African Americans and the GLBT community, and other notes on same-sex marriage

A couple of side notes from my story this week about the marriage equality movement and race relations.

• State Sen. Chris Kehoe mentioned that the GLBT community may not wait until 2010 to get back on the ballot. If there’s a special election to deal with the state’s budget crisis, they may try to put same-sex marriage on that ballot.

•  Black leaders have often bristled at the notion that same-sex marriage advocates are waging a civil rights crusade. I’ve never quite understood why this should be so. The common theory is homophobia is prevalent in the black community. At the rally against the Defense of Marriage Act, I interviewed Rev. Madison Shockley, an African American minister for the Pilgrim United church of Christ in Carlsbad, and he had an interesting take on it:

There’s a presumption[within the No on 8 campaign] that an appeal to civil rights will bring in the black vote. That presumption proved to be false. It’s an analogy that’s accurate legally, but not accurate culturally.

There’s resentment in the black community that gay community  co-opted a movement that had special cultural significance. The legal arguments are spot on, like the Loving case, and the biblical arguments, too. But black people feel ownership of that social reality. They feel that gay people are appropriating their history.

He also argued that while homophobia within the black, church going community is not inherent, it will be a long journey to make that community “open and affirming” to gays and lesbians. He said:

There hasn’t been an opportunity to think through the issues of gay liberation movement. It is presumptuous to think it’s going to change very quickly. There are many fewer openly gay black people who can talk about what it means to be gay. There’s not an open gay subculture in the black community.

I wouldn’t think that cultural revolution is going to happen in the next year-and-a-half. The gay movement is going to have to change their calculations and not count on a high degree of support from African American community.