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For many African Americans, it's not a civil rights issue.
By Cara Mia DiMassa and Jessica Garrison
November 8, 2008
For Trebor Healey, a 46-year-old gay man from Glendora, Tuesday's election was bittersweet.
He was thrilled that the nation elected its first African American president. But he was disappointed that black voters, traditionally among the most reliably liberal in the state, voted overwhelmingly to ban same-sex marriage.
He understands that there are differences between the civil rights battles of blacks and gays: For one thing, he notes, gay people have a much easier time blending in. Still, he says, he thinks it's sad that "people do not equate one civil rights struggle with another."
Many black voters didn't see it that way.
"I was born black. I can't change that," said Culver City resident Bilson Davis, 57, who voted for Proposition 8. "They weren't born gay; they chose it," he added, reflecting a commonly held belief that many researchers dispute.
Although many of the state's black political leaders spoke out against Proposition 8, an exit poll of California voters showed that black voters favored the measure by a ratio of more than 2 to 1. Not only was the black vote weighted heavily in favor of Proposition 8, but black turnout -- spurred by Barack Obama's historic campaign for president -- was unusually large, with African Americans making up roughly 10% of the state electorate.
The exit poll didn't ask voters why they voted the way they did. But Madison Shockley, pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad and among the roughly one-third of blacks who opposed Proposition 8, said the vote was understandable. "Black folks go to church, probably more than the Caucasian population, and the churches they go to tend to be very traditional."
Los Angeles resident Christopher Hill, 50, said he was motivated by religion in supporting Proposition 8. Civil rights, he said, "are about getting a job, employment."
Gay marriage, he said, is not: "It's an abomination against God."
One complicating factor was that both sides in the campaign had plausible reason to claim Obama's support. The president-elect strongly stated his opposition to the proposition, calling it "divisive and discriminatory."
But he has also said in public speeches that he opposes same-sex marriage. In the days leading up to the election, some Democrats received "robo-calls" on their cellphones containing an excerpt from such a speech.
"Here is Barack Obama in his own words on the definition of marriage," the call began.
Then the voice of Obama speaking to a crowd comes on: "I believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God is in the mix."
A narrator then urged a yes vote on Proposition 8.
California Democratic Party consultant Roger Salazar was among the recipients of the call.
"They saw the Obama tide coming and they were trying to capitalize on it," Salazar said, adding that the call was "manipulative and deceitful," given the candidate's stated opposition to the amendment.
Still, those efforts, combined with a push by dozens of African American ministers and commercials and mailers arguing that children would be subjected to a pro-gay curriculum should the measure pass, had an effect on voters like Pasadena resident Doris Tucker.
Tucker, who is African American, said she voted for "all the good things," especially Obama and Proposition 8. "I don't think it's right," Tucker said of gay marriage. "They shouldn't let it go on."
On Friday, four leaders of the No-on-8 campaign put out a statement urging cooperation among groups around the issue. "We achieve nothing if we isolate the people who did not stand with us in this fight," the statement said. "We only further divide our state if we attempt to blame people of faith, African American voters, rural communities and others for this loss."
In conversationsthis week, organizers of the campaign against Proposition 8 discussed the racial divide on the measure. Said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights: "One cannot underestimate the effect that . . . the robo-calls had where people heard Barack Obama's voice and then they were told to vote yes on 8."
Still, she added, the campaign could have done a better job reaching out to black voters. "The way you really move votes in the African American community is with conversations, with [real-life] experience . . . making sure that people see there are African American lesbian and gay people who will be affected by this. That is something we intend to assist our community leaders in doing more of," she added. "That is a real lesson learned."
Ron Buckmire, who heads the Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition, a black gay-rights group in Los Angeles, said the vote shows that "there is a lot of work to be done in the black community."
Buckmire said the campaign should also have emphasized that, at its core, the proposition was about stripping a minority of a right that they had enjoyed. "The civil rights of people should not be put to a vote," he said. "Period. I would have thought that that message would have gotten through."
Shockley agreed. Civil rights, he said, has come to mean "one thing in the popular culture": the empowerment of black people.
But "what people don't realize is that King said over and over that the victories of civil rights were won for everyone," he added, referring to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Political strategist Darry Sragow said that the success of Proposition 8 shows that several assumptions about California voters, particularly black voters, proved to be false -- namely, that "because you are for civil rights and equality, you are liberal on everything."
Cara Mia DiMassa and Jessica Garrison are Times staff writers.
By Mike Swift
Mercury News
Article Launched: 11/08/2008 02:00:48 PM PST
More than 10 million Americans in three states voted this week to deny marriage rights to gay people. With the addition of Florida, Arizona and California, 30 states now have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. In Arkansas, voters even approved a ballot measure intended to block adoptions by gay men and lesbians.
But nowhere did the gay rights movement suffer a more painful defeat than in California, the most populous and culturally influential state, where for the first time voters rescinded previously granted marriage rights. The national attention drawn to Proposition 8 - reflected by the more than $9 million in campaign donations that flooded into California from other states over the past two weeks, a large majority to support the ban - made the ballot measure something of a national test of gay marriage.
As proponents celebrated a sweet victory that polls just weeks ago suggested was unlikely, and gay rights advocates tried to recover their footing, the question remained:
With marriage replacing abortion as the most active front in the culture wars, was the battle over Proposition 8 a Shiloh, or a Gettysburg? A battle that was merely a prelude to future clashes, or a pivot historians will someday see as a definitive turning point?
There is evidence for both possibilities. The narrower margin on Proposition 8 showed an increase in support for same-sex marriage since California first voted on the issue in 2000,
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and young voters strongly support it. But, supporters of same-sex marriage enjoyed unique political benefits in 2008, specifically, the wording of the ballot question. In addition, the 5.4 million people who voted for Proposition 8 included support among growing minority groups.
"This is a major loss on the Gettysburg-type level for the other side," said Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal group that has been at the center of the legal fight over same-sex marriage. "They did not convince a broad spectrum of voters - who were not all right-wing fundamentalists - that marriage should be defined differently than one man and one woman. When you have huge numbers of Obama supporters voting for Prop. 8, that said something very powerful about the consensus for what marriage should be."
The next battleground could be a legislature in a state such as New York voting to legalize same-sex marriage. Or it might be over constitutional bans on the ballots of states like Indiana or North Carolina, or a fight over repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
In California, leaders of the defeated No on 8 campaign vowed to continue to fight to legalize same-sex marriage, a road that in the near term will lead through the courts. Because Proposition 8 was an initiative constitutional amendment, any political effort to overturn it would have to have to start in the Legislature before a referendum could go back to the voters.
Shrunken margin
No on 8 leaders noted in the eight years since voters approved a statutory ban on gay marriage, a 22-point margin for Proposition 22 shrank to five points for Proposition 8. They blamed their loss on advertising "lies and distortions" from the Yes on 8 campaign, such as that young children would be required to learn about gay marriage in public schools.
The history of civil rights movements is full of setbacks, said Lorri Jean, chief executive of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center and a member of the No on 8 executive committee.
"This is a temporary defeat," she said. "I don't have the slightest doubt in my mind that we ultimately will win the freedom to marry, and that it will be the law of the land in this country, not in just these few states."
But Frank Schubert, who managed the Yes on 8 campaign and said its ads were accurate, noted same-sex marriage supporters had big advantages in 2008, particularly that it's easier to convince voters to vote against an initiative than for one.
"They had everything going for them," he said. "They had a big Democratic turnout year. They had the skewed (ballot) language that it 'eliminates rights.' They had the advantage of a No vote. In the future they are going to have to campaign in favor of same-sex marriage as an affirmative policy of the state of California, that we should substitute same-sex marriage for traditional marriage. It's going to be enormously difficult for them to do."
What's clear from Proposition 8, pollsters and other observers said, is that many Californians are not ready to fully equate marriage rights for same-sex couples with the civil rights of minorities and women.
Polls consistently showed Proposition 8 trailing before Election Day. But Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, said there was no "Bradley effect" with same-sex marriage, where voters did not level with pollsters about an inner bias toward gay people. DiCamillo said the measure benefitted by a surge in support from faith-based voters at the end of the campaign, boosted by religious leaders.
"People tend not to lie to pollsters," he said. "It's a theory without any proof."
Conflicting feelings
The Field Poll showed voters had a tough time reconciling conflicting feelings about same-sex marriage, he said. For example, many Yes on 8 voters agreed that the measure denied rights to a class of people. Many No on 8 voters agreed traditional marriage was a cornerstone of Judeo-Christian society.
"It wasn't clear cut in people's minds," DiCamillo said.
Clayborne Carson, a Stanford professor who is a leading historian of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, said Tuesday's vote for Barack Obama and Proposition 8 reminded him of a similar situation in the 1964 presidential election. That year, California helped send Lyndon B. Johnson to a landslide victory on the heels of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, but voters also approved Proposition 14, which voided a state law barring housing discrimination on the basis of race.
Carson said he is mystified that some people of faith differentiate between civil rights for racial minorities and civil rights for gay people.
"This is an issue that's not going to go away, and there's no way you can vote it away," Carson said. "I hope it's not just something that is forced on people who believe it's un-Christian, but that they themselves will come to a realization that they've allowed bigotry to shape the way in which they understand their own faith."
