Black people are so homophobic..

I've waited for a bit on the Prop 8 issues. When it was first passed everyone was running around saying, erroneously, that it passed because Barack got the Black vote out. See below...

"Gays came back in some polls, but they couldn't pull out a win. Part of the reason is that Obama inspired unprecedented numbers of African Americans to vote. Polls show that black voters are more likely to attend church than whites and less likely to be comfortable with equality for gay people. According to CNN, African Americans voted against marriage equality by a wide margin, 69% to 31%. High turnout of African Americans in Florida probably help explain that state's lopsided vote to ban same-sex weddings. http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081106/us_time/whygaymarriagewasdefeatedincalifornia"

Working in a Gay heavy area I always hear laments about the Black community being so homophobic, and after I politely inquire as to why they feel blacks are more homophobic than, say... white people in Virginia, Mississippi, upstate Pennsylvania, or the dirty south...I inform them that an unsubstantiated belief about a group of people - especially when that belief is negative - falls in the racist category.

But I used my new patience button and waited...I would soon be vindicated by numbers....Half of everybody is homophobic. We, blacks, have enough on our plates without singled out as the sole source of American Homophobia. http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/11/10/proposition_8/index1.html

I wrote the above weeks ago and still decided to sit on it because something was nagging me about it...In the Huffingtonpost.com there is an article by a UNION alum that postulates that we may not be the sole source of homophobia, we may not be the cause of the bill passing at just 6% of the population BUT we are overwhelmingly homophobic and 7 out of 10 blacks voted against the right of LGBT people to marry......

And that was what was gently tapping my conscious. In my effort to combat the inherent racism of the blame being cast on our community I forgot to turn around and give black people a good smack in the face. I, for one, will admit publicly that I am tired of having the same conversation with blacks pointing out the obvious and hurtful contradiction in extending civil rights to blacks (say the right to be...uhm, not be enslaved...or uhm the right to vote) while simultaneously withholding them from Gays and Lesbians.

It is a problem and it is not okay.

And pastor, please stop dragging around that same dusty bag of excuses, gay marriage in no way is going to harm the stability of African American marriages - - it might give me some more options though. lmao.

Read the article...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/proposition-8-is-not-abou_b_142994.html