Jonathan Adams

Prop 8: Beyond Black vs. Gay

Originally published on The Public Record.
Beyond Black vs. Gay: A Wake-Up Call to Gay Marriage Activists in California

By Robert Chlala
The Public Record
Saturday, November 22, 2008

I’m not quite sure when the mainstream gay rights advocates adopted George W. Bush’s “you are either with us or against us” mantra, became obsessed about exit polls, and started to believe that it’s OK to marginalize people of color, but here we are.

In the past few weeks, a tremendous backlash – fueled by mainstream media outlets across California – has come from public same-sex marriage advocates against people of color, based on several (discredited) exit polls that blame these supposed voting blocs for the passage of Proposition 8 and the banning of same-sex marriage in California.

Always couched with a “of course I’m happy an African American got elected, but I’m so mad…” this highly-public racism is cleaving an even deeper trench between the mainstream gay sphere and many straight and LGBTQ people of color and is doing much more damage than Proposition 8 could do on its own.

Taking cues from the mainstream media, including California’s most prominent newspapers, a large number of anti-Proposition 8 activists have decided that, because exit polls say black people voted 7 out of 10 for the same-sex marriage ban, then African-Americans (and other people of color, including Latinos and Asian) are wholly responsible for the passage of Proposition 8.

Read more.

Posted at 1:20 PM, Nov 24, 2008 in LGBT | Permalink | View Comments