I just heard on Michelangelo Signorile's Air America radio show that Whoopi Goldberg is going to be speaking at the protest tonight once the march reaches Columbus Circle. Whoopi has maintained an admirably clear head in all of this.

I've said this before - an African-American woman speaking about gay civil rights is a powerful and poignant instrument of civil rights.

This got me thinking about Jasmyne Cannick, an African-American woman who writes for The Daily Voice: Black America's Daily News Source. Jasmyne has a post today that suggests African-Americans were not correctly targeted in the No on Prop 8 ads: "So let's recap, no Black people for the No on 8 campaign ads (using Samuel Jackson's voice doesn't count) and Black people in the Yes on 8 campaign ads. And Black people made up 69 percent of the Yes vote you say?" Cannick writes in an article in the SF Chronicle:

I am a perfect example of why the fight against Proposition 8, which amends California's Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, failed to win black support. I am black. I am a political activist who cares deeply about social justice issues. I am a lesbian. This year, I canvassed the streets of South Los Angeles and Compton, knocking on doors, talking politics to passers-by and working as I never had before to ensure a large voter turnout among African Americans. But even I wasn't inspired to encourage black people to vote against the proposition.

The blame for the failure lies with all of us. The No on Prop 8 committee failed in its approach to get the right information to the right people. The LA Times asks, "Where were the gay leaders? It's hard to imagine the civil rights movement of the 1960s succeeding without Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X, or to imagine the women's suffrage movement without the likes of Susan B. Anthony."

Below, is the video accompanying Jasmyne Cannick's post. It shows how the idea of gay marriage as a component of civil rights was twisted and re-shaped into something almost unrecognizable. Let me be clear - I am not saying in any way that African-Americans are to blame for the passing of Prop 8. This video is an indication of how some of those who favored it viewed its relation to civil rights. Imagine if there had been a similar ad that was AGAINST 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.