestic partner rights that gay couples enjoyed before the court ruling "versus 47 percent among non-Catholics." Many Catholics seem to have been swayed by a letter from their bishops read from most pulpits on the Sunday before the vote.

While that may explain whose votes were moved and why, it does not offer a fuller view of the No campaign's failure to be more effective. The gay blogosphere was full of reproaches for a campaign that almost entirely refused to feature gays or lesbians or appeal to emotions the way the Yes side did, but the invariable answer from No on 8 leaders during and after the battle was, "We know what we're doing." They insisted their ads were focus-group and field tested and that they worked with the voters that they needed to win over.

The Yes ads may have been lies - about churches being persecuted for not marrying gays and children being taught about gay marriage in elementary school -but they were effective. Even Barbara Walters on "The View" was repeating the Yes on 8 lies after the election, essentially saying that a Yes vote was understandable.

The right wing was also successful in exploiting Barack Obama's opposition to same-sex marriage in mailers and robo-calls, particularly in the African-American community. The No side responded with their own robo-calls citing Obama's opposition to Prop 8, but calls using his and Joe Biden's clear and early comments opposing Prop 8 went out only during the last weekend.

The leaders of the No side acknowledged that they did not make a serious outreach to the African-American community and did not feature blacks in their ads. After the campaign they wrote, "We achieve nothing if we isolate the people who did not stand with us in this fight. We only further divide our state if we attempt to blame people of faith, African-American voters, rural communities, and others for this loss."

The Blue Store and Blue Door video, two of Chelsea's aging Eighth Avenue porn shops, have been the site of a number of recent questionable arrests for prostitution. Gay City News reports:

Robert Pinter, a licensed massage therapist, has a thriving business. When he was arrested [for solicitation], he had $207 and a check for $110 in his pocket, according to the police voucher.

His arrest is just one of a number of improbable arrests that officers from the Manhattan South Vice Enforcement Squad made in Blue Door Video this year . . . Blue Door was closed in June under the city nuisance abatement law after vice cops made ten prostitution arrests there in January and February. The criminal complaints in those arrests were filed as part of that lawsuit. In every case, it was police who first mentioned money.


Asked if the police were entrapping gay men in city porn shops, Paul J. Browne, the police department's spokesman, wrote in an email, "Robert Pinter was arrested for prostitution on October 10 after he asked the officer how much money he had, and then offered to perform oral sex on the officer for $50. The location, Blue Door Video, has been the subject of prostitution complaints previously. It's currently enjoined by the court from conducting, permitting, or promoting prostitution. Blue Door Video and the landlord paid $2,500 in settlement costs stemming from the injunction."

If you're still getting your porn from video stores, I suppose it'd pay to be careful while you're there. An even better idea? Get your porn and sex accoutrement online!

Gay City News interviews with Dave Noble, who left his post as public policy and government affairs director at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, to join Obama's campaign. From the interview:

Asked specifically if Obama would reiterate his calls for action on key gay issues early in 2009, Noble was circumspect.

"I wouldn't speak for what bills he would push for in which months, and I believe there will be movement in Congress in the near future as well," he said. "With larger majorities, we will see a lot of progressive legislation on issues across the board."

. . . Obama, of course, is not a supporter of marriage for same-sex couples, but he has adopted an otherwise ambitious position that would give federal recognition to whatever legal rights and benefits couples enjoy in their home states. He also supports repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. In a nation that does not even have a fair employment law, that's a tall order.

. . . Even as Noble talks about all these issues in his drive to crank up the gay vote in two weeks, he acknowledges the cynicism that often undermines LGBT confidence in the political process.

"I think it makes sense for some LGBT voters to be concerned," he said. "The fact that we are just passing ten years since Matthew Shepard's murder without a hate crimes bill is discouraging to lots of LGBT voters."

He was quick to add, however, that at no time during that decade did Democrats hold both the presidency and Congress, which will certainly be the case if Obama is elected.

Read the full interview at Gay City News.

Who, if anyone, will deserve the blame? In the Gay City News, Kelly Jean Cogswell writes an understandably frustrated article about the very real possibility of losing the just-received right to marry in California:

Apparently, there's some fixed amount of freedom in the world, like oil in the ground, or gold, and anybody in their right mind tries to hoard it. That's the idea I get, anyway, when somebody's explaining why you can't give more rights to women (or people of color or immigrants). It'll be coming right out of their pocket, and they can't afford it.

. . . And what are embattled queer people countering that with? Ads with reassuring heterosexual faces explaining that we're not going to take over the world. That's right. The voice for same sex-marriage is embodied in smarmy hets like San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. If you want straights, you should at least get them from Massachusetts where they can attest that after several years of gay marriage nobody's civil or religious freedoms have been abridged. The sky didn't fall. Just a few maple leaves.

If the Proposition [8] passes, ending same-sex marriage, I'll blame national gay leadership, especially Democrats, that already agreed to be invisible in the Obama campaign. By banning us from the camera, they make us seem like a bunch of pervs. It's for our own good, of course. Always for our own good. Mesmerized by their homophobic voices, we've lost our pride, and the belief in our own American stories of loss and striving, like our fights to visit our partners in hospitals, share health insurance, make lives together, all the stories that could persuade a reluctant audience that does, essentially, value equality and civil rights.

How can we not all share this anger? Although there is no specific mention of Obama, his name is certainly clear here. I support Obama. I think he is a remarkable man and politician. His brilliance is what makes his failing in this area--gay marriage--so heartbreaking. When Obama, a man who has spoken and written so beautifully about his understanding of the minority American experience, refuses to support marriage for gay people, he sends a message to everyone, not just his political opponents, that we are not equal. And what are we supposed to do with that?

More after the jump.

Obama has shifted his stance on any number of issues (FISA, gun control, off-shore drilling, Reverend Wright), but he has remained firm in this -- no gay marriage. (Remember during the VP debate when Biden practically had to choke out his agreement with Palin regarding gay marriage.) In an interview with The Advocate, way back in April during the primaries, the Advocate interviewer pressed Obamaon this:

Both you and your wife speak eloquently about being told to wait your turn and how if you had done that, you might not have gone to law school or run for Senate or even president. To some extent, isn’t that what you’re asking same-sex couples to do by favoring civil unions over marriage -- to wait their turn?

Obama: I don’t ask them that. Anybody who’s been at an LGBT event with me can testify that my message is very explicit -- I don’t think that the gay and lesbian community, the LGBT community, should take its cues from me or some political leader in terms of what they think is right for them. It’s not my place to tell the LGBT community, "Wait your turn." I’m very mindful of Dr. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” where he says to the white clergy, "Don’t tell me to wait for my freedom."

. . . but my perspective is also shaped by the broader political and historical context in which I’m operating. And I’ve said this before -- I’m the product of a mixed marriage that would have been illegal in 12 states when I was born. That doesn’t mean that had I been an adviser to Dr. King back then, I would have told him to lead with repealing an antimiscegenation law, because it just might not have been the best strategy in terms of moving broader equality forward. That’s a decision that the LGBT community has to make. That’s not a decision for me to make.

Is it fair for the LGBT community to ask for leadership? In 1963, President Kennedy made civil rights a moral issue for the country.

Obama: But he didn’t overturn antimiscegenation. Right?

Cogswell, in the Gay City News, writes:

. . . Like with children, I suppose the only counter to miserly behavior is to explain the benefit of sharing. In the case of same-sex marriage, we could argue that it strengthens an institution plenty of heterosexuals are turning away from, and also guarantees that we queers take care of our partners so that they don't become burdens on "society."

On the other hand, if our fellow citizens refuse to share the wealth with same-sex couples, maybe we should shift our focus altogether, and demand they quit awarding any special rights to heterosexual marriages. Then we can all share the loss.

I know that pushing for marriage equality might cause a backlash. How could I not understand that? But I am listening to Obama when he says, "It’s not my place to tell the LGBT community, 'Wait your turn.'"