My first reaction, on reading the news about proposition 8, was to think of this diary, by our very own pico. I don't live in California anymore, and none of my "real world" friends got married...but I've followed and loved many of pico's great pieces on literature, exchanged an email or two, and generally just admire the hell out of the guy. I respect his moral courage online and my world is bigger for reading books he's recommended and described. That's not a small thing...it is personal in a way that general political affinities are not...so that picture, hand in hand, and those rings, that was the first thing I thought of. To say I was terribly sad would be an understatement.
As I clicked around today, I started seeing much weirder stuff. It would appear that a lot of people are noting a 70/30 split for the initiative in the African American community and assigning blame accordingly. To describe a lot of the rhetoric I've seen as vile would be an understatement. Without calling out specifics, I've seen comments implying that having a black president indicates institutional racism is dying out(!), discussing the "down low" as a an indicator of permanent black homophobia, and generally using the word "them" to describe African Americans.
Let's establish frames here: I'm a white, transsexual chica with no small amount of priviledge. My intersections of race and gender and sexuality are pretty much what you'd expect of such a person. I've been a daily visitor to a black hospital over much of a year, with some stories of what were probably religiously motivated behaviors that would curdle your blood. I've had many black people, and only a few white people, offer to relieve me of my life for being a freak, using racial and gender slurs I will never forget. I've been beat up and I've had stuff thrown at me by black people. I have watched African American gay friends exist in a gray area which moves me to tears. I've had African American lovers who ranged across the entire spectrum of queerphobic to profoundly, courageously supportive at great personal cost. There is no one frame in which you can include black people with respect to gay people. If you think there is, think again.
So I'm partly writing this short diary to say that there is no "them". Really. There is no "them". There are only people. Some people have the moral courage of turnips, and some people are moral bastions, and most people are a mush of the two. But every single person makes their own moral choices. If you run about talking about how "they" hate you, or "they" are homophobic, you are implying that a class of people have moral agency. Guess what, my friends? Classes of people can suffer from the moral judgements and economic conditions imposed by others, but groups do not exercise moral agency. Individuals do that. And you will never, ever change people's minds and hearts by assigning them to a group and holding the group responsible.
The other reason I'm writing a rant -- which I know sells as well on dkos as Honda Civics in Detroit -- is that we're losing sight of the fact that while I weep -- truly -- for the outright theft of rights under Proposition 8 -- our rhetoric is ignoring something more important. As a trans woman, it does not escape my notice that a great number of hate crimes occur at the intersection of race, class, and gender. If you look at the report "50 Under 30", you'll see a report on the murder of fifty or so trans kids. As you look at the first page, you will see something else: very, very few of those faces are white.
We do not help queer youth of color when we talk about "them". It goes way past black folks always getting carded at the gay club. Kids are dying. Really. And talking about it as coalition politics and the big picture pretends a power we don't, as bloggers (except for a lucky few) posess. I don't know about you, but my hurt at this loss is not so great that I think we can afford to talk about "them". "They" are us. And we're dying.
There are other issues, of course. The AIDS rate in the African American community and the queer community, the ways in which religosity prevents discussion and treatment, a whole raft of things. But all I wanted to say was, before you comment -- one way or the other -- think about those kids. Goddamn they are brave. Are you helping them, with what you are about to write?