"I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world. I would not violate my principles for God, much less for a crazy kaiser, a savage czar, a degenerate king, or a gang of pot-bellied parasites." -Eugene Debs
Tuesday's election was a historic victory for equality with the election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States. But there was a bittersweet footnote to the election that made it a not-as-great day for equality under the law.
The decisive margin in the narrow passing of a gay marriage ban in California was provided by blacks. According to The Los Angeles Times, 70 percent of African-Americans voted to enshrine this bigotry into the state constitution.
In fact, blacks backed this constitutional bigotry even more strongly than people who identified themselves as Christians, only 2/3 of whom supported it.
Blacks who supported this should be ashamed of themselves. It's shocking that equality was blocked by one of the group of Americans that's suffered the most from inequality over the centuries. How can you claim Obama's election was slap in the face to bigots while support a bigoted gay marriage ban? Blacks deserve human rights but gays don't? Disgraceful!
Being a bigot is like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren't. There's no somewhat about it. You have NO right to whine about veiled racism in society if you support government-mandated homophobia.
Anti-racism and anti-homophobia are not part of some sort of zero sum game where the success of one imperils the success of the other. There's plenty of room in society for everyone to be granted equal human rights.
4 comments:
The concern I've always had with exit polls is that people can say whatever they want - there may have been people of all races that for whatever reason didn't want to share their real opinion or didn't want others to know that they supported the proposition, so may have reported falsely. Regardless of that though, it is pathetic that Prop 8 passed, due to bigots of all backgrounds.
That's true. But typically when people lie to pollsters, it's to hide their bigotry or some other socially frowned upon rationale not to promote it. So if it's inaccurate, it's far more likely that the 70 pct figure is an underestimate not an overestimate.
That's one of the quirks of the black voting demographic: liberal/Democratic on economic policy, liberal/Democratic on foreign policy, yet since many of them attend Protestant churches that are rather conservative, they tend to be social and cultural conservatives on some issues. It is indeed a hypocrisy.
However, I have also heard that some of the gays in California, by some of their actions that made for some "great" pro Pro 8 ads, helped the electorate turn their back on this battle for equality.
This'll be interesting how the CA State Supreme Court decides in the matter.
I was reading somewhere just tonight (I think it was the NY Times) that if Prop 8 is a simple amendment that they just rejected this past May, it'd be unconstitional because they'd need a 2/3 majority vote in the State Legislature BEFORE they can vote upon it. Whereas if its a simple revision (possible but unlikely since the Prop 8 advocates used the exact same language as before just making it part of the state constituition), they can bypass the State Legislature.
Not to mention, it calls into question how it squares w/ CA's "Equal Protection" clause. If it is upheld, it essentially puts an asterick "Equal Protection under the Law except if you're a homosexual."
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