http://www.slate.com/id/2204534?wpisrc=newsletter
Slate.clom
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008
Original Skin
Blacks, gays, and immutability.
By William Saletan
<snip>
The National Election Pool exit poll tells the story. Whites and
Asian-Americans, comprising 69 percent of California's electorate,
opposed Proposition 8 by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent. Latinos
favored it, 53-47. But blacks turned out in historically high
numbers--10 percent of the electorate--and 70 percent of them voted for
Proposition 8.*
This is no fluke. Black support for Florida's ballot measure against
gay marriage ran 11 points higher than white support and 7 points
higher than Latino support. The adoption measure in Arkansas turned out
differently--black support was 4 points lower than white support--but
nationwide and over time, there's a clear pattern. In Maryland and New
Jersey, polls have shown whites supporting gay marriage but blacks
opposing it. A report from the pro-gay National Black Justice Coalition
attributes President Bush's 2004 reelection in part to the
near-doubling of his percentage of the black vote in Ohio, which he
achieved "by appealing to Black churchgoers on the issue of marriage
equality." This year, blacks in California were targeted the same way.
The NBJC report paints a stark picture of the resistance. It cites
surveys showing that "65% of African-Americans are opposed to marriage
equality compared to 53% of Whites" and that blacks are "less than half
as likely to support marriage equality and legal recognition of
same-sex civil unions as Whites." It concludes: "African-Americans are
virtually the only constituency in the country that has not become more
supportive over the last dozen years, falling from a high of 65%
support for gay rights in 1996 to only 40% in 2004." Nor is the problem
dying out: "Among African-American youth, 55% believed that
homosexuality is always wrong, compared to 36% of Latino youth and 35%
of White youth."
Why the gap? Most analysts blame religion. But that doesn't explain why
black Protestants, for example, are far more hostile to gay rights than
white Protestants are. Nor does it explain why blacks, who have felt
the sting of discrimination, see no parallel in laws that deny equal
rights to homosexuals. We've just elected as our next president the
child of a black-white sexual relationship. So much for the old laws
against interracial marriage. Why, then, are the people targeted by
those laws supporting bans on same-sex marriage?
The answer is: They think sexual orientation is different from race.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of a nation in which individuals would be
judged not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character." Whites, on balance, have come to believe that sexual
orientation, like color, is immutable. Blacks, on balance, haven't.
They see homosexuality as a matter of character. "I was born black. I
can't change that," one California man explained after voting for
Proposition 8. "They weren't born gay; they chose it."
The NBJC report notes that blacks are "more likely than other groups to
believe that homosexuality is wrong, that sexual orientation is a
choice, and that sexual orientation can be changed." Polls confirm
this. In a 2003 Pew survey, 32 percent of whites said homosexuality was
inborn, 15 percent said it was caused by upbringing, and 40 percent
said it was a lifestyle preference. Latinos answered roughly the same
way. But only 15 percent of blacks agreed that homosexuality was
inborn; 58 percent said it was a lifestyle preference. A plurality of
whites (45 to 39 percent) said a person's homosexuality couldn't
change, but a two-to-one majority of blacks (58 to 30 percent) said it
could.
The pattern persists in Pew's 2006 survey. A plurality of whites said
homosexuality was inborn, and a majority said it couldn't be changed. A
majority of blacks said that homosexuality was just how some people
preferred to live and that it could be changed.
The mutability question is hardly academic. It has been driving public
opinion toward gay rights for decades. In 1977, 56 percent of Americans
polled by Gallup said homosexuality was a product of upbringing and
environment; only 13 percent said it was inborn. Today, a plurality
says it's inborn. That 20-point shift has coincided with a 20-point
shift toward the stated acceptability of homosexuality and a 30-point
shift toward support for equality in job opportunities. In Pew and
Gallup surveys, respondents' positions on mutability overwhelmingly
predict their positions on gay marriage and homosexuality's
acceptability. Pew puts the equation bluntly: "Belief that
homosexuality is immutable [is] associated with positive opinions about
gays and lesbians even more strongly than education, personal
acquaintance with a homosexual, or general ideological beliefs."
I've covered politics for a long time. I've seen shrewd polling and
message-framing turn issues and elections upside-down. Eventually, I
came to believe that the most potent force in politics wasn't spin but
science, which transforms reality and our understanding of it. But I've
never seen a convergence like this. Here we have a left-leaning
constituency (blacks) that has become politically pivotal on an issue
(homosexuality) and is susceptible to a reframing of that issue (seeing
sexual orientation, like color, as inborn) in accord with ongoing
scientific research.
From prenatal hormones to genetics to birth order, scientists have been
sifting data to nail down homosexuality's biological origins. As they
advance, it will become easier and easier to persuade African-Americans
that being gay is a lot like being black. The lesson of Proposition 8
isn't that blacks have stopped the march of gay rights. The lesson is
that when they turn, the fight in blue America will essentially be
over.