Are Black People Really Homophobic?

There always has to be someone to blame. So when California's Proposition 8 – the state constitutional ban on gay marriage – was approved by voters on Nov. 4, the story line was set: African-Americans, who had registered and turned out in record numbers for Barack Obama, delivered crucial, even deciding votes for Prop. 8.

Initial reports cited exit polls with seven of 10 black voters backing the initiative. Cue the back-and-forth name-calling. In comments and on blogs, some of the measure's opponents called blacks who voted "yes" bigots. Blacks didn't appreciate being singled out, misunderstood and treated as a monolithic block. Was the LGBT community in California racially inclusive and was there enough outreach before the vote?

Admittedly, the conclusion of the Prop. 8 campaign made a tantalizing headline: a historically oppressed group had voted to deny civil rights to another oppressed group. No matter that the numbers were later proved wrong, or at least seriously flawed, or that – at seven percent of the California population – African-Americans could hardly have determined the fate of Prop 8.

After a little time passed and everyone took a deep breath, reports said the exit polling was exaggerated and put the percentage of black support for the measure closer to 58 percent.

The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Patrick Egan of New York University who with Kenneth Sherrill of Hunter College of New York wrote a post-election report for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: "Party identification, age, religiosity and political view had much bigger effects than race, gender or having gay and lesbian family and friends." In fact, among regular church-goers, black support for Prop. 8 was lower than for any other ethnic group. But the report also found that African-American support rose above the 52 percent that Prop. 8 received from all voters in the November election.

The issue is far from over. In California, gay rights groups can't agree on the best time to fight the gay-marriage ban, in part because of the struggle to change hearts, minds and votes.

Politics Daily's Carl Cannon set the stage for a similar battle in Washington, D.C., over a city council proposal that would have the District of Columbia recognize marriages performed in other states, with pastors in conservative black churches opposing any measure that would accept same-sex marriage in D.C. and more progressive black churches supporting the measure.

The controversy is not new. Bayard Rustin, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s adviser and an architect of the 1963 March on Washington, "lived in the shadow of many other civil rights greats because of his sexual orientation (gay), his political orientation (socialist), and his religious orientation (atheist)," said a column on AOL's Black Voices.

In the King family, the civil rights leader's widow Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006, called gay marriage a civil right in 2004, when she denounced a proposed constitutional amendment to ban it. Her daughter Bernice, a minister, opposes gay marriage.

NAACP national chair Julian Bond and president and CEO Benjamin Jealous both support same-sex marriage.

In a question and answer in The New York Times, Jealous said when asked why the organization doesn't have an official stand on the issue: "We're engaged in fighting a whole range of issues of urgent relevance to the gay community and people of color in our country, including school bullying, hate crimes and employment discrimination. But we're a barge, not a speedboat. We're not going to repeat the mistakes of so many other institutions that have literally torn themselves apart over this divisive issue."

When the question, "Are black people really that homophobic?" was asked at the recent National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference in Tampa, Fla., panelist Rashad Robinson, director of media programs at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said the question itself needs to be challenged. National polls show a majority of blacks supports hate-crime legislation but opposes marriage equality. Dig deeper, he said, and you find differences based on class, religiosity and geography, with the strongest opposition to gay marriage in the South.

Katina Parker, of the NABJ LGBT task force, who grew up Baptist and has stopped going to church because she's "afraid of being beat over the head" with views about homosexuality, still said her answer would be "no," as many African-Americans are trying to resolve their religious beliefs with family members who are gay.

Freelance producer Patrick Riley, the baby of three siblings who grew up in the Bible Belt of Savannah, Ga., was clear with his "yes." He said some relatives would "prefer to have a crackhead" in the family than a gay person. "I do think it exists," he said about homophobia in the black community. "I do think it is more. I do think there is opportunity" to shift opinion.

In some churches, "don't ask, don't tell" is the simplest solution. Others think such a policy would be abdicating their mission. At Friendship Missionary Baptist in Charlotte, N.C., the Rev. Michelle Jones, daughter of the senior pastor, directs the HIV/AIDS ministry, which offers testing, counseling and soon, affordable housing. "We're called to love and not to judge," she said. Her ministry speaks to everyone from seniors to young people. "There are things we don't want to talk about, but you have to have the conversation."

Why do some African-Americans – even those sympathetic to the goal of legal equality – bristle when gay rights activists insist that the civil rights struggles are exactly the same?

Put aside religion, and there is still a feeling that the language and goals of a historic movement – the civil rights movement – are being co-opted by the LGBT community. Yet, tactics are not exclusive. King borrowed from Gandhi. Protest movements from women's equality to the Polish workers of Solidarity have taken from one another without the same resentments.

"It's equally offensive that we cannot draw from our common experiences," said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, a gay rights organization. Wherever it's coming from, it's the idea that there's one group that's inferior and there's a group that's superior, she said.

In common is a wish to be judged as an individual and not dehumanized by stereotypes and fear. And now, at least, civil rights and gay rights groups are talking to, not past, each other.