By Kheven LaGrone

Being homos exual compromises or revokes the entitlement that most white gays and lesbians are born and raised into. Many feel they must have a decision between their full entitlement (by abstaining or by remaining in the closet) or express their sexuality. 

White gay activists fight against having to decide between the choices; they want to be openly homosexual and have their full white skin entitlement.
In contrast, African American activists have struggled to obtain that full entitlement that the white gay activist had taken for granted since birth. America has a race caste. Fighting to reinstate the white skin entitlement is not the same as breaking do wn America’s race caste. Yet many advocates of gay marriage connected the gay marriage movement to the civil rights movement. For example, they argued that years ago interracial marriage was banned. This point is irrelevant in the Prop 8 debate. Most Prop 8 proponents were fighting for family.  They believed that a family is a father, a mother and their children. Since a Black man and a white woman can have children and raise their family together, they would not conflict with most Prop 8 proponents.
The defeat of Prop 8 would have h elped white gays and lesbians reclaim their white skin entitlement. Some are angered because they feel they came so close, but the passing of Prop 8 kept it out of their hands. Some were outraged because they believe that their entitlement was breached by, to use their word, “niggers.” That those protesters operated in a white supremacist paradigm was evidenced by their accosting African Americans (even those displaying “NO ON 8” signs) who had gone to join them in protest. In a ddition, that the “NO ON PROP 8” movement was a fight for white skin privilege was evidenced by the fact that little outreach went out to non-white communities, otherwise grouped as “people of color.”

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Depending on how you looked at Proposition 8, the proposition either protected traditional marriage and family or banned gay marriage. “No On 8” activists argued that the proposition promoted hate and discrimination. However, before the election, I could hear the beginning of a “Yes on 8” backlash on talk radio here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I listened to the “No On 8” movement imploding and riling the backlash.


 

On November 4, 42 of California’s 58 counties voted to support Proposition 8. The state’s five largest counties supported it. What happened? Initially, many voters seemed to not have cared one way or another about gay marriage—and they certainly didn’t care enough to vote against it. However, the video clip of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s angry rant that gay marriage was coming “whether they like it or not” surely agitated some people into action to support Proposit ion 8. The clip got a lot of attention. Push people and people push back. One man called in to a talk radio show and said that when he saw all the, to use his word, “wackos,” fighting against Proposition 8, he assumed it was a proposition that he should support. Some supporters of Proposition 8 were concerned that gay marriage would be promoted in schools. Opponents of the proposition argued that it wouldn’t. However, when school leaders joined in the fray to f ight Proposition 8, the question arose: If they’re not going to teach gay marriage in the schools, why are these teacher leaders getting so involved? To prove their argument that gay marriage would be taught in the schools, Prop 8 supporters highlighted the true story about the elementary school teacher who brought her class to her lesbian wedding.
Some opponents of Proposition 8 pointed at a high divorce rate and the “failure” of heterosexual marriages. The reaction was not one of defeating Prop 8. Instead, protectors of marriage saw the rising divorce rate as a call to “rescue” the institution of traditional marriage.
Proposition 8 was compared to legalized racial oppression. Surely, the opponents reasoned, if we are against oppression based on race, we have to be against oppression overall—and, using this argument, African American voters would have to vote against Proposition 8. However, many African Americans do not accept that a white man’s CHOOSING to live an openly gay lifestyle faces the same discrimination that a conservative, middle class churchgoing African American man might. One must factor in the power of choice into the equation.

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