Anyway who knows me knows I am on the extreme left on most issues. I do have my doubts about the gay marriage issue, but let’s disregard that for the moment.
On this forum I have sometimes taken a middle-ground, devil’s advocate stance. Face it. We live in very liberal, accepting Seattle. Right or wrong, we are often clouded by where we live. As the last few elections have shown, our views are not shared by many in this nation. As musch as I like The White Papers, I don’t enjoy preaching to the choir; I will sometimes take a more middle ground to foster debate (sorry, I don’t know how to be a right-wing Nazi!). Please understand my strategy and motivation in this.
Having said that, if I had to choose between a politician who will lose based on his/her principles and one who might win because s/he knows how to make intelligent compromises, I will pick the latter in almost all cases. I am liberal (progressive, whatever) but I am not blind.
I’m not blind either. But I refuse to think that the ends (a Democratic government) justify the means (oppression of a class of people for political gain)
no ones talking oppression here. I just want a totally convincing argumeent that holds water for me and doubters like myself.
Gay people of color disagree with your position. Read the links @ The Left, Gay Marriage and Color Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black? and Racial Divide in Queer Communities on Marriage Debate. Both writers are gay people of color who feel it is an issue for white people that all of sudden needs to the support of the black community. They bring up the very valid question of asking how the gay community supported people of color until recently. Where has the queer community been on these issues except willing to adopt MLK when it suits their purpose? I feel much the same.
Put it this way. If I lend my support to gay marriage and it succeeds, can I realistically expect that the queer community will be 100% behind color issues. That community’s track record does not give me much confidence that it will be.
Where has the gay community been in on race since 1968 when they adopted the civil rights movement to their cause? Virtually absent. Furhtermore, the black response will justifiably point to the gentrification issue that is happening all over your neighborhood is the payback they can expect from the gay community.
Please, prove me wrong. Equality is equality but it has not been historically so for the gay community.
Wow- if I took your position I could say that since people, sorry, men of color sold out on women getting the vote (and thereby let women’s suffrage languish for decades)then I should have no reason to support the equal treatment of black men.
Actually, what has the black male community done for advancing women lately- what was that, nothing. Oh then they should all be left with poor educations, no job prospects, and exponentially greater rick of incarceration because “What have they done for me lately”.
People of color in 1869 were in no position to help women. Again it was a difficult postion that the white majority put both groups in.
I am trying to be practical not emotional. Recent history proves that, in general, the gay community has been no help to people of color. And remember, it is the gay community which offends blacks by using the legacy of MLK.
If you want to take your argument further, what has the (mostly) white feminist movement done for women who are not white? Even in my favorite area, environmentalism, very few blacks are involved. Why is that?
If gay marriage loses support for a time, but other rights are kept, I would be sad, but not scared. But if gay marriage helps me lose other rights I ever every right to fear for my life. If blacks lose the rights they have gained should you be afraid? Damn right. You’d be next in line. Does women losing their right to control their reproduction scare me. Damn right. Will I fight for their right to do so. Already do.
Again, convince me that same-sex marriage is a life or death issue and I will support it. I’d rather see an effort to renew the amendment that claims equal rights for women than ssm. Would I support ssm down the line? Probably. Again, I’d rather win elections than dream about what might have been.
1) The feminist movement has always worked for issues that impact all women. Not just white women need access to birth control or abortions (actually, the abortion rate is higher for african americans, yet white women still want it to be legal) Not just white women want equal pay or freedom from domestic violence or to end rape. And it is quite a few of us white feminists who are screaming the loudest about the Duke rape. Yeah– that one I am going to take personally.
2)It was called the CIVIL rights movement, not the black or brown rights movement. The definition of civil is of, relating to, or befitting a citizen or citizens. So you get pissed because a different group of CITIZENS is struggling for equal rights. Wah, they took our platform. Not your platform by the way- civil or human rights are the rights of everyone.
3)How easy it is for you to dismiss a liberty that you will never use. I hope to god i never have to use the Americans with Disabilities act, but I am not going to make someone else’s life harder because I don’t need to exercise that liberty.
4) Life or death- how bout the dying cop in New Jersey who couldn’t give her partner her pension, how bout the poor rancher in Arizona (I think) who got thrown out of his home after his partner died despite having a will that left the property to him, how bout all the partners out there who are watching their loved ones die from Aids or cancer who worry constantly that their loved ones family is going to keep them out of the hospital room or make choices the person wouldn’t want?
From “Is Gay Marriage anti-Black?”:
‘Is Gay Marriage Anti Black?
I, as a black gay man, do not support this push for same-sex marriage. Although I don’t claim to represent all black gay people, I do believe that the manner in which this campaign has been handled has put black people in the middle of essentially two white groups of people, who are trying to manipulate us one way or the other. The Christian right, which is in fact anti-black, has tried to create a false alliance between themselves and blacks through religion to push forward their homophobic, fascist agenda. The white gay civil rights groups are also anti-black, however they want black people to see this struggle for same-sex unions as tantamount to separate but equal Jim Crow laws. Yet any close examination reveals that histories of terror imposed upon generations of all black people in this country do not in any way compare to what appears to be the very last barrier between white gays and lesbians’ access to what bell hooks describes as “christian capitalist patriarchy.” That system is inherently anti-black, and no amount of civil rights will ever get black people any real liberation from it. For, in what is now a good 40 years of “civil rights,” nothing has intrinsically changed or altered in the American power structure, and a few black faces in inherently racist institutions is hardly progress.’
His point is that we are angered for that a certain group of whites are using blacks and their legacy to gain power into a system that already oppresses. I can’t say that it doesn’t feel that way to me.
He cites other instances in his blog about how the gay white community has margainilized the gay black community for quite some time (since the early 90’s), but now wants the support of the entire black community.
Wouldn’t you be pissed?