According to a SurveyUSA poll, 58% of black voters support Proposition 8, which would enshrine irrational fear and rank bigotry into the California Constitution in order to deny gays the right to marry. Black support is 10% higher than support of any other ethnic group. This is ironic, considering that in striking down the law banning same sex marriage, the California Supreme Court cited the landmark 1967 civil rights case Loving vs. Virginia that struck down the prohibition of interracial marriage.
A majority of California's voting African-Americans seem blind to that irony, however. They see no kinship to their own past as a reviled minority whose sexual touch toward a single white man or woman would sully the entire "race"- of American white--just as legally sanctioning the sexual touch of same sex partners would so sully heterosexuals' unions that they will, what? Seek immediate divorce? Abandon their children to the streets? Suffer mass orgasmic dysfunction?
58% of the black voting population sees no irony in accepting a "separate but equal"- status for gays despite the fact that the Supreme Court freed us from just such subjugation with Brown vs. Board of Education; without it we would still be classifiable as second class citizens.
We see no slippery slope in enshrining hatred and bigotry against a specific group into our ruling document==our California Constitution. If we can enshrine the second-class citizenship of gays with respect to marriage, why not the second-class citizenship of blacks with respect to education, or Hispanics with respect to citizenship itself? Someone will always hate you with equal vociferousness to your hate for someone else. It's simply a matter of convincing enough to do so--as has been done in convincing 58% of blacks to support the same kind of irrational hatred that kept us in figurative shackles for most of the last century.
We say its "Jesus."- Jesus says"- It's because Jesus hates the fags"- The Bible says so"- First, the Bible does not. The Bible contains no imprecations against homosexuality stronger than those against the eating of pork. Bacon anyone?
Secondly, it wasn't that long ago that the Bible (thrust upon our ancestors to make them more accepting of their enslavement) supposedly preached that black skin was a curse from God. The Curse of Ham or Noah's Curse infected Christianity and became a justification for our debasement. We were accursed of God, just like gays are supposed to be today. Jesus said so. The Bible said so.
That debasement is still at work. I believe its lingering effects account for much of that 58% black support for the repellant Proposition 8. Throughout American history, black men could not protect themselves, much less their families, from the predations of the majority, who could own, rape, maim and kill you and yours at will. Later, they could heap endless indignities upon you for your kith and kin to see; and there was not a damned thing in the world you could do about it. In the traditional sense of manhood, black men did not qualify. Once we began to develop some sense of self-respect, we overcompensated with a black buck hypermasculinity that's still apparent today. From blaxploitation movies to gangsta rap, it's been a constant in the images with which we're entertained.
Fear feeds those images. Fear of being once more less than a man, less than able to protect and defend what is yours. Fear of once again being treated as the dirt beneath white men's feet. Fear fuels Proposition 8. It's like some sci-fi creature that feeds on it; and we blacks have so much of it in reserve.
That 58% number makes me sorry for us all right now. It reminds me of what we've been through, and how it allows us to be manipulated by the same racialist, religious right zealots who've spent the last 40 years trying to deny us our rights to equal housing, equal educational opportunities, equal voting rights, and equal treatment under the law.
Today, our attempts to defend our pride in the manhood of our men, we only prove that we're still vulnerable to whims of those who've most reviled us. We're ready to open the door to the legalization of bigotry--a door through which we too might one day be shoved. We're not defending our "manly"- bona fides through supporting Prop 8. We're only proving how damaged we remain.
www.leoncegaiter.com
Raised in New Orleans, Washington D.C., Germany, Missouri, Maryland and elsewhere, Leonce Gaiter is the quintessential army brat-rootless and restive. He began writing in grade school and continued the habit through his graduation from Harvard. He (more...)
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MOST FERVENT BELIEVERS OF THE RELIGION OF THEIR SLAVE MASTER
The irony is that both Blacks and Gays have been victimized by Christianity but blacks tend to be the most fervent adherents of that same Christianity that victimized them and are its shock troops in victimizing another group, Gays and Lesbians, that have been victims of that religion. In fact, a racist could make the strongest argument for racism if he ignored the fact that other groups have equally made fools of themselves as fervent Christian believers and said; "Look, I can prove that Blacks are intellectually inferior. The even bought into the religion of the people who kidnaped them from their homeland and brought them in chains to this country to be slaves!" I hasten to add that the racist's argument would not be a sound argument since he would be ignoring how other groups that have been victimized by that religion have become its most fervent adherents. As a Gay Atheist, when I see other Gays in the Metropolitan Community Church fervently adhering to the religion that has spent 1500 of the last 2000 years burning us alive at the stake; then its enough to make you think that those psychiatrists like Bieber and Socarides who say there is something wrong with our minds are right! Of course, I do not think that. Those whose life circumstances in this world are unpleasant tend to cling more strongly for solace to fantasies of a better life in a mythical better world. And groups that are being victimized tend to have more unpleasant lives. Thus lower class, economically poor, white heterosexuals are more likely to be found speaking in tongues in Pentecostal churches.
Robert Halfhill
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rhalfhill (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 325 comments) on Friday, Oct 24, 2008 at 11:37:00 PM
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