Obama's White Voters Problem

The increasingly visible racism that is being fanned by the GOP and its Christianist base is one of the hurdles facing Barack Obama in the 2012 election.  And some in the Christianist ranks of the GOP base no longer even try to hide their racism as the image above from a church group in Alabama illustrates as it invites "all white Christians" - the organizers of the event tried to explain away the racism this way:  

Organizers of the "all white" annual pastors conference explained why it's open to only white Christians.  William Collier said, "We don't have the facilities to accommodate other people. We haven't got any invitations to black muslim events. Of course, we are not invited to Jewish events and stuff."  Mel Lewis said, "We have a right as Americans to meet, to pray, to assemble. If someone is offended too bad."

But I digress from Obama's challenge.  There are simply too many whites who cannot seem to put Obama's race aside and support a president whose policies are actually in their own best interests.  Here are excerpts from Huffington Post that look at the issue of white voters and Obama in historical context:

 In the year after the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act was introduced into Congress, the president who stumped for it would be killed, his successor would face serious pushback from within his own party and a cadre of southern senators would spend more than seven weeks filibustering it..  .  .  .  .  The Civil Rights Act formally made it illegal to discriminate in public institutions, employment, union membership and federally funded programs.

Behind closed doors, however, Johnson was pessimistic about the electoral fallout of the law’s passage. "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come," he told Bill Moyers, his speechwriter.

Although though Johnson would win the presidency in a landslide that November -- bolstered by 94 percent of the black vote, a record that would hold until President Barack Obama's win in 2008 -- his concerns about the South proved justified.
 
As black voters flocked into the Democratic fold after the act's signing, white voters -- particularly in the South -- bolted. The 1964 election was the last time a Democratic candidate for president would win more than half of the nation’s white vote.  Richard Nixon would use the racial resentments of southern whites to help propel himself to the White House. The South has been solidly Republican in every election since.

"It's similar to white physical flight, but what we have here with white political flight," said Rick Jones, a political scientist at the University of Louisville.  It's an electoral problem that is especially pronounced for Obama. No president has won the White House with a smaller sliver of the white vote. The president's approval among white voters has dropped below 40 percent, and he trails Mitt Romney with that group by 13 percentage points.

“President Obama does not currently have enough white support to win re-election, even if he retains his minority base from 2008,” wrote David Paul Kuhn at Real Clear Politics. Obama won about 43 percent of the white vote in 2008, but needs about 38 percent of the white vote to win this fall, according to one pollster. (Obama pulled in 80 percent of the non-white vote in 2008.) 

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National Review Fires Derbyshire

I wrote yesterday about the outrageous column that John Derbyshire wrote which appeared on the website Taki’s Magazine. One reader (who I greatly respect) sought to defend Derbyshire saying that his "rant was actually a facetious and satirical April 6th response to the outrageous article by Toure' in Time Magazine's April 2nd issue which hit the news stands in the last week of March." Apparently, the people at National Review saw things differently and Derbyshire has been given his walking papers by National Review. This from Rich Lowry:

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream,” or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

As Queerty notes, blacks were not the only targets of Derbyshire's less than loving approach to his fellow man. Gays likewise were in his view "a net negative for society." Sadly, Derbyshire's views on blacks and gays - and likely Hispanics don't rate well with him either - are all too typical of today's American conservatives. The irony that I've noted many times is that some of those who most embrace these foul views are the ranks of Christianists who now make up much of the GOP base. Here's more from Queerty:

[H]e considered himself a homophobe, “though a mild and tolerant one.”

This means that I do not like homosexuality, and I think it is a net negative for society. As a conservative, inclined to give the benefit of the doubt (when there is doubt) to long-established practices, I cannot help note that there has never been a human society, at any level of civilization, that has approved egalitarian (that is, adult-adult) homosexuality.

Male-male buggery has been proscribed in every society that ever existed. I am inclined to think that there are good reasons for these universal prohibitions. To say the least of it, male homosexuality is very unhealthy–much more so than, for example, cigarette smoking.

Homosexuality both male and female is also antisocial, in a profound sense. I do not believe that any stable society can be founded on any basis other than heterosexual marriage. Under modern conditions, I think you would have to add “monogamous,” too.

On the positive side, Derbyshire says he does not support the criminalization of homosexuality. Beyond that, he certainly is no friend to LGBT rights. Queerty notes:

And what does giving a “normal life” a try entail exactly? Banging a few babes before giving in to dick? Getting married to a man and popping out a few kids before accepting you’ll always be a dyke? It’s nice that you cop to your homophobia, Mr. Derbyshire, but we’re gonna need a little more information if we’re gonna ratchet back our civil rights to your liking.

A National Review Writer's Racist Screed

UPDATED: While some argue that Derbyshire's post was done in jest, perhaps it wasn't. This from Rich Lowry at National Review:

Needless to say, no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks in this instantly notorious piece here.

I have often felt that today's Republican Party is increasingly racist and that often one sees GOP candidates using coded messages to win the votes of racists. Some of Newt Gingrich's batshitery is a prime example. Now, in a wildly racist screed, John Derbyshire (pictured at left) of the National Review has thrown this often denied racism out in the bright light of day. It's beyond shocking, but I suspect his views are held by many in the GOP base who hold contempt - or worse - for all but those who are white, heterosexual conservative Christians. Think Progress looks at this wildly racist rant. Here are highlights:

Popular conservative columnist and National Review writer John Derbyshire topped all of his previous racistscreeds (and sexist rants) today by posting a long breakdown of all of the important lessons he has taught his children about race — and he’s outdone his own racism with this one.

Derbyshire wrote the column in the third person, as a list of lessons to his kids about race. . . . he cuts to the heart of his lessons for his children:

(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”

We need to thank Derbyshire for being honest enough to openly state what so many of his conservative cohorts are thinking.

The Onion Bashes NOM's Sick Strategies

With most major news outlets now having picked up on NOM's race baiting scandal - other than the Virginian Pilot, of course, which likely deemed it "not newsworthy" since it makes Christianists look bad - it was only a matter of time before The Onion weighed in on the scandal. NOM needs to be made a laughing stock and known as a bunch of bigots. Kudos to all the news coverage.

NOM's Agenda Exposed: Drive a Wedge Between Gays and Blacks

I have often lamented about the manner in which members of the black community - black pastors in particular - have allowed themselves to be manipulated like trained circus dogs to do the bidding of white Christianists - many of who are the direct descendants of those who supported slavery, then segregation and bans on interracial marriage. These white Christianist groups hold no love for black Americans. Rather it's all about cynically using them to achieve Christianist goals that do not involve the betterment of blacks in society. Now, at last the Christianist scheme has been boldly exposed as documents have been unsealed in Maine as part of the ongoing investigation by the State of Maine into the campaign finance activities of the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") in that state. HRC's NOM Exposed project has copies of some of the just released documents. Here are highlights from HRC's analysis:

[S]ome high (low) lights from PDF page 13 of the “confidential” 2008-09 report to the NOM Board of Directors:

“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…”

Another passage:

"The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity - a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation."

On PDF page 12, it talks about “sideswiping Obama,” painting him as a “social radical” and talking about “side issues” like pornography.

Rather than describe the black spokesman as bigots, I'd call them gullible suckers who have been cynically used by those who in reality hate them. Blacks really need to look at those behind "pro-family" because often ties to white supremacy groups are just below the surface. Tony Perkins at FRC is a perfect example.

Bayard Rustin - Civil Rights Hero, Balck and Gay

While black pastors continue to allow themselves to be played like violins by the white Christianist descendants of the very people who supported slavery, then segregation and then bans on interracial marriage, most in the black community still close their eyes to the reality that Bayard Rustin, one of Martin Luther King's most important lieutenants, was a gay man. Sadly, the homophobia so rampant in the 1960's forced Rustin to often remain in the shadows. And one result is that due to their own ignorance of accurate history, many black pastors continue to serve as water carriers for groups that in actuality despise them and their communities. One sees it here in Hampton Roads time and time again as black pastors rally on orders from the stealth racists and Christofascists at The Family Foundation based in Richmond. My friend and fellow LGBT Blogger Summit alumni, Irene Monroe, has a piece at Huffington Post that looks at Rustin's role in the battle for civil equality. Here are some highlights:

This month around the country, LGBTQ communities are celebrating Bayard Rustin's 100th birthday anniversary. Next month, AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts will have their annual Bayard Rustin Breakfast, and last month, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association awarded State of the Re:Union, a nationally aired radio show distributed by NPR and PRX, first place in the Excellence in Radio category for the Black History Month special they did on Bayard Rustin, titled "Bayard Rustin: Who Is This Man?"

To date, he's still largely unknown because of the heterosexism that has canonized the history of last century's black civil rights movement.

Rustin was born March 17, 1912 in the Quaker-settled area of West Chester, Penn., one of the stops on the Underground Railroad. A handsome 6-footer who possessed both athletic and academic prowess, he is most noted as the strategist and chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington that catapulted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King onto the world stage. Rustin also played a key role in helping King develop the strategy of nonviolence in the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956), which successfully dismantled the longstanding Jim Crow ordinance of segregated seating on public conveyances in Alabama.

During the civil rights movement Bayard Rustin was always the man behind the scene, and a large part of that had to do with the fact that he was gay. As Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers and friend of Rustin's, stated in a review on Jervis Anderson's biography Bayard Rustin: The Troubles I've Seen, Rustin "was the quintessential outsider -- a black man, a Quaker, a one-time pacifist, a political, social dissident, and a homosexual."

African-American ministers involved in the civil rights movement would have nothing to do with Rustin, and they intentionally spread rumors throughout the movement that King was gay because of his close friendship with Rustin.

In a spring 1987 interview with Rustin in Open Hands, a resource for ministries affirming the diversity of human sexuality, Rustin recalls that difficult period quite vividly:

Martin Luther King, with whom I worked very closely, became very distressed when a number of the ministers working for him wanted him to dismiss me from his staff because of my homosexuality. Martin set up a committee to discover what he should do. They said that, despite the fact that I had contributed tremendously to the organization ... they thought I should separate myself from Dr. King . . .

As a March on Washington volunteer in 1963, Bayard Rustin was Eleanor Holmes Norton's boss. The renowned Congresswoman of D.C. recalls the kerfuffle concerning Rustin's sexuality. "I was sure the attacks would come because I knew what they could attack Bayard for," Norton stated to Steve Hendrix in a 2011 interview. "It flared up and then flared right back down," Norton stated. "Thank God, because there was no substitute for Bayard."

"When the anniversary comes around, frankly I think of Bayard as much as I think of King," stated Norton. "King could hardly have given the speech if the march had not been so well attended and so well organized. If there had been any kind of disturbance, that would have been the story."

To many conservative African Americans Rustin wasn't only "queer" in the literal sense but was perceived also as one who didn't have any of the approved and appropriate black sensibilities.

It is very sad that to this day, many in the black community know little or nothing about Rustin and the debt that they owe him. Hopefully, some day anti-gay black pastors will stop allowing themselves to be cynically manipulated by those who hate them.

Quote of the Day: Andrew Sullivan on Gingrich

BREAK DOWN OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRIMARY VOTERS:

I believe Newt Gingrich is a despicable man who is willing to say and do whatever advances his agenda and further inflates his already Goodyear blimp sized ego. But he is also symptomatic of a political party that is becoming more sick, racist and divisive by the day. Andrew Sullivan summed Gingrich and his win in South Carolina most succinctly:

In a state where African-Americans make up 28 percent of the electorate and 1 percent of the voters in the primary today. . . . . what an indictment of a party that in a diverse state, 99 percent of the voters were white.

If I were a Republican, I'd be ashamed. But Gingrich won, I think, because shame is alien to him. Especially when it comes to race.

The GOP's Disingenuous "Concern" for African Americans

Just when you think the hypocrisy of today's GOP cannot possibly reach more absurd heights, someone in the GOP Congressional delegation proves that assumption wrong. A case in point is Rep. Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, who is pushing for restrictions on abortion out of supposed concerns for African Americans. This from the same political party that is working incessantly to reduce African American voting rights through voter ID requirements, etc., opposes affirmative action plans, is populated by Christianists/Tea Party members who barely seek to hide their white supremacist leanings, and that wants to cut funding for numerous programs that benefit African Americans. It's like Hitler claiming to have concerns for the welfare of Jews. A column in the Washington Post looks at this ridiculous posturing that's enough to make one want to vomit. Here are some highlights:

Rep. Trent Franks established his credentials as a civil rights leader last year when the Arizona Republican argued that, because of high abortion rates in black communities, African Americans were better off under slavery.

But the congressman doesn’t just talk the talk. On Tuesday, he chaired a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on legislation he is introducing that would protect African American women from themselves — by making it harder for them to have abortions.

Orwellian naming aside, the House Republicans’ civil rights gambit (which follows passage of a similar bill in Franks’s Arizona and marks an attempt to get an abortion bill to the House floor before year’s end) points to an interesting tactic among conservatives: They have taken on a new, and somewhat suspect, interest in the poor and in the non-white.

Newt Gingrich, now threatening Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination, tried a similar argument when he argued for the elimination of “truly stupid” child labor laws and suggested that students could replace the janitors in their schools. He further explained that he was trying to help children in poor neighborhoods who have “no habits of working.”

Developer Donald Trump, who owns a Virginia country club that counts Gingrich as a member, announced this week that he would join with Gingrich to help “kids in very, very poor schools” — by extending his “Apprentice” TV reality show concept to all of 10 lucky kids.

This “fun” might sound less patronizing if these conservatives displayed a similar concern for the well-being of the poor and the non-white during debates over budget cuts. But, whatever the motives, lawmakers and conservative activists were not bashful when they held a pre-hearing news conference Tuesday, standing beside posters directed at Latinos and African Americans (“black children are an endangered species”).

“It is horrific that in America today, babies are being killed based on their race and based on their sex,” protested Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America. Other participants in the news conference suggested that Planned Parenthood is “excited to take money specifically earmarked to kill a black baby” and linked abortion-rights advocates to eugenics, euthanasia and the Holocaust.

“This morning, you can walk into a clinic and get an abortion if you find out your child is African American,” said Patrick Mahoney, a conservative activist. If you find out your child is African American? So a black woman would have an abortion because she discovers — surprise! — that her fetus is also black?

Before the audience had a chance to digest that, Mahoney began shouting about how abortion is “lynching” — frightening a child in the front row, who cried out and hugged his mother.

And people wonder why I fled the Republican Party? Anyone with a shred of honesty and integrity needs to run screaming from this crowd.

Bachmann Shoots Herself in the Foot With Endorsement of Slavery Statement

While continuing to pander to the most ignorant and bigoted elements of the GOP base, the utterly insane Michele Bachmann shot herself in the foot in a major way by signing onto the Family Leader's "Marriage Vow" which in reality translates into ugly anti-gay marriage and racist language. Bachman is apparently trying to deny that she endorsed the portion of the hate group's vow that stated that black children were better off under slavery than in toady's broken families. The statement is indicative of (i) the latent racism that I find always just beneath the surface of all of the "family values" Christianist organizations and (ii) the ease with which these supposed Christians rewrite history to suit their agenda. As for Bachmann, it demonstrates that she's a liar - just like her husband who claims not to engage in ex-gay therapy even though it has now been documented that he does precisely that. Once again, if a self-congratulatory conservative Christian's lips are moving, the safest bet is to assume that they are lying. The Washington Post has coverage of Bachmann's lame attempt to lie her way out of the slavery statement debacle:
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A socially conservative group has apologized for including a passage about slavery in a pledge it asked the Republican candidates to sign as a prerequisite for the group’s endorsement in the presidential race. Rep. Michele Bachmann had been the first GOP hopeful to sign “The Marriage Vow,” which included in the introduction a section that lamented that “the Institution of Marriage in America is in great crisis.”
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One piece of evidence it offered was the claim that a black person born into slavery “was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president.”
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The suggestion that African American babies may have somehow been better off under slavery touched off sharp criticism from liberals and commentators, who noted that U.S. slaves had been forbidden from marrying and were often sold at auction and separated from their family members.
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Saturday, Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart said that the Minnesota congresswoman had only endorsed the 14-point “candidate vow,” which did not include the slavery passage. However, the entire document was only four pages, including two pages of footnotes, and the slavery section was the first bullet point within the preamble.

Teabaggers Want A Return of Jim Crow Laws

Time and time again I have maintained - based on my years of monitoring anti-gay "family values" Christianist organizations - that in addition to being violently anti-gay, the pro-family Christian organizations are also very racist and anti-black and anti-Hispanic. Adding to the proof of this animus towards others who are not white, evangelical Protestants are the statements made at the teabagger coven over this past weekend where former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo, a speaker for the opening of the tea party convention stated that "literacy tests" that were once used to keep blacks from voting should be re-instituted. Some may be shocked by this bigoted, anti-white mindset, but is a main current running through all of the teabagger and birther insanity. America is theirs and everyone else can go to Hell. These people are ignorant, racist, homophobic and down right un-Christian, yet they claim to wrap themselves in the flag while clutching the Bible - the same Bible that some of their fore bearers used to justify slavery and later segregation. I hope the general public will take a good look at the poison these folks are peddling. Here are some highlights from Raw Story:

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The opening night speaker at the Tea Party convention suggested a return to a "literacy test" to protect America from presidents like Obama -- a segregation-era method employed by southern US states to keep blacks from voting.
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In his speech Thursday to attendees, former Republican congressman Tom Tancredo invoked the loaded pre-civil rights era buzzword, saying that President Barack Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."
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"Prior to passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965, Southern (and some Western) states maintained elaborate voter registration procedures whose primary purpose was to deny the vote to those who were not white," a website for civil rights veterans explains. "In the South, this process was often called the 'literacy test.' In fact, it was much more than a simple test, it was an entire complex system devoted to denying African-Americans (and in some regions, Latinos) the right to vote."
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Tancredo called Obama a "committed socialist ideologue," and referred to him by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. ABC News reported that the former Colorado representative's speech "received enthusiastic applause at times," but said the crowd did not fill the ballroom in which the event was held.
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The irony, of course, is that any well written literacy test that required true knowledge of American history, the structure of the three branches of government, etc., would disqualify most of the teabaggers and birthers from voting. All they know is the faux news and hysterics disseminated by Fox News and other far right noise machines.

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

A few conservatives - such as David Frum - seem to be grasping the fact that time, society and the country are moving on and that the same message of religious extremism, anti-gay hate, promises of low taxes, and anti-abortion obsessions are no longer a viable message if the GOP ever seeks to regain majority status. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your prospective, the Rush Limbaughs of the GOP and similar Christo-fascists are not getting the message and are attacking those like Frum who realize that the GOP must change. Frum and others are not taking the attacks quietly and are speaking out about the current state of affairs and what is wrong with the party. Here are some highlights from Frum's latest response to his critics:

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These days, the question I hear most from political comrades is: “What the hell happened to you?” . . . . So if it’s not too personal, let me request a few minutes of your time to explain how I ended up being bashed by Rush Limbaugh on the airwaves — and taking a few shots of my own in the pages of Newsweek.

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I moved to Washington, D.C., in 1996. And there I began to notice something disturbing. While the congressional victory of 1994 had ceased to produce much in the way of important conservative legislation, it sure was producing a lot of wealth for individual conservatives. They were moving from the staff offices of Congress to lobbying firms and professional associations. Washington (to quote something I’d write later) began to feel like a giant Tupperware party, where people you had thought of as friends suddenly seemed always to be trying to sell you something. Acquaintances of mine began accepting all-expense-paid trips to the South Pacific from Jack Abramoff.
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Conservative economic policies, which had saved the United States and the other advanced democracies from stagnation in the 1980s, suddenly seemed bereft of answers for the economic challenges of the 21st century. This worried me. What worried me even more was how little it seemed to worry so many of my friends and colleagues from the conservative world and the Bush administration.

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So much of our energy was being absorbed instead by cultural battles left behind from the unfinished business of the 1960s and 1970s. Here, too often, we were on the wrong side of history: Back in the 1960s and 1970s, we’d been fighting to protect the common-sense instincts of ordinary people from elite interference. Now, in the Terri Schiavo euthanasia case, with stem cell research, on gay rights issues, it was we who had become the interfering elite, against a society that was reaching its own new equilibrium.

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Of course, that’s not how conservatives saw it. We saw a country divided in two, red states and blue, NASCAR vs. NPR, real America against the phonies in the cities. A movement that had begun as an intellectual one now scornfully pooh-poohed the need for people in government to know anything much at all. But expertise does matter, and the neglect of expertise leads to mismanagement and failure — as we saw in Iraq, in Katrina and in the disregard of warning signals from the financial market.

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Conservatives stopped taking governance seriously — and so Americans ceased to trust conservatives in government. . . . But on environmental issues, we have to follow the evidence where it leads — and on social issues we have to take our society as it is. If the world changes, we have to change with it. The refusal of so many of my fellow conservatives in the United States to adapt their thinking to facts and realities does not demonstrate their adherence to principle. It demonstrates a frivolous indifference to the responsibilities of political leadership.

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my side will only be successful to the extent it is knowledgeable, to the extent it is public-spirited, to the extent that it is based on evidence and research, to the extent that it advocates the greater good rather than the narrow interests and values of one class or one geographic section.

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Personally, I haope that the GOP continues to ignore those like Frum and continue its veering ever further to the far right with the Christianists until the Party becomes so discredited that its only recourse will be to jettison the Christianists and banish them to the political wilderness for a generation or more.

Gay Marriage and the Black Vote

As I have said on numerous times, in this area of Virginia, besides the Kool-Aid drinkers who blindly follow Pat Robertson and other Christianist demagogues like lemmings, some of the most strident voices against gay rights are black ministers. I don't know if it's due to a total ignorance of history or just religious belief bordering on insanity, but many of these black ministers are cynically played and manipulated by white Christianist organizations who not that many years ago (and I believe still do) supported segregation, opposed interracial marriage and in general want to keep blacks inferior. These organizations who in the final analysis ONLY care about white evangelical Christians play the black ministers and their followers for fools. I an sure these black ministers and congregations do not realize that these false Christians like Robertson and Tony Perkins are laughing at them behind their backs. Thus, I find it interesting that an editorial in the Los Angeles Times questions whether this will hold true in the vote on Proposition 8. Here are some highlights:

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At a Democratic presidential forum on gay issues last year, the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart prefaced a question to Sen. Barack Obama this way: "Now, you and I both know that there's a homophobia problem in the black community." Capehart seemed to suggest that he was disclosing a shared secret, but the belief that African Americans are disproportionately hostile toward gays and lesbians is widespread.

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That notion will be put to the test Nov. 4, when black voters in California -- expected to turn out in record numbers to support Obama -- also will face a proposition to put a ban on same-sex marriage in the state Constitution. The foregone conclusion, expressed by prominent gay journalist Andrew Sullivan and others, is that this means trouble for gay newlyweds.

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Don't bet on it. Although ordinary polls report lower levels of support for same-sex marriage among blacks than among whites, views on same-sex marriage are a rapidly moving target that's tough to pin down, even for experts.

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By invoking rights, the ballot's wording on Proposition 8 -- the title reads "Eliminates Right of Same-sex Couples to Marry" -- could turn off black voters. Proposition supporters sought a different heading, "Limit on Marriage," but a judge dismissed their case last week. . . . . Across the country, black voters repeatedly reelect African American politicians who support gay rights. The nation's two black governors have forcefully backed gay marriage -- and each has spoken movingly about accepting gay people in his own family.

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Nonetheless, we can expect leaders of the religious right such as James Dobson and Tony Perkins to feature African American ministers prominently in their campaign to end gay and lesbian weddings in California. It's a cynical strategy. Too often the media have played along. In 2004, for instance, we heard far more about the subset of Martin Luther King Jr.'s family opposed to gay marriage than about how the late Coretta Scott King denounced the "Federal Marriage Amendment" proposed by President Bush that year as "a form of gay-bashing."

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It is possible that California's African Americans this year, like those in Georgia four years ago, will vote for Proposition 8 in larger numbers than whites. But there is also reason to think that, as in six other states four years ago, the opposite might occur in the Golden State.Opposition to gay rights takes culturally specific forms, and Capehart was right, of course, that there is "a homophobia problem in the black community." But it's no worse than the homophobia problem in America that belongs to all of us.

Conservatives' Links to Africans Questioned by Black U.S. Bishops

In yet another interesting twist to the ongoing soap opera within the Anglican Communion, black Episcopal Bishops have come out questioning the motives of the "conservatives" within the Episcopal Church who are suddenly seeking alliances with black African bishops as they seek to break away from the Episcopal Church. In this area, some of these conservatives are the same folks who have belonged to private clubs which excluded blacks until relatively recently and who typically only interacted with blacks they hired as domestic help. Yes, it is difficult for me to push the word "hypocrites" from my consciousness. One of these local "Godly Christians" is a former law partner of mine who chastises me about being gay because of phrases in the Bible, yet is divorced and remarried yet conveniently ignores the biblical prohibitions against divorce. He gets quite peevish when I respond by telling him he's an ongoing adulterer per the literal words of the New Testament of the Bible. But I digress. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post"

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CANTERBURY, England -- For five years, conservative Episcopalians eager to escape their liberal U.S. church have been building ties with African Anglicans half a world away. But they have few connections with black Americans in their own back yard, said black Episcopal bishops.
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It's something that I like to point out," said Bishop Eugene T. Sutton, the first black Episcopal bishop in Maryland, "the historical anomaly of dioceses that have nothing to do with the black community going all the way to Africa to make these relationships." Moreover, Sutton and other black bishops at the meeting said the use of Scripture to reject homosexuality in the Anglican Communion evokes previous eras' biblically based arguments in support of slavery and racism.

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In the small discussion groups that formed the backbone of the conference, some black Episcopal bishops said they have framed their support for gay rights within the context of a long struggle to include blacks and women in the church and in society at large. "As a person who knows what it means to be oppressed, I refuse to allow my brothers and sisters in the faith to be discriminated against," said Suffragan Bishop Gayle E. Harris of Massachusetts.

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"They're looking for black faces to give them legitimacy," Sutton said of U.S. conservatives, "because they can't find them at home." Harris said that the bonds between Africans and U.S. conservatives are a "political expediency" and that "connections made for the time being will not last across the huge gulf of understanding" between the groups.