Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

i’ve about had it listening to parade of people telling me that the reason why prop 8 banning gay marriage passed in california was because gays and lesbians didn’t do enough outreach.

well, excuse me for feeling that, if you think that you deserve equal treatment under the law, then the least you can do is extend that sentiment to the homos. excuse me for feeling that no one should have to go to the houses of worship of blacks, latinos, or whites and explain to them why they shouldn’t ban gay marriage.

excuse me for thinking that gays and lesbians shouldn’t have to go begging to anyone for acceptance and support from oppressed people! I know, I know: being oppressed doesn’t make you “naturally” progressive *spit* but what the fuck. 75% of support for prop 8 among black women is a fuck-load of support. 3 out of 4 black women want to ban gay marriage! Just over 2/5s of white women do (45%). That’s a huge difference. black women were *more* opposed than black men! Higher income black women were more opposed than any other group.

excuse me for thinking that, since gays and lesbians are part of all communities — white, black, latino, NDN, etc., then — shocking! — they should already be sympathetic to their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors.

excuse me for thinking that, as a practical matter, which both of the women i heard tonight admitted: even if they’d wanted to, they didn’t have the money to match the religious right’s massive outreach.

but the question is, why are higher income black women susceptible to this outreach? hmmm? religion!? i mean honestly was my sexist grad school prof who criticism patricia hill collins right when he said that her views were obviously shaped by the lack of marriagable men for better of black women? was it the whole living on the DL debate. what?

it was so irritating listening to two black women *refuse* to take responsibility for the heterosexism among people who, in their own words, they claim as *their* community.well, if it is their self-professed community and you think you can speak *for* it as some sort of cogent representative of what black folks think, then maybe they ought to be ought there volunteering their own outreach efforts. I don’t know why i or anyone else should head out to some homophobic Catholic, Born Again, Evangelical, Mormon, whatever church and ask the pastor (whatever) for entree so I can explain to their congregation why gays and lesbians deserve to be treated with dignity and be extended equal protection, civil rights, etc.

You know, in the past, I really couldn’t give two shits about the gay marriage issue. Like I didn’t give a shit about gays in the military. I had more “radical” things to work on. But this? This has pissed me off, especially since I had to listen to two years worth of stupid ass wimpy “progressives” telling me about how being a person of color somehow automatically made you more likely to have progressive politics and shit. people said that at lbo repeatedly.

as Obama names Rahmbo to be his COS the other day, I had to laugh: this is the guy who helped get rid of all the Liberals around Clinton, and backed the end of welfare as we know it.

Every time someone on LBO got on that schtick, I about wanted to listen to fingernails scratching across a blackboard more than I wanted to listen to such bizarre claims. but still something would tug at me, some stupid remant of identity political epistemologies about the need to center the voices of the most oppressed groups, because the most oppressed groups would lead the way with the most radical views of how to advance a more just society….

and right about now, I’m with Bill Maher: fuck religion. That’s like a 180 degree turn for me, but fuck piety, religion, the religious. I’m tired of that noise. I didn’t really care for Religulous. It annoyed me, how smug he was. The jokes were sometimes funny, but I didn’t see the point. Who was he trying to convince? Certainly not the religious, who he offended constantly.So he was talking to people already on board with his ideas. Big whoop.

Well, whatever. I could not care less about offending people any more, or trying to have a more reasonable understanding of the sources of political radicalism that have sometimes emerged in the civil right movement, the abolition movement, liberation theology, etc.

—

i call bullshit, also, on this issue, which came up at another discussion list to which I subscribe

no one in the glbt movement fighting against prop 8 took people of color for granted. it is well known that people of color typically oppose equal rights for gays in higher numbers than whites, whether they are religious or not. they didn’t have the money to fight the issue plain and fucking simple. the mormon church alone dumped assloads of cash into the fight to get prop 8 passed.

GLBT people aren’t whites only; they are also people of color. Therefore, it isn’t news to them that being a black female doesn’t automatically make you supportive of equal rights for GLBTQs. This battle has been fought for years and no politically active GLBTQ activist is that ignorant that they thing that piously religious, family oriented latinos are going to automatically vote for their issues.

And you still have to ask yourself: why such a huge difference between latino women and black women?

my guess: religion.

but, of course, then I’m just painting them as stupid asses with no agency, who are brainwashed by religious. Who could be so easily swayed by the tons of money poured into the yes to prop 8 campaign.

So, stepping back, and thinking about the agency of women of color, I’m going to guess that there was no religious brainwashing going on here at all. Instead, I’m going to assume that they were exercising their agency and voting for something because they wanted to, because it spoke to something they fervently believe in, regardless as to religious brainwashing or the opposite form the homos.

As active agents making their own history, no one had to brainwash it into them and therefore that no one could possibly brainwash out of them. As active agents making their own history, they voted for something that advanced their interests as they understood them, and those interests were not and never have been the interests of anything other than their own free will, self-expression, and sense of self- and community-self-interest.

hooray for hegelian epistemology of the more vapid end of the identity political powerlessness has its privileges movement.

hint: if it isn’t religion and if people of color in higher income brackets and educational levels supported prop 8, guess what the factor is!

free mini lingerie washer ‘n’ dryer combo if you get it right!

“Although Barack Obama has said that he supports civil unions, he is against gay marriage. In an interview with the Chicago Daily Tribune, Obama said, “I’m a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”

As Jasmyne Cannick writes, it’s her job as a black lesbian to speak to the homophobia in *her* community and it’s not the job of white queers to go to the black community and tell them how to understand queers or how to vote and support queers:

The gay community is using the Blacks as a scapegoat for the passing of Proposition 8—but they’re not alone—believe it or not—there are some misguided self-hating Blacks joining them in that call. This by the way is going to do nothing to soothe relations Blacks both gays and heterosexual who always seem to be caught in the middle. Are Blacks homophobic? Yes, that’s no secret. However, that’s a discussion for us to have with each other on our terms and in our community—not to be discussed in mixed company or to be confused with the racism in the white gay community, which is a separate issue all of its own. And even though I may be unhappy with the position of Blacks on gay issues—that’s our dirty laundry.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-cannick8-2008nov08,0,5044196.story

and all that is fine with me. I deal with racism among whites. She can deal with homophobia among blacks. Latinas can deal with sexism among Latinos. And on and on.