“I am upset about this erroneous finger pointing at African-Americans regarding Proposition 8. Why are you so quick to believe whatever you hear?…This political year was fraught with right wing lies. Bear that in mind.”

Lies? Finger pointing?

Overwhelming Black and Latino support for Prop 8 has been well documented by mainstream media including the Los Angeles Times, the LA Daily News and MSNBC to name just a few.

Gay racism pisses me off but I neither deny nor excuse it.

“Religious organizations that support Proposition 8 include the Roman Catholic Church], Knights of Columbus, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) a group of Evangelical Christians led by Jim Garlow and Miles McPherson, American Family Association, Focus on the Family[and the National Organization for Marriage Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, California’s largest, has also endorsed the measure. The Bishops of the California Catholic Conference released a statement supporting the proposition. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) has publicly supported the proposition and encouraged their membership to support it, by asking its members to donate money and volunteer time. The First Presidency of the church announced its support for Proposition 8 in a letter read in every congregation. Latter-day Saints have provided a significant source for financial donations in support of the proposition, both inside and outside the State of California. About 45% of out-of-state contributions to Protect Marriage.com has come from Utah, over three times more than any other state.”

Still, even though gays were fighting to preserve a basic right, it was the anti-equality side in California that seemed to have the most fervor. A symbolic low point for the gay side came on Oct. 13, when the Sacramento Bee ran a remarkable story about Rick and Pam Patterson, a Mormon couple of modest means – he drives a 10-year-old Honda Civic, she raises their five boys – who had withdrawn $50,000 from their savings account and given it to the pro-8 campaign. “It was a decision we made very prayerfully,” Pam Patterson, 48, told the Bee’s Jennifer Garza. “Was it an easy decision? No. But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children.”
This is your real enemy. Don’t trust exit polls taken when many of these same groups taking them were angry with African-Americans about Obama beating their Christian Right coalition messiah ie Sarah Palin. I think they are pitting one group against the other. African-Americans are less than 7% of the state population, do the math. And they do not have the money to fund a tens of millions of dollars Proposition 8 campaign. Note that they also targeted affirmative action for eradication in another state.

Rather than be upset at the phantom African-American menace, put forth a gay candidate for office and fight like hell. No one gave Obama anything and they will not give gays anything either. Obama stands on the shoulders of a lot of brave people who gave their lives for him to stand on that podium last night.

Never trust exits polls because in all my years of life, no one has ever been seen at a polling place asking anyone anything when they left.

Take heart, try again in 2010 when the blacks will be sitting at home crying over all the things Obama never did for them.

In response to the anonymous poster who simply wants to spew about religion and blacks being a part of the problem, you need to take off your own blinders and look objectively at why there might be an issue to begin with. First off, Al Sharpton (love him or hate him) is most certainly on board and fully in support of gay marriage and has been active in trying to fight homophobia amongst black religious leaders. It’s definitely an issue and we definitely have allies, so before disparaging a whole group of people maybe you should get educated on the issue.

From my understanding, there were several issues here. The LDS pretty much shelled out a lot of money and apparently the barrage ads that appeared in the final weeks did enough to change some people who were leaning in the direction of voting against it. At this point there needs to be a concerted effort within the gay community to start attacking the organizations and their tax-exempt status. In addition, why not compile a list of Mormon owned businesses and create a boycott list? If we as a community can effectively affect the pocket books of Mormons and get our allies outside of the LGBT community to do the same they might want to start rethinking their efforts.

The No On 8 campaign chose to keep gay families out of the spotlight, focusing instead on abstract notions of equality for all, which I presume they thought would be less controversial. I think it was a bad strategy. Next go-around, I want to see stories about little kids who don’t have the same opportunities as other kids because they have a mom and a mom instead of a mom and a dad. We should be winning when the debate turns to children.

to put it frankly: what the fuck?

if we want to grow the coalition for gay civil rights, the gay community has to support equality for everyone. we have to work within our own circles of friends and remove the prejudices that exist there. and as we do that, i think it’ll be a lot easier to work on a dialog of true civil equality beyond the gay community. hard to expect the african american hetero population to be more supportive of gays if we can’t bridge racial divides within the gay community.

i guess that’s not a great strategy to launch a campaign on or create a non-profit or PAC over, but for me, it’s something to work on doing on my own micro level. i think that the gay rights movement will probably have to be largely a grassroots one in the end, because as we saw this week, court cases don’t do much when the opinion of the people is still against equality. and let’s face it, as much as we need to think about volunteering and organizing and donating and rallying and fighting through courts and congresses, we could also stand to be a little more unified ourselves, not just for what we want for ourselves, but for real equality in this country.

so it seems to me that this is infinitely more complicated that “blacks versus gays,” especially considering there is a preeetty good deal of overlap there, and many hetero african americans support gay rights. to me this says that as minority communities, we haven’t come together in the best way possible to promote equality for everyone. and that’s something that as minorities, as americans, and as human beings, we need to work on together.

No no, we are just “bible-thumping jesus freaks who hate gays”

An education might help you.

The other target that should be in our sights must be the Mormon church. Mormons donated as much as 70% of the funding to Yes on 8, as well as countless thousands of man-hours to the cause. I think our community needs to explore various remedies aimed at weakening this church’s capacity to spread its bigotry: its tax-exempt status should be called into question, and legislative strategies should be considered for reducing the ability of churches to participate in political campaigning.