Chad Goller-Sojourner Takes on "Who Passed Prop 8?" Debate
Since the passage of California's Prop. 8, which reversed a State Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, a potentially poisonous debate has sprung up over whether the California African-American community, who turned out in record numbers to vote for Obama, bears special responsibility for passing the measure. For perspective, we turned to Chad Goller-Sojourner, a local writer, poet, and performance artist whose work has explored his own struggles growing up black and gay.
A guest post by Chad Goller-Sojourner
I’ve spent the better part of this past week trying to understand new math. It’s the kind of math where a people, who make up 6.7 percent of California’s population, end up responsible for the passage of a statewide proposition. It’s the kind of math that minimizes the fact that all of Proposition 8’s creators and major backers, those that share 100 percent responsibility for the measure’s very existence, share the same common denominator: conservative white men. It’s the kind of math in which cable news political pundits and pollsters insert new vocabulary—"the Obama factor"—and then attempt to provide "insight" into it.
Furthermore, it fails to examine Proposition 8 in its historical context and thereby misses the silver lining, which is: in 2000 Proposition 22, which similarly sought to declare same sex marriage illegal, passed overwhelmingly by a 61.2 to 38.8 percent margin. And, yes Proposition 8 also passed, however there the margin was much smaller (52.2 to 47.8 percent). Two similar propositions placed before the same body in a relatively short time-frame show striking evidence that in the court of public opinion, the winds of change continue to blow in our favor. And, yes, the fact that our rights are being voted on in this court troubles me deeply.
And finally, new math clouds our ability to take comfort in knowing that while legal protections and constitutional rights often come much later than requested, history reveals not only do they come, but the waiting period continues to grow shorter. The road from Stonewall to present is a lot shorter than both the road from the 13th Amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the road from the beginning of the Suffrage movement to the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Let’s cut to the heart of the matter. The big elephant in the room of this whole debate is the larger gay white community’s disappointment and anger over polling numbers which CNN associated with black voters. It shocks them to their core: how can blacks, with their long history of slavery, Jim Crow and segregation, vote in favor of discrimination and bigotry?
While I’d love to dive right into exploring the aforementioned, to do so would play into the fallacy so prevalent in today’s gay white community, which is that a relationship exists between them and the larger black community. They fail to grasp that within the larger black community, white gays and lesbians are seen as part of the larger white community. This is partly of their own making as, historically, gay rights organizations have chosen white leaders and spokespeople whom they believe will present well to the white middle/upper class. This plan seems to work well, even among blacks who continue to view the gay community and "gay issues" as white.
So why do white gay community leaders continually choose to bypass the gays and lesbians who are already members of the target community (black gays and lesbians) and go directly to the larger black community? It appears many believe that since being gay often changes their status and affiliation with the larger white community, it also somehow changes the way they are seen in the black community. It does not. Nor does it necessarily, automatically, increase their sense of empathy or understanding regarding the black community. Regardless of what you think you know about homophobia in the black community, the fact remains that the vast majority of black gay and lesbians choose to reside in the black communities. The larger white gay community would be wise to take note of this as they explore the impact of black voters and craft ways to reach out to the larger black community.
Had the "No on Proposition 8" folks understood this, they might have redesigned the interracial marriage comparison campaign they used to reach out to blacks to vote against Proposition 8. Merits aside, the Loving decision of 1967 (that struck down laws banning interracial marriage) is neither well known nor seen as a civil rights milestone in the black community. Shortsighted, perhaps, but given the fact they were dealing with lynching, assassinations, and bombings, the right to marry into the community of their oppression was understandably hard to get behind. That being said, there is still merit in the comparison. It’s just a wonder who thought it best to send white gays to make the argument to the black community? To do so shows a lack of understanding of both the importance of the messenger and what today’s black community actually feels about interracial marriage.
Had they found an interracial gay or lesbian couple (of which there are many) to serve as their spokespeople, they may have had better luck. Or at the very least, the black member of such a couple might have suggested they run with the Rosa Parks (back of the bus) or Brown v. Board of Education (separate is not equal) comparisons. Because, at the end of the day, anyone who has ever spent any time in the black town square, (aka barbershops and beauty salons), knows that the responses and opinions to a comment like, "Did you know so-and-so is gay?" pales in comparison to a comment like, "I heard so and so is messing with a white girl."
On November 4, 2008, California gays, lesbians, and their allies lost a battle. Based on the final numbers, as well as the continued incoming crop of young voters, if organizers on both sides ran a very similar campaign in 2012, we’d win. That being said, I think we can do better. We should see this as a call for a new movement, not a parade, not a rally, not another "We are just like you so it would be unfair to take our rights away" campaign. But a movement that embraces those among us who are nothing like them; a movement that encompasses, that believes enough in itself that there is no need to link its worth on a false resemblance between two communities with two very distinct and different cultures. This is the type of new math needed for a renewed civil rights movement.
Chad is Seattle-based writer and performer whose one-man show, Sitting in Circles With Rich White Girls, was produced by the BrownBox Theatre at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center. He was profiled by Seattlest in July.
Photo of the Nov. 15 Seattle March for Equality by Seattlest Flickr group contributor Miss Crankypants.
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