Jack & Jill Politics

I’ve weighed in with my comments on this proposition and the fact that my “Christian” friends have called me a heathen because my position on this proposition is that gay people should have the freedom to do whatever they want.

I’ve also been told that my reasoning as a Christian is “flawed” because I feel this way, and because I believe people who claim to be Christian, more often than not, use the Bible to beat up and control anyone who has independence of thought. I guess my reasoning is “flawed” because I still believe in the basic humanity of people, regardless of their identity, orientation or how they choose to live their lives.

Enough of that.  An autopsy has finally been performed to determine why Prop. 8 passed. From TIME Magazine:

Longtime gay rights advocate Dean Trantalis of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and others on the conference call expressed concern that the gay rights movement had become too focused on marriage, and is now paying the price in other more critical areas. “Marriage was never our issue,” Trantalis said. “It was thrust upon us by the other side, and they’ve done a very good job of beating us up over it.”

The concern is that conservatives will use those same tactics – statewide referendums aimed at overruling court decisions or rebuffing reluctant legislators – to restrict other rights. In Arkansas, for example, voters easily passed an initiative that did what state legislators had refused to do: ban adoptions or even foster-parent roles for unmarried couples, including gays. Now the state joins Utah, Florida and Mississippi as places where gay couples cannot adopt. Trantalis and others are worried that even as the gay rights movement continues to win court victories, those very victories may prompt stronger and stronger backlashes, jeopardizing other hard-won rights, from adoption to antidiscrimination measures by local governments and in the workplace.

On the Evangelical side, Mohler told TIME that religious conservatives see the threat from the gay rights’ agenda as much broader than just an affront to traditional notions of marriage. “Full normalization of homosexuality would eventually mean the end to all morals legislation of any kind,” he says, echoing the line of reasoning made famous by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent in the high court’s 2003 decision striking down state laws that made gay sex a crime.

I fully realize African-Americans have a long way to go in dealing with the issue of gay-anything, just as Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and Caucasians have to deal with it.  The whole issue at hand is the allowance of discrimination ANYWHERE, which gets on the slippery slope to discrimination EVERYWHERE.  My position on this is if discrimination is legalized for gay people, what’s to stop the religious powers from attempting to reinstate Jim Crow laws again?  Or repudiation of interracial marriages; or repudiation of Women’s Rights? There is no limit to repudiation of hard won rights, especially by those who felt like if they gave them to us, when they get ready, they can take them away.

Hell, the Mormon Church only decided thirty years ago that it was okay to allow Black People into their church as MEMBERS or LEADERS.  And the Southern Baptists just issued their “Sorry for Slavery” apology in 1995.

Which is why I feel any group that has been subject to discrimination should not be doing the victory dance on the passage of this Proposition because as longtime victims of discrimination, people of color KNOW the pain that comes from being denied freedom of anything because of being born of ethnicity.  But the organizers of Defeating Prop. 8 didn’t do their jobs, either.

They failed to campaign in the communities that mattered.  And from where I sit, it really looked like the middle-class, white gay males running this show failed to form their own Rainbow Coalition to mount up fierce opposition to this proposition by educating and reaching out to those going to the polls; not to mention that there may have been an assumption that California is a “liberal” state, that the Proposition would get no traction.  They failed to do any of these strategies, and then blamed African-Americans because of a CNN report that implied 70% of the African-American people who voted, voted in favor of passage, when the reality was 70% of Black People participating in an exit poll said they voted for passage of this proposition.

Made it a lil’ easier for white gays to holler “Nigger” at people during those protests this past weekend, and therefore, not only retreat behind their whiteness showing, but showcasing their bigotry as well.

People, I grew up in California.  It’s not as “liberal” as been perceived. There are “liberal” pockets within the state.  Northern California – from San Francisco to San Mateo County, to Marin County to Oakland – Liberal.  Solano County to Sacramento and Upper Northern Cal to the Nevada and Oregon Borders – TOSS UP. Anything South of San Jose to Bakersfield (Conservative).  Los Angeles County (Liberal). Maybe Ventura County as well.  The rest of the Southland (Conservative).  If we had been “liberal”, Tom Bradley, not Doug Wilder, would have been the Nation’s First Black Governor 20 years ago.

I watched Proposition 209 – the misnamed “California Civil Rights Initiative”, pass 55%-45%, for almost the same reason this Proposition passed – a failure to reach out and mount up a coalition to defeat this proposition; a failure to develop an effective on the ground game to defeat and not enough money to run campaign ads to educate people that this misnamed proposition wasn’t going to strengthen Civil Rights, but eviscerate them.

Propositions usually pass or fail because of semantics – what it says.  And usually, what it says versus what it will actually do, is usually buried in the fine print that no one bothers to read.

Here’s the autopsy report.  Maybe, after white gay males (I emphasize white gay males, because it looked to me like they kicked white lesbians to the curb along with gays and lesbians of color), read this report, they will realize they can’t get it done without us, and stop including us when they need us, but kick us to the curb when they think we’re IRRELEVANT.