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Gay-Marriage Ban Should Sound Familiar To Blacks

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By MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS

Media General News Service

Published: November 20, 2008

Forty-one years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional and ended race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

Can you imagine if voters were later allowed to overturn Loving v. Virginia?

On the same day Barack Obama's historic election married hope and history, California voted to override a state Supreme Court decision recognizing same-sex marriage as a fundamental right.

The vote set off global protest, including a half-dozen rallies Saturday around Virginia.

"We are all interconnected in our efforts to achieve full equality in this country," said Dyana Mason, executive director of Equality Virginia, a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization.

Last week, I visited Los Angeles, where air made acrid by the ring of fires in Southern California was filled with shouts of "Yes We Can!" during a Proposition 8 protest at City Hall.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cited Loving v. Virginia in his remarks as protesters held signs such as "No to H8" and "From Selma to Stonewall, This is the Fight Today." Nearby, a small band of Prop 8 supporters held signs such as "Homo-Sex is a Threat to National Security."

There were few African-American faces in the crowd of thousands. Indeed, Prop 8 was approved with heavy black-voter support. Why do so many of us flinch at parallels drawn between our civil-rights movement and the gay and lesbian struggle for equality - a struggle that led one sign-holder Saturday to wonder, "Is Pink the New Black?"

"The great tragedy of the recent election was the passing of Proposition 8," said the Rev. Canon Dr. Alonzo C. Pruitt, rector of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Richmond's North Side. "And the reality that black people made it possible to pass is especially saddening."

Pruitt, who is black, wonders how a people so long targeted with oppression could not find more empathy for another group that has landed in the crosshairs of bigotry.

Opponents call same-sex marriage unnatural and sinful - justifications that should ring familiar to African-Americans who recall arguments against black-white marriage. But Pruitt says significant biblical interpretation does not outlaw homosexuality.

"We don't punish people for being left-handed. We don't punish people for being red-haired," he said. "And pretty soon, we'll stop punishing people for being gay."

Virginia outlawed same-sex marriage in 1975. In 1997, it enacted a law to not acknowledge marriages and civil unions recognized in other states. And two years ago, state voters approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage by defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Mason wouldn't speak to the role of black voters in the Proposition 8 vote but noted that in Virginia in 2006, a smaller percentage of black voters (56 percent) voted for the "marriage amendment" than did white voters (58 percent). She noted that black leadership is split, with NAACP Chairman Julian Bond a strong proponent of marriage equality.

"All we can do is hope that that conversation continues and hope to have a seat at the table. Because unfortunately, caught in the middle of that are black gay folks."

Mason said it's inappropriate to put people's civil rights up for popular vote. Indeed, the civil-rights legislation of the 1960s would not have been approved at the polls. And Prop 8 is a clear sign that bigotry did not die on Election Day.

Michael Paul Williams is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

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