[lbo-talk] Why Blacks opposed Prop 8 -- and a simple way to turn them?

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Nov 14 07:35:11 PST 2008


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.



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