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Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of the parent's argument, your comparison is facile. So-called 'separate but equal' legislation never provided for an
by Maktab 18y ago
Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of the parent's argument, your comparison is facile. So-called 'separate but equal' legislation never provided for anything close to legal equality. Civil unions, on the other hand, could provide the same legal rights as marriage.
But that's besides the point. The real story here is that Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy. As a block, American-Americans tend to vote against gay rights and gay marriage issues, and so the high turnout was what swung the ballot in favour of Prop. 8.
The lesson here should be that the gay community of the US has not done enough to reach out to the African-American community in order to gain greater acceptance and understanding. Despite all the advocacy against white religious conservatives and high-profile court campaigns, there has been precious little effort in convincing voters why they have nothing to fear and why gays should have the right to marry because that would be fair and just.
Until that happens, gay Americans are going to have to be content with winning brief victories through the courts while fearing each and every time the general public is given the chance to have their own say on the issue.
- sethg 18y ago_Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy._ Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com points out that first-time voters voted against Prop. 8 by 62-38, while experienced voters favored it by 56-44. Therefore, if Obama's candidacy had not boosted turnout, Prop. 8 probably would have passed by an even higher margin. Yes, black voters voted 70-30 in favor of Prop. 8, but they were only 10% of the electorate, and lots of other demographic subgroups favored it as well. (E.g., 22% of the voters attend church weekly--I bet that 22% includes the vast majority of the black voters--and they favored Prop. 8 by 82-18.) So I think treating the black vote as the reason for Prop. 8's passage is unfair.
- Maktab 18y agoFair enough, I had not seen Nate Silver's analysis yet before you alerted me to it. But even if the black vote was not pivotal in this case, Silver's analysis still validates the chief point I was trying to make, which is that support for gay rights amongst African-Americans is frighteningly low and that the gay community's advocates are not doing enough to understand and get the support of the only community in the United States that truly understands what it means to be denied rights that others enjoy. It doesn't have to be this way.
- sethg 18y agoI don't think the historical or current experience of being oppressed automatically makes a person more sympathetic to other oppressed groups. It can just as easily harden a person--"I and my ancestors suffered through X, why should I care about your Y?" So while I agree that the gay community could do a much better job selling gay rights to African-Americans, I wouldn't describe the support level as "frighteningly low". PS: There's a black church on the south side of Chicago which is unusual, for black churches, because it stands firmly in favor of gay rights. Its pastor, until recently, was a guy named Jeremiah Wright. You may have heard of him.
- Maktab 18y agoIt may not grant you automatic support, but it provides a level of common ground on which you can begin building support. And the stats I've seen are indeed 'frighteningly low'. As for Wright, I think if we go by the rest of his sermons (which were frequently racist), his support for gay rights is as likely to be because of his desire to be contrarian and controversial as it is due to deep-seated personal convictions.