The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is internally conflicted over gay rights and Proposition 8 according to the Empowering Spirits Foundation. Apparently the national SCLC leadership threatened to remove the Los Angeles chapter’s president (Rev. Eric P. Lee) because of his outspoken support of gay marriage. My first response was of course, SCLC…Southern…Christian. What should we expect? But it’s disheartening nonetheless.
The tension between “blacks and gays” (a linguistic construction that perpetuates the invisibility of gay blacks, not to mention the complete absence of the L, B, and T part of GLBT or of any other non-white queer in this struggle) has been part of the national discussion of Proposition 8 for a while now. This tension is particularly painful when the media cites various statistics around the country that show black people reject gay marriage at much higher percentages than do whites. And, of course, white conservatives gleefully exploit and propagate this rejection of justice by blacks.
The arguments in a nutshell revolve on the analogy between the black civil rights movement (was it only for blacks? Really?) and gay rights. Some people are resentful that the queer community implies that black = gay when they call gay rights “the new civil rights movement.” This resentment obviously comes in large part from a place of homophobia and heterosexism. As one black preacher puts it, the comparison is “insulting, offensive and racist. To compare civil rights with gay rights is to compare my skin with their sin.” Some black Christians claim that you can hide your sexual orientation, but you can’t hide your skin color, thereby implying that race trumps sexual orientation in the oppression game. (This type of statement leaves in place the deep silence about the ugly dynamics surrounding “passing,” either as white or as straight.)
The resentment toward gay civil rights also comes from a place of legitimate anger that black people still face overwhelming oppression, and that the civil rights movement has far from reached its goal of ending racial oppression. I understand this resentment and anger, but I reject the game that says one group of people’s rights come before another’s. White women played that game in the 19th century when it came to advancing white women’s rights over black men’s. It left an ugly mark on the “first wave” of feminism when the advocates of women’s rights, who fought so hard for ending slavery, turned to such a depressing reliance on white privilege when they expressed dismay that black men would receive the vote before white women. It was racist then, and it’s homophobic and heterosexist now.
I’m not going to rehearse here all the standard arguments that attempt to mobilize MLK on either side of the debate, or that discuss the way that large portions of the black clergy did not support MLK during the 60s, or that white conservatives used the very same arguments against blacks that homophobics of all races use against gays today.
No, today my agenda is just to be depressed. Utterly depressed. The Huffington Post has a post about the NAACP publicly supporting gay marriage. I’m grateful for this organization’s support, but the responses to it are virulent and sickening. They overwhelmingly play “my oppression is worse than yours”: White gays are racist toward blacks. Blacks are homophobic toward gays. White gays lay all the problems at the foot of blacks. White gay rights are a way to detract from the suffering of blacks. White gays do not speak up for the rights of people of color.
Here are some disheartening examples:
One post (WTF???): Who said you don’t deserve rights? You need to work for yours, just like everyone else. No piggybacking.
One of the few sane voices: Also during the stonewall riots black panthers fought the police alongside drag queens, gays and lesbians of all stripes, butch lesbians, peace activists and homeless kids.
I seriously need a drink.