Terrance Heath's List: Prop H8

• "We've finally arrived at a moment when America feels like it's supposed to." - Bob Cesca of the Huffpo (Wenesday, November 5, 2008)
• Passing Prop 2 and Prop 8, Californians secured a chicken's right to "extend its wings, lie down, stand up, and turn around" in confinement, while revoking basic democratic rights from gays; rights like equal protection under the law, the ability to pursue happiness, and the freedom to worship religion without state interference (that's right, there are Judeo-Christian confessions that view same-sex marriage as sacred). In short, Californians sympathize with chickens but not with gays.

  • That's just it. Have we made any real progress? If a black president fulfills MLK's dream, then certainly extending rights to chickens while denying them to human beings is a step backwards.
• Sorry to be the buzz-kill at the liberal victory-party, but this election has been a historic nightmare for millions of gay Americans.
• Apparently nobody in the MSM has the stomach to parse words like "bittersweet," "hypocrisy," and "pyrrhic victory."

  • Because they know what millions of Americans would say. It's not the same. MLK was wrong. Injustice anywhere is not a threat to justice everywhere, because dicrimination against some people isn't injustice. It doesn't even matter enough to rise to the level of injustice.
    
    People want marriage reserved for heterosexuals, and for chickens to have more comforatble lives before they end up on dinner plates.
• To be sure, this is not the media's fault. But its reticence on the uneven nature of American progress is strikingly naive and delusional, especially given the overwhelming--though not singularly determinative--role that African-Americans played in supporting Prop 8 and denying other Americans their civil rights.

  • Whether African Americans were responsible for passing proposition 8 or not -- and even those who discount the exit poll sugessting that a significant number of African Americans voted for proposition 8 -- to fail see the sinificance and the irony (how many who celebrated Obama's election did so after voting to support and codify discrimination in California, Arizona, Florida, or Arkansas?) you have to just not want to see it.
• The Obama victory was undoubtedly historic and groundbreaking, but it has come at a price: the aggrandizement and intensification of hostility between Blacks and gays. The irony is as ugly as it is heartbreaking. The betrayal gays feel can be summed up pithily: how is the outlawing of same sex marriage any different from the anti-miscegenation laws of segregation? Some may point to religious values as the discriminating factor, but "Christian values" were used to justify anti-miscegenation just as they are now used to justify the revoking of same-sex marriage. Hiding behind the Church, then and now, does not absolve anyone of their complicity in discrimination.
• Some gays -- mostly from the Boomer generation -- point out (correctly) that I am impatient. Progress, they say, is inevitable. Consider the historicity of a president-elect who freely and comfortably refers to gays within the first breath of his victory. We are a long way, they remind us, from the days when a president couldn't even utter the word "AIDS" publicly.
• Well, as the cliché goes, in the long term we are dead.

  • Martin Luther King has somethign to say about this in "Why we can't wait." Asking people facing discrimination to wait is asking them to continue living with injustice, and without remedy.

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  The numbers are daunting: 70 percent of black voters favored the amendment to ban gay marriage. In comparison, the CNN exit polls report "55 percent of white voters and 52 percent of Hispanics voted against the proposition." 75 percent of black women voted yes on the anti-gay measure. Similar numbers are not available for black men.
• But black voters only represent 6 percent of the electorate—that's only a very small piece of the pie—so you have to look at the entire jigsaw puzzle. Even if black California voters opposed the measure by similar margins as white and/or Latino voters, it still is likely to pass. The number of black voters are dwarfed by whites and Latinos. The question becomes, why did black voters overwhelmingly support this amendment and what can LGBT organizations do differently?
• The first question can be answered by the many black pastors who supported this measure. Although the black community is moving from a prophetic-based leadership to a multi-ethnic political paradigm, the black  church is still very powerful and many of the anti-gay pastors were ecstatic to lead this issue.

  • If that's true, then protesters should take their protests to the churches of the pastors who supported prop 8.
• The second question has to be addressed by gay activists and LGBT organizations because the face of marriage equality remains largely vanilla.

  • The question remains then, if white gays are admonished to focus on their own efforts and not even mention homophobia among some African Ameriacns.

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• African-Americans voted for Proposition 8 by a 69 percent to 31 percent margin. However, 55 percent of white voters and 52 percent of Hispanics voted against the proposition.

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  Black Voters Not to Blame if Proposition 8 Passes

   

  Filed by: Michael Crawford

   

  September 22, 2008 4:00 PM

   

   

   

  A troubling New York Times article on Proposition 8, the proposed California anti-marriage constitutional amendment, asserts that some marriage supporters are concerned that strong support for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy among Black voters may spell trouble for efforts to defeat the proposal to take away marriage rights for same-sex couples.

    

    

  Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, is against the measure. But opponents of the proposed ban worry that many black voters, enthused by Mr. Obama's candidacy but traditionally conservative on issues involving homosexuality, could pour into voting stations in record numbers to punch the Obama ticket -- and then cast a vote for Proposition 8.

    

  "It's a Catch-22," said Andrea Shorter, the campaign director of And Marriage for All, a coalition of gay and civil rights groups that recently started what it calls an education campaign around the state, focusing on blacks and framing the issue of same-sex marriage as one of civil rights.

    

    

   

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  While the possibility that some African-American voters may oppose our fight for equality seems to have caught some white LGBT activists by surprise, it seems that the proponents of marriage discrimination have anticipated this opportunity to capitalize on homophobia among some in the Black and Latino communities.
• It ties historic electoral enthusiasm among Black voters to an anti-gay proposal put forth by white evangelical conservatives and strongly suggests that anticipated strong voter turnout among African-Americans will have a negative impact on the advancement of LGBT equality.

  • Well, it's panned out at least a few times. In 2006, Republicans thought the marriage amendment in VA would help them at the polls. But what happend was that the racism of the GOP candidate combined with the marriage issue brought African Americans to the polls, and while they largely supported the amendment, their votes didn't got to GOP candidates.
• The writer of the article seems to forget that whites are a majority of voters in the state and that if the amendment to strip marriage away from same-sex couples is successful it will be because a lot of white voters voted against equal treatment under the law for gay couples.

  • Actually, this would justify not reaching out to black voters anyway. If they are such a small part of the electorate, it wouldn't make a huge difference to win them over. It would make more sense to reach out to white voters.
• Unfortunately work like this, efforts among LGBT people of color to dialogue with and work within communities of color, are among those given the least amount of resources and investment by LGBT organizations even as it becomes increasingly clear the key role that people of color can play in advancing LGBT civil rights.

  • Which is it? Black voters are such a small part of the electorate that they don't matter or that black voters are such an important part of the electorate that LGBT organizations should reach out to them more?
    
    Also, LGBT POC orgnaizations taking money to reach out to black communities are likely to be targeted by black gay activists who assert that marriage isn't a "black issue" and that black gays have "more important" concerns than marriage.

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• Could Senator Barack Obama’s popularity among black voters hurt gay couples in California who want to marry?
• The Obama/Proposition 8 situation appeals to those opposed to same-sex marriage, who are banking on a high turnout by blacks and conservative Latinos. “There’s no question African-American and Latino voters are among our strongest supporters,” said Frank Schubert, the co-campaign manager for Yes on 8, the leading group behind the measure. “And to the extent that they are motivated to get to the polls, whether by this issue or by Barack Obama, it helps us.”

  • Here's the problem. It will take years of effort to move a significant number of African Americans on gay issues, because it takes that much time and effort to move anyone whose positions are based on religion beliefs.
• To blunt that possibility, gay leaders and Proposition 8 opponents have been sponsoring casual events at restaurants in traditionally black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, meeting with black clergy members and recruiting gay black couples to serve as spokespeople on panels and at house parties and church events.

  • It seems that a low-key approach was chosen. Maybe that's because a "hard sell" would have gone over like a led balloon?

  • So, efforts were made? It's not like nothing was done? Would doing more have yielded more?
• “This is black people talking to black people,” said Ron Buckmire, the board president of the Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition, a gay rights group in Los Angeles. “We’re saying, ‘Gay people are black and black people are gay. And if you are voting conservative on an antigay ballot measure, you are hurting the black community.’ ”
• “We think there’s 15 to 20 percent that are still undecided on this issue,” said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, which supports gay rights. “We do believe that if we can get our message out at least equal to the other side, we will win, but that’s a fund-raising issue.”

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• It was fickle "progressive" Democrats that caused Proposition 8 to pass. I have been saying for weeks that if Democrats were only opposing Proposition 8 in the mid-60s while Republicans were supporting it in the high 70s then we would lose.
• The revised exit polls posted by CNN show that Democrats (42% of sample) opposed Prop 8 64%-36%, while Republicans (29%) supported it 85%-15% and Independents (28%) opposed discrimination 54%-46%. Stop blaming Black people and the illusory "Obama effect" for Proposition 8's passage!
• I do agree that it is troubling that 70% of Black people voted for Proposition 8 in exit polls and that shows just how much work needs to be done in the Black community to combat decades of homophobic indoctrination by the conservative religious community. It does not mean that Black people are inherently more homophobic than other communities.

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• I woke up this morning to the devastating news: with 95% of votes counted, a historically high turnout of California voters, by a margin of approximately 4-6 percent, chose to stick it to the LGBT community.

  • Part of the reason for the focus on African Americans was the vote margin - 4 to 6 percent - which fits neatly with the percentage of the electorate African Americans make up.

• While Obama does not support gay marriage, he opposes both proposition 8 and any constitutional ban.
   If passed, Proposition 8 would amend the state constitution to define marriage as valid only between a man and woman — essentially overturning a ruling by the Supreme Court in May that legalized same-sex marriages.
• Some Obama supporters wish the Democratic presidential hopeful would speak out more forcefully against the initiative and perhaps even issue a statement before Election Day. Immediately after the measure qualified for the ballot in June, the Illinois senator wrote a wide-ranging letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club in which he said he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California constitution" and similar moves in other states.
   
   Since then, however, Obama has not made any bold pronouncements or urged supporters to specifically vote no on 8. "It's been frustrating," says one gay Obama supporter and fundraiser.

  • This is probably due in part to Obama knowing that to come out stronger against prop 8 and for equality (which, oddly enough he and Biden both did to almost comedic effect, opposing same-sex marriage but saying same-sex couples should have "all the same rights as heterosexual couples.")
• Once Proposition 8 got on the ballot in June, LGBT activists met and brainstormed to oppose it, but no one stepped up to lead the effort. Precious weeks, if not months, were wasted, say some activists. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean reportedly offered to go on a media/fundraising tour but never heard back from organizers.
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   Not everyone is "incredibly pleased," however. "Obama will not say a mumbling word on Proposition 8, proving what has been noted before," 365Gay Agenda blogger James Withers wrote shortly after the candidate's "Ellen" appearance. "He is no better, or worse, than your standard Democratic pol willing to put gay issues on the back burner."

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• I watched on my television as the Prop 8 supporters -- the ones who creepily spent their time and money restricting the rights of their fellow citizens -- cheered and hugged each other at their victory party. Victory over what? How are their lives changed? If these revelers were married before the proposition passed, I assume they are still married. If they weren't married, I assume they'll still have just as much trouble finding love for their loveless hearts. So what did they gain?
• The dirty secret among these people is that their precious definition of marriage, as that which occurs between a man and a woman, doesn't actually strengthen a single union. The only thing it does is marginalize, ostracize and villainize human beings whose only crime is that they want to be treated equally in a country that declares for its citizens that very equality in its founding document.

• Political analysts say such electoral gains are quietly changing the political landscape, increasing the number of black lawmakers adept at crossing color lines as well as the ranks of white voters who are familiar, and increasingly comfortable, with black political leadership.

  • If this is true, then gays have to step up outreach in African American communities, otherwise state adn local efforts on LGBT equality could be hampered. Or not, if the CBC is any example.
• Most black elected officials, however, still represent predominantly black communities. And Dr. Hajnal and other analysts say racial animosity toward black candidates still exists and may affect the results of local and national elections, including the race for president. But he said such feelings were declining.

• Sixty-six-year-old Jake Coakley picked cotton as a boy in Beaufort, S.C., just as his father and grandfather did before him. So yesterday, as he stood amid a throng of people hugging, high-fiving, and even weeping outside a Roxbury polling place, he wanted to underscore the significance of the day.
• "This," he said to a little boy, patting his head and staring deeply into his eyes, "is history."

  • Tuesday night, I got home at 3:30 a.m. I went upstairs to my son's room because I wanted to be the first to tell him that Obama had won. We had been following Obama's campaign, and I'd explained to Parker that Obama would be the first black person to ever be president. I wanted to be the one to tell him how much the world had changed, whether he fully realized it or not.
    
    What I had to tell him the next day was that the world hadn't changed enough to let his parents marry each other; another thing he actually shares with the president-elect, whose parents' marriage was illegal in many states 40 years ago.
• In St. Petersburg, Fla., Ron Dock spoke of the day he learned that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. Dock was 18, he said, crouching in a rice paddy in Vietnam, preparing for a firefight. In Alexandria, Va., 83-year-old Flossie Parks recalled turning 21 and being forced to pay a $3 poll tax for the right to vote.

  • Florida voters who elected Obama also voted to dicriminate against their fellow Floridians.
• Millions of black voters across the country turned out to help elect Barack Obama the first African-American president yesterday, and as they did, they reflected not just on the course of a historic campaign, but on the history of a nation.

  • And, in the states, many of them did so while voting to codify discrimination agaist their fellow citizens.

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• Journey's end? If this is the journey's end, and the promise land reached, too many African Americans are willing to lock the gate behind them. - Terrance Heath on 2008-11-11

• There will be a lot of soul-searching in the weeks to come, but the fact is that gay Americans remain an electoral liability for Democrats whose support remains largely tepid, often crystallising only after they've left office.

  • And can do little to effect policy, but don't need votes anymore.
• That's why it was safe for Bill Clinton to lend his support to the "no" campaign in the last few weeks, despite his advice to John Kerry in 2004 to back local bans on gay marriage, and the Defense Of Marriage Act that he signed into law in 1996. And it explains why Obama played such an awkward dance of being for equality, but against gay marriage. On MTV last weekend he said he Proposition 8 was "unnecessary" (gee, thanks!) while reiterating his opposition to marriage equality, a stance that played into the hands of Proposition 8 campaigners, who used his words in their TV ads and campaign literature. We kvetched about that, but who can blame them? That's politics.
• For months, pro-gay marriage campaigners fretted that a big turnout for Obama would tip the scales in favour of Proposition 8 because it would bring out record numbers of African-Americans, who tend to hold more conservative social views. A CNN poll seems to suggest that's exactly what happened, with African-Americans voting 69 to 31 in favour. It goes without saying that we wouldn't be seeing the election of a black American today had the civil rights battles of the 1960s been decided by public referenda – a message we would do well to play up more.
• "We must never let popular votes affect our own internal sense of our worth, our equality, our dignity as human beings. Our marriages are real; all that is at issue is whether a majority will recognise them in law. The next generation already does. We shall overcome."

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• A special target of the campaign is the African American vote, which is expected to be substantial this year because Barack Obama on the ballot. That may be a problem for gay marriage supporters.
• The 'Yes on 8' campaign is banking on African American voters siding with them, against gay marriage.

  • The established religiosity of many black voters and their social conservatism gave prop 8 supporers an "easy in" to winning them over; one that I'm not convinced black gays can easily or quickly overcome. It will take years, years, to begin to make ground with that demographic. Perhaps the best LGBT organizers can go is start that outreach but don't count on these voters to affect the margin of victory for at least another decade at best, and probably longer.
• "It is offensive to some people to draw the comparison between the struggle for black rights and the struggle for gay rights. I'm not offended by it at all," said Eva Patterson of No on 8. "You don't have to get into the oppression Olympics to say who's been more oppressed. We want everyone to be free."

  • But there are parallels. Do they have to be the same, identical, for there to be paralells? Or can we address two different struggles that have at their core issues of discrimination and injustice often based on relgion?

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• hree big states — Arizona, California and Florida — voted to change their constitutions to define marriage as a heterosexuals-only institution. The losses cut deep on the gay side. Arizona had rejected just such a constitutional amendment only two years ago. It had been the first and only state to have rebuffed a constitutional ban on marriage equality. In Florida, where the law requires constitutional amendments to win by 60%, a marriage amendment passed with disturbing ease, 62.1% to 37.9%.
• And then there was California. Gay strategists working for marriage equality in this election cycle had focused most of their attention on that state. Losing there dims hopes that shimmered brightly just a few weeks ago — hopes that in an Obama America, straight people would be willing to let gay people have the basic right to equality in their personal relationships. It appears not.

  • Opposing same-sex marriage isn't out of line with supporting Obama. Like many other candidates, he's opposed marriage equality but at the same time said we should have "all the same rights," but offers no recommendations on how this will be achieved. Chances are he'll still be saying it when he leaves office, and we still won't have achieved it.
• Gays are used to losing these constitutional amendment battles — as I said, Arizona was the only exception — but gay activists cannot claim they didn't have the money to wage the California fight. According to an analysis of the most recent reports from the California secretary of state, the pro-equality side raised an astonishing $43.6 million, compared with just $29.8 million for those who succeeded in keeping gays from marrying. The money the gay side raised is surprising for two reasons: first, the cash-Hoover known as the Obama campaign was sucking down millions of dollars a day from the nation's liberals. Many gays expected it to be difficult to raise money to fight Proposition 8 and its plan to outlaw same-sex marriage from Democrats eager to give to Obama and to the outside 527 groups supporting him. As recently as August, one of the nation's top gay political givers told me that he expected the gay side to raise no more than $25 million.
• Still, even though gays were fighting to preserve a basic right, it was the anti-equality side in California that seemed to have the most fervor. A symbolic low point for the gay side came on Oct. 13, when the Sacramento Bee ran a remarkable story about Rick and Pam Patterson, a Mormon couple of modest means — he drives a 10-year-old Honda Civic, she raises their five boys — who had withdrawn $50,000 from their savings account and given it to the pro-8 campaign. "It was a decision we made very prayerfully," Pam Patterson, 48, told the Bee's Jennifer Garza. "Was it an easy decision? No. But it was a clear decision, one that had so much potential to benefit our children and their children."
• You could argue that marriage equality has little to do with children, but Patterson seemed to speak to Californians' inchoate phobias about gays and kids. On the Friday before the Bee story appeared, a group of San Francisco first-graders was taken to city hall to see their lesbian teacher marry her partner. Apparently the field trip was a parent's idea — not the teacher's — but the optics of the event were terrible for the gay side. It seemed like so much indoctrination.

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• I called one of my best friends and was barely able to mutter through the tears, "We did it. America did it. I'm so proud of my country and so grateful that I lived long enough to see this election." The MSNC cameras swept the ecstatic crowd in Grant Park in Chicago -- young people of all colors were jumping and yelling, but older people were subdued, calm ... and weeping.

    

  I started to dry up, but as the camera stopped panning and slowly zoomed in on Jesse Jackson standing tall in the crowd silently weeping, I welled up and Old Faithful erupted again. Jesse Jackson wasn't smiling, he wasn't jumping with joy; he was just crying. The camera panned to Oprah. Her head was tilted to one side, resting on her arm. She was crying, too. Old Faithful erupted again.
• Why was so many people's response to this joyous news to cry? Certainly not sadness. Were they tears of joy? Perhaps. I think the tears were a release of multiple and unspoken emotions that were unique to each person who wept. We can never know the depth of emotion of Jesse Jackson, who kneeled over the dead body of Martin Luther King in Memphis. And we probably can't define our own emotions - too complex, too much history, too much gratitude, too much of a release, and too much hope finally fulfilled.

  • Can it b said that on the same night America also fell short. We did it, but we didn't do it. We didn't extend that dream to all Americans, we haven't yet, and if we don't acknowledge that then we further postpone the day that we do, and the day that we will finally have really embraced and realized that dream.
• As I watched MSNBC, I'm convinced I saw Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews well up. If professional TV personalities and anchors can't suck it up, then no one can -- and few could on election night. It was a night of tears that will hopefully wash away our sins of racism and float in an era of equality... and they did at least for one wet night.

  • It has not all been washed away. At best we have losened our grip on one prejudice while tightening our hold an another.
    
    If that doesn't make all the celebrating ring hollow, then there is actually less hope for America coming out of this election. Not more.

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• The ballot measure was funded in large part through Catholic, Mormon and evangelical mega-churches. Money poured in as hateful well-crafted sermons spewed out to congregants anxious for the golden ticket to their beloved afterlife. This year, voter's self-aggrandizing reinvigorated Hitler's edict, "give them someone to follow, something to do, and someone to blame."
• "Focus on the Family" acted against their own god's teaching when they bellowed hateful rhetoric against same-sex couples. Money that could have fed the poor was donated instead to this intrusion of church and state. Voters frightened by deceptive ads sold their souls to the devil when they pulled the YES lever for god. A lack of education bundled with ignorance and fear has caused a chasm in California bigger than San Andreas.
• Same-sex couples fought long and hard for the simple recognition of their families by Sacramento. Thousands of same-sex couples - and their children are now disenfranchised by their state. Judicial prudence has been usurped when California put the rights of the few to a majority vote.
• No on 8's Michael Fleming writes, "Never before in California's history has a group who currently enjoys a basic right been singled out and then had those rights ripped from them by a vote of their fellow citizens. In this fight for fairness and justice, tens of thousands of Californians built a campaign that far surpassed any previous civil rights effort on any ballot measure -- not only in California, but anywhere in our entire country." Fleming's promises, "Because of the struggle fought here in California and fought so incredibly well by the people in this state that loves freedom and justice -- our fight for full civil rights will continue."

  • Let us be clear. The dream did not win on Tuesday. The dream lost. Dr. King never specified that his dream was limited just to black people or just to heterosexuals. When he said injustice anywhere was a threat to justice anywhere he did not qualify that statement.
    
    If we claim victory for his dream we are qualifying that statement, and ignoring that in four states voters singled out gay and lesbian Americans for discrimination that will be written into law in those states. Citizens, some of who were celebrating Tuesday night, had voted to limit the rights of some of their fellow citizens, and in California to take away what had finally been granted.
    
    If we can celebrate and not acknowledge that, then we have derailed the dream and cast down on our ability or even our willingnes to get it back on track.
• Same-sex marriage was the sacrificial lamb to a presidential victory for Barack Obama. Gay America knew Obama could never win in Bush's evangelical America if he verbalized a distain for Prop 8. By his silence he voiced his opinion. Obama quietly let millions of his supporters vote for their political evolution while simultaneously selecting a prejudice that led to the lynching of Matthew Shepard, Lawrence King, Tony Hunter and untold numbers of hate crime victims.
• Today the court has been replaced by popular vote but the jury is still out on how painfully society will have to pay its prejudicial penance.

  • Every single American should ask "Which of my civil rights am I willing to put to a simple majority vote?" and not just in the present, but in the future when they could just as easily find themselves in the minority.
    
    The creepign majoritarianism signified by these votes will eventually mean that none of us will have a right that our fellow cititzens cannot vote out of existence, perhaps even with a single vote. We can then strike the word "inalienable" from our founding documents.

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• Next time--and there will be a next time--we must believe in ourselves. That's one of the key messages of the Obama victory. Believe in the people. Empower the people. If you give them orders and you make them cogs, they'll write some checks, but they'll stay home. On election day, it felt good to wave at the people on the street holding No on 8 signs. But I saw no one, not one person, waving a Yes on Obama sign. Why? Because the Obama campaign focused like a laser beam on using California money and labor to win in other states. They had California in the bag. They did not waste people's time doing "visibility" in California.
• Shocking as it may seem, we had West Hollywood in the bag. Imagine the thousands and thousands of people who could have called, spoken to five friends, walked and persuaded for the past four months. Imgaine what might have happened had we truly engaged our wonderful friends in the labor movement, such as Sal Rosselli. And then, if we had lost, we'd have a real movement. Now we have to build one from Zach and Geoffrey up. Maybe it's all for the best. As Barack Obama has shown, real victories do not come easy, but they do come from movements.

• In the end it seemed the gays were the scapegoats, the ones left behind at the back of the bus.
   Had we asked for too much, too soon, to a country that was not ready to give us the full measure of our dignity?

  • Gays are perhaps the only Americans (besides McCain's most ardent supporters) who wer left behind while the rest of the country allegedly took a great leap forward.
• I think for one very precious moment we were larger than ourselves. In a country beset by identity politics, we’d soon be analyzing the Latino vote and the Asian vote. Did the black vote tip the balance on same sex marriage? What about the youth vote? All that would come later, in the dissection and re-dissection of the polls. But for one emotional un-cynical moment we were reveling in something that was bigger than all of our labels.
   
   It’s not a post-racial America by any means. But it was a moment when many of could look at each other and after a long time say not “The President of the USA” but “our president.”

 That feeling, however ephemeral it might be, is more powerful than any ban on any marriage ceremony anywhere.
• Gay men and women are resilient. They had relationships before there was even a name for the movement. They had babies and families and didn’t wait to ask for permission from the larger society. Their families are growing up all around us, marriage ban or no marriage ban. My gay friend’s twin daughters went out this Halloween in matching skeleton outfits, collecting their treats with confidence and charm. They will not stand for their families being outsiders in America. Even now 61 percent of people under 30 supported same sex marriage.

  • Perhaps we simply need to wait for more people to die.
• The gay community knows that. It is fighting its battles in courts to change laws. The day after the elections, groups filed a lawsuit asking the courts to invalidate Prop. 8 even if it passes. But the vote on Prop. 8 showed it has some ways to go in changing hearts and minds.
   
   That might have to happen the hard way – one person coming out at a time to their families, communities, co-workers.

  • What do we do while we wait for hearts and minds to change? When in making commitments and starting families we merely make ourselves and our loved ones more vulnerable. When we continue to suffer injusitce, indefinitely and without remedy?

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• USA Today’s polling research showed Obama won 95 percent of the black vote, 43 percent of the white vote and 66 percent of the Hispanic vote. He won 69 percent of first-time voters, 89 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Independents. He did well among single people and won across all income groups and levels of educational attainment. He won more liberals and moderates and nearly every other voting group except white Protestants, veterans and gun owners.
• Mutafa said Obama’s victory was “an important symbol not just for black Americans, but the world in general” and that the political challenge for African-Americans would be how the civil rights generation can attract and keep those who were engaged in the civic process by Obama’s campaign.
   
   It was giving people the sense that they were partners in the process, Walters said, that brought so many young people and African-Americans into the election.
• Walters said Obama’s victory may represent a cultural shift in the nation’s psyche, and Bositis added that this was the first election that represented the interests of African-Americans in a substantive way, adding that Obama’s victories in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia demonstrate a shift in the thinking of voters overall.

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• First, progressive straight people do not, will not, see the moral equality of gay people. Except for the efforts of the ACLU, the rights of gay people are rarely championed by progressives. The moral sanctity of their marriage is inexplicably undermined by gay marriage. In the forty years since Stonewall we have achieved only a hollow, virtual equality. Like Sarah Palin, we too can be thrown under the bus.

  • This has been true since my first time at Netroots Nation. Where the mantra on lack of support for gay equality was "this is what we have to do to win." Bottom line? We're on our own.
• Second, religion is the opposite of the people. While Black Churches certainly helped pass Prop Hate, the White Churches can not get off Dred Scott free. In an image-burnishing move, multi-wived Mormons poured millions into Prop Hate. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, with its zero experience of marriage, contributed thousands. Democracy and religion are a bad mix.
• Third, gay people cannot win if our own people do not care. If gay people remain partially or fully closeted, and do not openly support gay organizations which train those much maligned but highly effective “community organizers”, we will never win full equality. It has been forty years since the Stonewall Riots and we still do not think, yes, we can.

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