In the November 4th General election the state of California voted YES on Proposition 8, thereby banning same sex marriage in the state of California. In the wake of this, Black folks have been blamed for the loss to gay rights. Labeled "Homophobic" and "Church-going Hypocrites", Black folks have taken a lot of heat for the ban. But a deeper look points the blame in another direction because the numbers don't hold up. The state's Black population is 6.2 percent, and it accounted for 10 percent of the overall vote. In other words, blaming African Americans for the referendum's passage ignores 90 percent of the vote.
It also ignores recent history. To judge from social research, had there been an unapologetically pro-civil rights campaign, there was the prospect of a different outcome.
The most comprehensive study of Black attitudes toward homosexuality, which combines 31 national surveys from 1973 to 2000, came to a fascinating conclusion. Georgia State University researchers found that "Blacks appear to be more likely than whites both to see homosexuality as wrong and to favor gay-rights laws."
African Americans' religiosity leads many to believe that homosexuality is a sin, while their own experience of oppression leads them to oppose discrimination. This was borne out in the 2004 elections, where, in the six states with substantial Black populations that had same-sex marriage bans on their ballots, Blacks were slightly less likely than whites to vote for them. We highly recommend Author Sherry Wolf and the rest of this story.
