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A campaign to open up a dialogue about marriage equality launches with videos featuring prominent black allies. Will it reach some black voters that are on the fence about the issue?
The Human Rights Campaign’s Americans for Marriage Equality campaign has showcased videos of LGBT advocates to help spark a national conversation about ending same-sex couples’ exclusion from marriage. What is notable is that the campaign tapped prominent black allies first, including Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Mo’Nique, and one of my heroes, civil rights leader and NAACP Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond. Here is his video:
The NYT’s Frank Bruni did a story on the HRC campaign and its particular focus to breaking down the resistance in the socially conservative, religious segments of the black community that have opposed marriage equality.
In its infancy the H.R.C. effort, called Americans for Marriage Equality, has showcased three prominent black Americans in a row. That’s no accident.
In some perfect world where human nature is less messy and history less fraught, any and all people who had ever suffered discrimination would find common cause, gathering together under one big anti-bigotry banner.
In our world there are divisions and even tensions among minority groups, and the quest to legalize same-sex marriage — now permitted in six states and Washington, D.C. — has met particular resistance from African-Americans.
This isn’t a topic that advocates for gay rights or their many black supporters relish discussing, because it focuses on a wedge where they wish there was a tighter bond.
Much of the friction is the perceived appropriation of the term “civil rights” by the LGBT community without deference or consideration that the black experience, where human beings were enslaved, legislated as less than a man, and without the right to vote or marry (even a man and woman to each other) is not equivalent to the LGBT rights struggle.
And while we can intellectually agree that there isn’t a minority misery index that must be reached in order to be able to use the term civil rights (after all, some of us are black and gay/lesbian/bi/trans), the LGBT community has to realize that in practical terms, there are some in the black community who continue to use the bible and the history of slavery to justify their biases.
“This is a community composed of many Biblical literalists,” Bond said in a recent phone interview, adding that they put a “wrong and wrong-headed” emphasis on certain Biblical references to homosexuality. ..Bond doesn’t utter the phrase “civil rights” in his ad. He discusses “what’s right and just,” along with “commitment and stable families.”
It pains him, he told me, to think that “black people of all people” might be an obstacle to ending any discrimination, including marriage discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
Will these videos and the HRC campaign make inroads into the black community to move some of the poll numbers in the right direction? Perhaps. I think the series should also include black clergy — after all, it was the very visible presence of supportive clergy of color that made the difference in DC marriage passing. There should also be more representation of Southern allies of color, a region where many minds need to be engaged.
For instance, there are other ways to reach minority communities that might be fruitful in an education campaign. How about reaching minority populations on their phones? Some facts:
- 44% of black and Latino adults are Smartphone (iPhone, Droid, Blackberry) owners compared with 30% of whites
- Highest Smartphone adoption is in urban and suburban areas.
- Historically minorities have been earlier adopters of text messaging and relied upon cell phones (and now Smartphones) for general phone communications and internet access.
HRC could also take a look at group texting education campaigns to enhance this effort — people could opt-in to learn more and receive links to the latest video in the Americans for Marriage Equality series and spread it virally from there. You have to go where your intended audience is. The black community is not a monolith in terms of faith, politics and even regional culture (for crying out loud), and in many cases there’s bias in the LGBT community that causes activists to fail to see these nuances — and that affects how the messages are received. There’s a lot of work to do and this campaign is a good start.
15 Comments
It pleases me to know that nationally the NAACP supports marriage equality. It’s disappointing that the NC chapter of the NAACP doesn’t support marriage equality, but can only muster up statements opposing adding discrimination to the NC constitution.
First of all, Mo’Nique is bad ass.
Second, while I understand Bond’s point in the first sentence of his quote, the folks who insist that homosexuality is a sin because the Bible says so are not Biblical literalists. If they were, eating shrimp cocktail and other such equal “abominations” would be railed against with the same vigor with which they persecute homosexuals. They would also have to confront the contradiction of the polygamy of so many Biblical heroes with the idea that marriage has always and rightfully been between a man and a woman.
The rub here is that Christianity is predominantly patriarchal, authoritarian and sexually repressive. This ordering of the lives of Christians–and of course it is all the more effective the greater it is internalized–makes it difficult for them to approve of homosexuality because doing so would upset the very order of their belief and behavior. It really is a zero sum game: Embracing the sexual freedom that homosexuality represents negates the enforced patriarchal sexual conformity that is the fabric of their religion.
Lastly, let’s take the argument to its root: What business is it of the state to decide who gets married? Except of course, like Christianity, for purposes of control. If we don’t have freedom over our own bodies, we’ve got no kind of freedom at all.
Lastly, let’s take the argument to its root: What business is it of the state to decide who gets married?
It’s not so much that the state decides who get “married”. Any couple can get “married” in a church that is willing to perform a ceremony for them.
What the state decides is who gets to enter into a contract called “civil marriage” and receive the benefits and responsibilities of that civil contract.
For those that want to suggest that the state get out of the business of marriage, just how do you suggest the state handle the rights and responsibilities that are currently handled through a civil marriage contract?
Why is the state interested in managing civil marriages? Why are there benefits and responsibilities attached to this civil contract? Answering these questions gets us to the issue of control, which is where the state and the church meet and collaborate. Why?
How would you propose handling issues such as inheritance, property rights, and child custody just to name a few without the state creating a standardized legal arena to do so? Give me some specifics as to what you object to.
Our ideas about inheritance, property rights and child custody are informed by the institution of patriarchal, monogamous marriage. They are the symptoms, the expression of our particular concept of marriage. Your question ignores or confuses this cause and effect relationship and presupposes the natural legitimacy of our concept of state managed marriage. Without this presupposition, any number of possible legal or social avenues could be used to solve these issues without resorting to the false dilemma of your question.
timncguy, NAACP does not support marriage equality. Julian Bond is speaking in support as an individual and doesn’t represent NAACP in his views.
well then, if there are “any number” of possibilities, why don’t you enumerate a few of them for us instead of leaving us in the dark about how you would propose dealing with these situations. Why are you being so coy and vague about what you really want to see replace the current state? Are you afraid if you define your ideal it would be immediately rejected.
Too bad HRC didn’t do this when the democrats actually controlled congress. Oh that’s right, they were throwing cocktail parties for Obama as he defended DOMA for two years.
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As I black American, I don’t think that this is really our fight. Gay marriage is not an issue that really impacts black America. We have more important things to worry about that whether or not the same rich white guys (that by and large loathe black Americans and put their racism on display for the world to see without any comment around this place) can have their dream wedding.
We need jobs and employment security. We need to fight for school funding, health care and economic justice. We need to fight police harassment and gentrification.
Leave gay marriage to the rich gay guys. That’s their problem. Polls of even lgbt people of color have shown that this is not an important issue for that segment of the community. Yet this is the one that gets all of the attention.
Pam, let us know when you are willing to put as much attention into addressing one of the issues that is actually important to LGBT POCs….or god forbid actually…gasp…address the rampant racism in the LGBT community.
I am in no way being coy, nor am I worried about any rejection of my ideals. For someone opposed to state control over the private lives of citizens, such an insecurity about external confirmation seems a bit silly–your attack misses the mark. My comments were as direct and explicit as I was able to make them. Furthermore, any possibilities are up to all of us as marriage and its equality is at least partly a collective issue. In other words, collective thinking and dialogue are more important than my opinion in figuring this thing out and coming up with alternative possibilities. And questions do not leave anyone in the dark unless one declines to think about them.
If you are interested in discussing the topic, we can try some more. If you are only up for pissing contests and ad hominem rebuttals, then I am not your man on this one. So if it is the former . . .
Your question @5 does not prove what you might think it does. We are still left with trying to understand why the state insists on having a role in managing marriage. If we can come up with other ways that issues like inheritance can be solved, then that begs the question, “why confine the solutions to state managed marriage?” If we can imagine how any of the issues you mention might be solved by organic agreements between individuals, arbitration by friends, family or an impartial third party, or even in court in the same fashion that any conflict can be resolved there, then we have have to ask, “Why state managed marriage?” In other words, if there are other possibilities, then something else must be going on here. To suggest that if the state is not involved in marriage then everything will fall apart confuses the cause and effect relationship of marriage and our political structures as well as creates an overly-simplistic dichotomy, a false dilemma.
My argument is that the something else is the authoritarian control mechanism that institutionally sanctioned marriage affords. The appeal and utility of this control mechanism as it has been used to advance the interests of both the church and the state helps explain why they both insist on having a definitive say in marriage. (It also helps explain why the revolutionary freedom of homosexuality is treated as such and affront to both of these institutions and why the church and the state have traditionally worked to quash homosexuality—as well as other forms of sexual freedom.) Because patriarchal, monogamous marriage functions as a control mechanism when managed by either the church or the state, it necessarily limits the freedoms we have over our own bodies and interpersonal relationships. If we are concerned about pursuing this freedom, then we have to start by asking, “What business is it of the state to tell us who we can officially spend our lives with?”
Blah, blah, blah, racist, blah, blah, blah rich white gays, blah, blah, blah, I’m a self-loathing Black man looking for someone to cuddle me blah, blah, blah, blah same sex marriage is a white gay thing, blah, blah, blah, blah I’m a concern troll for LGBT of minority communities blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, rampant racism in in the gay community blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
lol
Civil rights legend Julian Bond supports Marriage Equality – do you?” —No.