"They can't reproduce, so they got to recruit. They tryin’ to recruit our kids. They tryin’ to promote their lifestyle to our kids, and I say no. They gonna bring it under a civil rights issue. It’s not a civil rights issue, it’s a moral issue."
So spews a Proposition 8 supporter to rousing cheers of approval.
"To try to say that it’s all right for people of the same sex to marry, and then to compare that with civil rights? I’m upset about that, that gets me passionate because of everything African Americans have gone through in order to get their rights."
Bishop Wellington Boone
Fellowship of International Churches, Atlanta Ga.
And it gets worse. A new report by the National Black Justice Coalition shows that African Americans are more likely than whites (65 percent versus 53 percent) to oppose marriage equality for gays and lesbians.
According to the report, African Americans "are virtually the only constituency in the country that has not become more supportive over the last dozen years, falling from a high of 65 percent support for gay rights in 1996 to only 40 percent in 2004."
"Nearly three-quarters of blacks say that homosexual relations are always wrong, and over one-third say that AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behavior," the report stated. "Overall, blacks are 14 percentage points more likely to hold both positions than whites."
What is especially disturbing in this African American homophobia is that it is coming from a group that should know better, having also been victims of hate and discrimination, and who have had such strong gay and lesbian support in the civil rights movement.
Hopefully the African American community will face and address this entrenched homophobia. Now more than ever we need to come together and not be divided by homophobia and hate. Changing African American homophobia and hate towards the gay community is an area where Barack Obama can show some real leadership and can deliver on his goal of being a unifier.