Although most of California’s black politicians opposed Proposition 8, many African-American pastors vociferously supported it. Why does black culture draw different lines on gay rights?
Channeling Leni Riefenstahl and the Nuremberg rallies as inspiration, three dozen antigay black pastors dispatched hundreds of uniformed black Southern California schoolchildren in October to encourage blacks to vote yes on Proposition 8. The smiling children had been dismissed from school for the event. Banners read, “For Children. For Families. For Our Future.”
Apostle Frederick K.C. Price, one of the nation’s more prominent black televangelists and leader of the 22,000-member Crenshaw Christian Center, ordered the children into the streets as the army in his own personal jihad against gay marriage. Marriage was defined by God as a union between a man and a woman, he said, and to change that definition would “jeopardize our children’s future.”
Thinly disguised homophobia has always been the calling card of fundamentalist black churches, and as a result black voters tend to be more conservative on social issues. It came as no surprise when exit polls on Election Day showed that Prop. 8 was rejected by 51% of white voters yet supported by 70% of blacks. Even before a single ballot was cast, the persistent drumbeat by many in the gay e-telligentsia -- especially revisionist conservative Andrew Sullivan, who fancies himself an authority on race relations -- was that black homophobia would seal the passage of the ballot initiative.
The truth is far more nuanced. Blacks made up no more than 10% of those voting in California this election. Even if a larger proportion supported the measure, the passage was “sealed” by millions of mostly white, conservative, inland voters and the millions of dollars from the almost lily-white Mormon Church. An eleventh-hour television commercial by Samuel L. Jackson and robo-calls by Magic Johnson and Barack Obama apparently fell on deaf ears.
Almost every major black politician and organization in California was on record against Proposition 8: the state chapter of the NAACP, whose friend-of-the-court brief was considered in the state supreme court’s landmark marriage ruling last May; assembly speaker Karen Bass; then-assemblyman Mervyn Dymally; Oakland mayor Ron Dellums; U.S. representative Barbara Lee. Even former NBA player and new Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, who angered gays by saying marriage should be restricted to a man and woman, opposed Prop. 8 “because it would write discrimination into the state constitution.”
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