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Contradictions, Elections, and Movement(s)
During this election cycle, we have seen organizers reach across issues and constituencies to elect a progressive candidate. But in the wake of Proposition 8 and other state-wide bans on gay marriage, have we as organizers done enough to address the rampant homophobia within our movement for change?
I found it hard to clap my hands as the election results came in on November 4th. One hand wanted to celebrate the election of a biracial black man (like myself) and former community organizer to the office of the presidency. But the other hand wanted to mourn the passage of constitutional bans against marriage rights for same sex couples (like myself and my partner) in two states that went for Senator Barack Obama. I fully support economic and racial justice and am devoted to continue to work on those issues, but I am left wondering when my concerns as a gay man will be fully included in this progressive movement I’m committed to.
This latest vote in California and Florida feels a little like déjà vu. Back in 2004, we learned that gay marriage was an effective wedge issue, capable of getting many low-income people and people of color to defy their economic self interest and vote for conservative candidates. Overly simplified or not, a major part of the narrative to explain the reddening of the electoral map was that the right-wing used “gay marriage” and “illegal immigration” to stoke the cultural anxieties of voters. Ever since, immigration reform has been largely left off of the legislative agenda and progressive candidates (including the President-elect) have offered confusing mixed messages opposing constitutional bans against gay marriage while affirming their belief that marriage should be reserved for straight couples.
This time around, it seems that the economic crisis and racial solidarity persuaded more of those same constituencies who fell for the dirty tricks of wedge politics in 2004 to turn out and vote against the conservative candidate. But all of the organizing to get a progressive candidate elected didn’t prevent those same voters from simultaneously advancing a conservative agenda by taking away the rights of same sex couples.
The analysis of the California vote has been that passage of Prop 8 was significantly boosted by the increased turnout of people of color for Barack Obama. Unfortunately, some white gay commentators seem to conclude that the Black community was decisive in the passage of Prop 8, unleashing a lot of racial resentment in the gay blogosphere. This is the wrong conclusion. First off, Blacks are only 6% of California’s voting-age population, and furthermore, and Black churches didn’t finance the campaign to ban gay marriage – the mostly-White Mormon Church did. Also, the organizing strategy of the opponents of Prop 8 seems to have failed to reach out to Black churches and involve civil rights organizations in the effort to oppose the proposition. Nonetheless, the fact that a slim majority (51%) of both Whites and Asians voted against Prop 8 while 70% of Blacks and 53% of Latinos voted for the gay marriage ban, should not be glossed over by progressive and civil rights groups.
To be clear, there is no inherent contradiction in supporting a candidate with a progressive economic agenda while simultaneously rejecting marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. To think that people would automatically be progressive on issues relating to same-sex couples simply by virtue of their ethnicity or class would be naïve. Homophobia is learned, just like racism – and even though community organizing has worked to combat the racial animosities among low-income people and foster understanding and solidarity between communities of color, homophobia is a bias that seems to go unchallenged. With immigrants and Blacks being pitted against each other in an economic race to the bottom, progressives organize both communities and challenge them to get beyond their biases and focus on their common struggles. But while organizing is tackling the immigration wedge, too many organizations won’t touch the gay marriage one.
When I express my frustration and discontent, progressives keep throwing tired clichés at me about history being on our side and we just need to wait for tides to turn. They point to the fact that public opinion on gay marriage has already shifted dramatically since the 1990s. And they encourage patience, after all 61% of people under the age of 30 opposed Prop 8 in California. But in Florida 53% of voters in the same age group supported Amendment 2, so the idea that gay marriage will become a non-issue as more young people grow up is a too-convenient fiction.
The other problem with waiting for views on gay marriage to magically change is that the history of legally sanctioned interracial marriage has shown how slow progress can be. In 1948, California’s Supreme Court decided in Perez v. Sharp that the state’s anti-“miscegenation” law violated the constitution. The Court decided that the law should not prevent Andrea Perez, who was Mexican American, from marrying Sylvester Davis, who was Black, but 60 years later California’s Latino and Black communities vote decisively to take marriage rights away from same-sex couples.
Then in 1967, the Supreme Court’s landmark Loving v. Virginia decision struck down all race-based restrictions on marriage, but it wasn’t for another 20-30 years that public opinion caught up with the Court. Gallup has surveyed on approval rates for interracial marriages every few years, and even as late as 1983 more than half (53%) of Americans disapproved of black-white unions. In 1991 and 1994, approval for interracial marriage (48% in both years) narrowly rose above disapproval, but polling didn’t see more than half of the population supporting interracial marriage until 1997 – 30 years after Loving v. Virginia.
Having grown up in an interracial family, I can attest to the persistent stigma against my family dealt with. And as a gay man I can also speak to the homophobia in our society. But while progressives are very comfortable railing against racism and economic inequality, the silence around the topic of homophobia is deafening.
Patience alone is not the answer. Nor do I think it fair to only criticize LGBT organizations for failing to do better outreach to communities of color. It’s time to also address the rampant homophobia in the communities that progressive grassroots groups organize. While I’m sure that there is still reason to apply the election’s mantras of hope and change to the fight for full inclusion for same-sex couples, simply hoping that homophobic attitudes will change isn’t much of an organizing strategy.
Sean Thomas-Breitfeld is an associate of the Movement Vision Lab. He also manages the Taproots Fellowship Program.
