In the wake of
California’s passage of Proposition 8, protests are
popping up around the country -- and so are comparisons
between gays’ and African-Americans’
fights for equality. Is gay the new black? Michael
Joseph Gross examines two struggles for civil rights. Plus:
Photos from Wednesday night's rally in New York City.
The following is the cover story from the December
16 issue of The Advocate. Selected
stories from that issue will be posted
November 19 on Advocate.com; subscribers will
receive the issue the following week.
Accompanying Michael Joseph Gross's piece are photos
taken November 12 at New York City's rally against
the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which
rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry.For more coverage of the New York rally, click
here. Top Photo: Gregory Gillbergh
The night before
Election Day, a black woman walked into the San
Francisco headquarters of the No on Proposition 8 campaign.
Someone had ripped down the No on 8 sign she’d
posted in her yard and she wanted a replacement. She
was old, limping, and carrying a cane. Walking up and
down the stairs to this office was hard for her.
I asked why
coming to get the sign was worth the trouble, and she
answered, “All of us are equal, and all of us have to
fight to make sure the law says that.” She said
that she was straight, and she told me about one of
the first times she ever hung out with gay people, in New
Orleans in the 1970s. “I thought I was so cool
for being there, and I said, ‘You faggots are a
lot of fun!’ Well, that day I learned my lesson. A
gay man turned on me and said, ‘A faggot is not
a person. A faggot is a bunch of sticks you use to
light a fire.’ ”
The next day,
Barack Obama was elected president, and gay marriage rights
in California were taken away. At the same time, Arizona
voters amended their state constitution to
preemptively outlaw gay marriage. Florida went
further, outlawing any legal union that’s treated as
marriage, such as domestic partnerships or civil
unions. Arkansas passed a vicious law denying us
adoption rights.
The
combination of Obama’s win and gay people’s
losses inflicted mass whiplash. We were elated, then
furious. I’d spent the week in the No on Prop.
8 office in the Castro, a neighborhood where our
defeat was existential. For the next few days, wherever I
went -- barbershop, grocery store, gym, bars -- I
heard people talk of almost nothing else. Incredibly,
strangers on the street walked up to me and started
conversations about Prop. 8. Taking the long view, some
found hope and consolation: 52.3% of Californians
voted against us, but 47.7% voted with us, which was
the closest we’ve ever come to winning a ballot
measure for marriage equality in the state. Other election
results were even more encouraging: In New York State,
where a marriage bill is pending, we won enough
legislative seats to secure a pro-equality majority;
Connecticut voters rejected a constitutional convention that
could have reversed that state’s legalization of
marriage.
Still, the
election was a blindsiding reminder that the majority of
voters, even in a state as liberal as California, still see
gay people as second-class citizens. These past few
years we’ve made so much progress that
we’d begun to think everybody saw us as we see
ourselves. Suddenly we were faced with the reality
that a majority of voters don’t like us,
don’t think we're normal, don’t believe our
lives and loves count as much or are worth as much as
theirs.
History compounds
the insult and suggests hypothetical scenarios
rendering the mixed result of this election even more
absurd. If the California supreme court and the U.S.
Supreme Court decisions overturning antimiscegenation
laws -- Perez v. Sharp and Loving v.
Virginia -- had been blocked by popular vote,
Barack Obama might never have been born. His parents would
not have been able to marry in several states (although
Hawaii, where they were married, had never enacted a
law against interracial marriage).
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