This is really quite pissing me off.

[theweaselking]

Not to pick on kittikattie because I quite like her, but this came from her journal post of this morning:

Not even two days later, and people are blaming Prop 8's passing on PoC.

Other people are saying it, and since I can't say it well, have their links.

http://ladyjax.livejournal.com/603663.html?style=mine

"Apparently, Black people are to blame for Proposition 8 passing. You heard it right: it's our fault. We went out and voted for Obama but gave a shaft to gay people.

If anyone saw the commercials for the No on 8 campaign here in California, then you know that the few times when they did show people in them, they were overwhelmingly white. The Yes on 8 campaign? Busted out with a clever commercial (and I'm gonna call it clever because it sure as hell was), that showed a Black preacher, a Latino gentleman (you couldn't tell what he was doing but he was positioned Joe Regular) and then a white woman with a child. They hit the high notes: church, San Francisco judges (boo, bad!) , and 'what do we tell the kids?'

Yes on 8 did massive organizing in POC communities. No on 8? barely a blip on the radar screen."

*~*~*

http://black-pearl-10.livejournal.com/660201.html?style=mine

"The No on 8 campaign lost this issue with their assumptions and prejudice. I got sick of not seeing any commercials at first, then of seeing commercials that made no mention LGBT people, then seeing commercials that equated it with other civil rights issues far too late in the campaign to be effective. I wonder if anything was even actively done to reach out to show folks in the rural areas of this state how this effects real people, or if they just thought that "those people" were far too ignorant to bother with."

Now, I've cut the rest of the links and discussion, because they aren't important to my point. I'm not addressing the problems inherent in blaming black people for disproportionately voting Yes, when that disproportionality comes only from a single poll with only arguable statistical value and when, even if the poll is true, it means that black voters accounted for 7% of the 51% it passed by, versus 3% against. If black voters had gone even 50/50 yes/no, would it have failed? Yes, but it also would have failed if *white* voters hadn't also been about 50% bigots, and when blacks are 10% of the total vote, it's awfully hard to make "that 50%+1 is your fault" stick.

My point is about the two that got quoted first, the two I've quoted above.

Yes on 8 did massive organizing in POC communities. No on 8? barely a blip on the radar screen

SAY WHAT?

The No on 8 campaign lost this issue with their assumptions and prejudice

OH NO YOU DID NOT.

But yes. Yes they did.

They both just argued that Prop 8 passed with large minority support because *their advertising had more minorities in it*.

They both just argued that People Of Colour were *right* to vote to strip civil rights from a minority group *because the No campaign didn't target them specifically*. Because the No campaign, which was necessarily an ad-hoc thing starting *after* the measure got added to the ballot, didn't "reach out" enough to non-white groups.

Fuck the advertising money and quality. This was a vote to REMOVE CIVIL RIGHTS FROM A MINORITY. Saying that "outreach" and "advertising" influenced votes is to say that those voters are happy to *remove civil rights from minorities* if they're just asked to nicely enough.

It's disgusting, and so are the people who make the "oh, the bigot's outreach was better, you have only yourselves to blame" argument as a justification for homophobia.

Comments

Blame the victim

[skippy-fluff.livejournal.com]

Anything that starts from a critique of the "No on 8" campaign boils down to blame the victim, in my eyes. The reality may well be that "No on 8" was ineffective, but the idea that we had to run a campaign against this in the first place is flat-out outrageous. The idea that "Yes on 8" was funded by tax-advantaged entities (LDS, Catholics, etc.) where "No on 8" was not adds to the shame here.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

I have no time to respond to this right now, but you typoed her username. Only the one E: kittikattie.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Got it. Thanks.

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the idea that there is less tolerance for homosexuality in black and latino communities.

I don't know how true it is but it may shine a big ole spotlight on an area for future outreach.

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

It seems, to me and to real analysts, to be an issue of religious beliefs and not color.

If people want to break that down further into color, then they need to be quoting stats on white people, too.

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

I'm not a real analyst. I have been told that there is more of a bias against homosexuality in minority communities then in white communities. I have NO PROOF to back this up but would love to see some numbers.

I know that among the more pious members of religious communities homosexuality is frowned on. I would imagine that the less invested an individual is in religion then the more likely they are to accept homosexual members of society.

I'm disappointed at the results of the vote in CA. I also have no real idea what I can do about it. Aside from changing the attitudes and beliefs of those who I hold some amount of sway over.

[benchilada.livejournal.com]

What you just said. :|

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

if you're interested in reading more, patricia hill collins writes about black people and sexuality, especially in her book Black Sexual Politics.

[psyco-path.livejournal.com]

Thx. I will add it to the ever growing list

Taking rights away from one group is taking rights away from all groups.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

Re: Taking rights away from one group is taking rights away from all groups.

[botia.livejournal.com]

I don't know, how about "no marriage until 60", because you're more likely to be "til death do us part"? ;)

[botia.livejournal.com]

If someone felt there was a missing element to the outreach in the "No on 8" campaign, why did they not speak up until now?

[chrisrw109.livejournal.com]

Fuck the advertising money and quality. This was a vote to REMOVE CIVIL RIGHTS FROM A MINORITY. Saying that "outreach" and "advertising" influenced votes is to say that those voters are happy to *remove civil rights from minorities* if they're just asked to nicely enough.

They're not saying that PoC were right to vote for it. They're saying that if you don't try to educate people, then you can't be shocked when those people are stupid.

Much of the 'Yes on 8' advertising camouflaged the actual issue to a large degree (much like the signs that you highlighted a while back). Which made it easy for people to do the stupid thing.

Should people educate themselves before they vote? Certainly. But assuming that people are going to be smart and agree with you isn't the way to win passage.

It's ludicrous that the vote went the way it did.
It's shameful that it was even on the ballot.

[dreamshade.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's worth noting that the actual ad campaign for Yes on 8 was less about taking away the rights for gays to marry and more about how we're going to teach all our children about gay people and make them go to gay marriages and trample on churches' rights to free speech and stuff. This was definitely not just a simple campaign against them.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

A few decades ago, King County (home to Seattle) was formally changed to Martin Luther King County. It was originally named for William King, Vice President under Pierce.

Other than the usual racist assholes, a few briefly brought up the fact that William King may have been the first gay VP and quiet partner to James Buchanan. There's a bit of evidence leading to this, including the fact that the two lived together for 15 years, and were referred to by Andrew Jackson as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy." After both died, their nieces fanned the rumor flames (no pun intended) by burning their letters.

Someone in the gay community here suggested that the county name change amounted to dismissing one oppressed minority with another. . . and the shit hit the fan. The pat dismissals and outright homophobic slams coming from sometimes prominent members of the black community frankly shocked me.

For me, it's not an issue. Everyone bears prejudice. Whatever. That episode so many years ago, though, showed me where to find some anti-gay prejudice. Based on that, Prop 8 didn't surprise me at all. I would like to see some hard numbers on homophobic tendencies based on self-identified race. I wonder where they might be found.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

I'm a bit confused.

I read the articles earlier today, and I didn't see where they were saying minorities were right to vote the way they did. In fact, all the authors seemed to say the
exact opposite.

What they are saying, and what is true, is that the gay community has a long history of ignoring people of color when it comes to gay rights, and that their outreach in prop. 8 was no different.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Please ignore the wonky spacing. Types from iPod.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Gah this is ridiculous - and worse, feeds and boosts the right wing hate groups who would just LOVE for us to attack each other

The population alone means black people cannot have been the factor that passed proposition 8

When it comes down to it - homophobia and bigotry passed proposition 8. Lashing out in a prejudiced manner against another oppressed group does not help. Seriously, does not help. Certainly not when the dishonest, lying homophobic, hatefilled scum that don't deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us that advertised for this proposition clearly intended to causes this rift.

We have more than enough enemies out there without having to manufacture them.

And as an aside: outreach isn't so much the issue as the lies that were told. Outright lies. But still, I agree with you - no matter how slick the advertising, if someone voted 8 on proposition 8 there's no way they could have been lied to sufficiently to make their vote anything less than and outright act of bigotry. It disgusts me that there are still so many hateful disgusting bigots out there.

One step at all time, eventually we'll win. Until then we just have to keep fighting for basic human rights against the mass of haters who have no respect for their fellow human beings

[hel]

They both just argued that People Of Colour were *right* to vote to strip civil rights from a minority group *because the No campaign didn't target them specifically*. Because the No campaign, which was necessarily an ad-hoc thing starting *after* the measure got added to the ballot, didn't "reach out" enough to non-white groups.

Fuck the advertising money and quality. This was a vote to REMOVE CIVIL RIGHTS FROM A MINORITY. Saying that "outreach" and "advertising" influenced votes is to say that those voters are happy to *remove civil rights from minorities* if they're just asked to nicely enough.

They're not saying it's RIGHT, or that people were HAPPY to do it. The articles are saying that if you fail to explain your side of things to a large group of people in ways that show them how it relates to them, you shouldn't be surprised when that group of people sides with the position that DID explain itself to them. No on 8 DID fuck up in not targeting minority communities with ads, when Yes on 8 was targeting them. You can complain about it all you like, but the reality is that human beings are susceptible to advertising, and the advertising industry works very very hard to be sure they do things that work.
You can't just assume people will understand the issues and trust them to do the right thing. You have to counter the misinformation they're getting, then lay out for them WHY it's the right thing. If all communities heard was 'Prop 8 is big and scary and will destroy your marriage and is against god and will corrupt the childrens!', and didn't get told 'Prop 8 is about everyone having the same rights, regardless of who they are', then it is no great surprise they went with Yes on Prop 8. Yes on 8 framed the issue the way they wanted it framed, Yes on 8 very carefully told people what it wanted them to hear, and oh, hey, look, humans are human, it worked.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

I think the assumption that advertising swung the minorities is overlooking some really important information regarding what happened with Prop 8.

First off, the way things were going, No had it in the bag. Somewhere along the lines, Yes got HUGE amounts of funding from religious organisations out of state, especially the LDS in Utah. Violation of church/state separation aside, more money means you can AFFORD advertisements in the first place.

Secondly, the ads that Yes made were full of lies and appealed to emotion, rather than fact. I heard one of the ads on a podcast (they played an example from each side) and, I kid you not, it claimed that a vote for "no" would mean that 2nd graders would instantly come home having heard a story about a prince marrying a prince, that churches would HAVE to allow gay marriages in their churches whether they liked it or not, and that churches would lose their tax-exempt status.

The No ad I heard was a couple who said they love their children equally and a "yes" vote would mean their lesbian daughter would not be able to marry. So they said to vote no because all "our" children deserve the same rights.

It's not hard to see why Yes has won... for nwo.

The last thing we need to realise is that the vote is NOT OVER. There are still enough absentee votes that it could change. It won by like 52% (is the number I heard) so this can still flip to "no."

I've heard the accusations blaming the POC, and I don't know how fair it is to say it's THEIR FAULT the vote passed (it's also possible a large number of people had no idea what prop 8 and prop 2 were about, so they just voted yes).

The problem most people have is the same one weaselking has mentioned: a minority which has fought so hard for its own rights is now REMOVING the rights another minority had been given by the Supreme Court (Cali, not national). It's hypocritical.

Further irony? Apparently the POC voted yes to both prop 2 and prop 8. Prop 2 was to prevent abuse and mistreatment to animals who are undergoing testing. So basically it looks like animals were granted more rights than homosexuals.

No matter how you address the problem, it does NOT look good for POC.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

I want to reiterate the fact that it was the "yes" ads which swayed a LOT to change their mind from no to yes. So there were a lot of people who were TRICKED into voting yes. This is one of the reasons human rights and gay rights groups are seeking an appeal.

But again, until ALL the votes come in, we don't know if this is finished.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The "blaming people of colour" thing comes up because POCs voted *overwhelmingly* in favour of it.

As in, if their split of yes/no had been the same as that of white people, it would have failed.

Secondly, the ads that Yes made were full of lies and appealed to emotion, rather than fact.

Yeah, but when you have those ads (which are clearly lies) and, even assuming you know nothing else, the TEXT OF THE PROPOSITION reads "remove the rights of same-sex couples"?

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong, I'm as pissed off as everyone else. :/

I wonder if it actually had that text on the ballot or if it was just a "Proposition 8: y or n" sort of thing.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

the civil rights parallels between people of color and gay people are not immedately evident to a lot of folks.

They're not the exact same, and when the gay rights movement insists they are, they wind up distancing lots of people of color, but there are parallels.

if the ads from gay rights activists had both started earlier and framed prop 8 as a civil rights issue, it likely would have gotten more support.

It's not okay that people voted the way they did...not at all. But this isn't the first time
gay community has acted like people of color don't exist. It's just that this time it didn't work out in their favor.

As an aside, blaming people of color is probably not the best route if you want their support in the future.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Blaming them is irrational. They're too small a minority to have swung the results without the help of a whole lot of white bigots, so, even if they *did* vote disproportionately in favour of it, the passage is still not entirely or even mostly their fault.

Defending them from this blame by saying that "the bigots talked to people of colour and the nonbigots had only white people in their ads, so OF COURSE they voted against you" is what's pissing me off so damn much.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

also, we're talking about people of color like they're this monolithic, heterosexual group.

There are lots of different kinds of people of color and some of them are queer and some of them voted in favor of (is that right?) of prop 8.

If the issue is bigotry and homophobia, then the white people who voted no on prop 8 are just as culpable as the
people of color who did.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

You have yes and no reversed.

Prop 8 was "remove rights from homosexuals".

"yes" on 8 was to remove the rights. No on 8 was to keep them.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Ah. Thank you.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

if their split of yes/no had been the same as that of white people, it would have failed.

Prove it.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

You're a latecomer to this argument and you're missing context.

Try this, from the post itself:
I'm not addressing the problems inherent in blaming black people for disproportionately voting Yes, when that disproportionality comes only from a single poll with only arguable statistical value and when, even if the poll is true, it means that black voters accounted for 7% of the 51% it passed by, versus 3% against. If black voters had gone even 50/50 yes/no, would it have failed? Yes, but it also would have failed if *white* voters hadn't also been about 50% bigots, and when blacks are 10% of the total vote, it's awfully hard to make "that 50%+1 is your fault" stick.

We're assuming for the sake of argument that the pre-election polls that showed overwhelming PoC support for anti-gay bigotry and the exit polls in California that showed overwhelming PoC support for anti-gay bigotry are correct.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

Why assume for the sake of argument when you could, you know, actually check?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/7/34645/1235/704/656272

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should read the original post. Since you didn't read it the first time and you didn't read it the second time when I said you should read it to get the context, I don't really have any suggestions other than READ THE POST.

Hint: I assume it's correct for the purpose of argument because the idiots I'm addressing *also* assume it is true, and then defend it as being *justified*.

But, if you'd read it, you'd know that.

[cacahuate.livejournal.com]

I read the post. And I've read all the posts you linked. I don't see them saying that statistic must be true. And frankly, I don't think it matters much whether it's true, but if you're going to make a claim either way it should be at least moderately factual.

Maybe if YOU had read the posts you're talking about, you wouldn't be acting like they say it's no problem that some black people voted for 8.

It's back in court!

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/06/MN3B13UM63.DTL

Thought you'd want to know. :)