Poster on 57th and 9th Avenue:

The 7th NYC Wedding March, September 26 @12pm in Foley Square.  www.meny.us/march

If you’re gay and pregnant and live in Maine, you can get an abortion but you can’t get married.  At least you can treat your depression about that kind of message by lighting up a joint:

In a landmark vote, Maine voters today approved Question 5, making the state the third in the country to license nonprofit organizations to provide medical marijuana to qualified patients and the first ever to do so by a vote of the people…. Under the measure, the state will license nonprofit organizations to provide medical marijuana to qualified patients and set rules for their operation. While 13 states permit medical use of marijuana, only Rhode Island and New Mexico have similar dispensary provisions, both of which were adopted by the states’ legislatures. Maine’s original medical marijuana law was passed in 1999.  — Salem-News.com

They voted down a later-term abortion ban:

Maine voters rejected a top-of-the-ballot proposal Tuesday that its advocates said would ban certain late term abortions.  With 467 of 664 precincts reporting, or 70%, the vote in favor of enacting the ban was 126,116, or 45%, while the vote against the ban was 154,580, or 55%.  — USA Today

Then they slammed the door on gay rights:

Voters rejected a state law Tuesday that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed. The repeal comes just six months after the measure was passed by the Maine legislature and signed by the Democratic Gov. John Baldacci.  Maine would have been the sixth state in the country to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, but instead becomes the 31st state to oppose the unions in a popular vote. With 87 percent of precincts reporting as of 2 a.m. today, gay marriage opponents claimed 53 percent of the vote to supporters’ 47 percent.– ABCNews.com

What to make of all this, I can’t tell you.  Perhaps a one-handed clap?

2008 NYC protest outside the Mormon temple in Lincoln Center; part of a series taken for Wikipedia/Creative Commons

After Proposition 8 passed, many gay people were angered by the 70% African-American support rate for the anti-Gay California measure.  The  media outlets, particularly Fox News, were keen to take the focus away from the conservative Mormon church’s involvement in Prop. 8′s passage, which spurred large nationwide protests.

Fox News et al. created the appearance of a “war” between the reliably-Democratic voting blocks of blacks and gays.  Stephen Colbert ridiculed this in several segments (below is with Dan Savage, who is hysterical in the interview):

Nevertheless, there was a modicum of truth to it as the gay and black communities have had a long, complicated relationship.  Although civil rights icons like Coretta Scott King, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have endorsed social justice and marriage for gay people, their followers remain unconvinced.

Homophobia is rampant in the African-American community.  Andrew Sullivan writes that, “The black church is one of the most powerful forces fomenting homophobia in America, and has fostered attitudes that have literally killed countless gay black men.”   Dan Savage, who after seeing the Proposition 8 support broken-down by race, expressed his outrage:

I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.

Porn king Michael Lucas has cited homophobia as the reason he can’t find more black models for his films.  Responding to a letter he received on his blog, Lucas wrote:

I would love to use more, but unfortunately, Black models are not that open to appearing in adult gay films. It of course has a lot to do with the rampant homophobia in the African-American community, and models are just scared of being in productions.

African-Americans ignore the homophobia in their community, but gays tend to ignore the racism in their own.  I have seen many gay men reveling in guilty giggles after they’ve shared a racist joke.

This racism has an impact.  According to a recent study by H. Fisher Raymond and Willi McFarland, from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the social barriers black men face may be responsible for the raging AIDS epidemic in their community.  Other races find black men undesirable, limiting their diversity of sexual partners.

The perception is that black men are most likely to transmit HIV.  African Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, yet they account for 57 percent of new AIDS infections.  According to the study:

Black gay men are the least preferred of sexual partners by other races, according to the interview data. Black men also are perceived to be riskier to have sex with, which can lead to men of other races avoiding black men as sexual partners. They are also perceived as less welcome in the common social venues of gay men in San Francisco. As a result, black men are three times more likely to have sexual partners that are also black, than would be expected by chance alone.

In the study authors’ view, the combination of attitudes on the part of nonblack gay men, friendships and social networks that are less likely to include blacks, and the environments found in gay venues serve to separate black gay men from other groups. Consequently, the sexual networks of blacks are pushed to be more highly interconnected than other groups, with the potential for a more rapid spread of HIV and a higher sustained prevalence of infection among black gay men.

Homophobia and racism between blacks and gays are problems that have hit a brick wall, as neither community trusts nor desires to engage the other.  As the passage of Proposition 8 and the black AIDS epidemic show, both communities suffer for their mutual bigotry.

Never mind that Cheney had eight years to do something as logical in a time of two wars as repeal the Defense Department ban on gays in the military.  In trying to cement his “Sister Souljah moment“, Cheney is out-and-about all gung-ho for the gays:

Cheney said:

“I think that freedom means freedom for everyone,” replied the former V.P. “As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don’t support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. … But I don’t have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that.”

Gays are perplexed by this surprise voice seemingly supportive in the midst of a national movement.  But with friends like these…  Nobody gay gives two hoots for Mary Cheney; she is, effectively, our version of a Jew for Jesus.

2006 Karen Grigsby Bates photo by Sandy Huffaker via NPR

Dan Savage at The Stranger called reporter Karen Grigsby Bates out on the carpet for a recent report she filed for National Public Radio about the consequences suffered by supporters of California Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriages. Bates gives several examples in her story of victims of the Prop 8 backlash:

In Los Angeles, would-be patrons of a popular Tex-Mex restaurant were greeted by furious protestors like John Dennison. “El Coyote — millions in gay margarita money funding hatred,” Dennison yelled during the protest. “Boycott El Coyote!” The restaurant owner’s daughter, Margie Christofferson, a faithful Mormon, had made a modest $100 contribution to the “Yes on 8″ campaign — and the restaurant’s gay patrons, like Edward Stanley, felt betrayed.

[...]

In Sacramento, the owners of Leatherby’s Family Creamery found themselves part of the backlash when The Sacramento Bee printed the list of contributors. Dave Leatherby, a devout Roman Catholic father of 10, says he was responding to a direct request from his bishop to give generously. “We gave $20,000 for Yes on Proposition 8,” he says. And once that was known, retaliation was swift. “We soon started getting very nasty e-mails and letters and phone calls by the hundreds,” he says.  Leatherby says he was mystified, because the Creamery had always enjoyed good relations with the gay and lesbian community.

[...]

Richard Raddon, director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, and Scott Eckern, director of the California Musical Theater in Sacramento, are devout Mormons. Both made contributions to Yes on 8, and both got demands for their resignations from gay rights protestors. They quit so their organizations wouldn’t face further controversy. Ironically, the film festival has been instrumental in introducing works by gay and lesbian filmmakers to a broader audience — and the musical theater included works by gay playwrights and composers.

You can not be for gay rights but against gay marriage.  It’s boggling that Dave Leatherby is so “mystified” by the angry response to his $20,000 support of Proposition 8.  Are these people that clueless?   It’s great that they don’t actively hate on gays, but when they deny them the legal rights that state-sponsored marriage affords couples, they are bashing them in the denial of civil rights.  Marriage is a civil institution, not just a religious institution.

What sticks out to me is that these are the same old examples of Proposition 8 backlash.  El Coyote, Richard Raddon and Scott Eckern are such old news that after reading this piece I wonder if this supposed backlash has gone anywhere.  The other thing that stuck out was that Bates interviewed not one gay activist for this piece about a gay activist backlash.

This omission was what Dan Savage pointed out last week, especially glaring since Bates quotes the Yes on 8 campaign for the piece:

And who does Bates go to for a quote about what all this means? Frank Schubert, spokesman for the Yes on 8 campaign. No gay activists are quoted about the impact of Prop 8, or the reasoning behind the boycotts. Bates speaks to no gay leaders, she doesn’t quote anyone about the role that boycotts have played in other civil rights struggles, from the African American Civil Rights Movement (think of that poor bus company!) to struggles farm workers’ rights (did anyone ever think of the poor people who owned the vineyards where grapes were grown?). All we hear from our faithful Mormons and devout Roman Catholics who “exercised their constitutional right to freedom of religion” and now find themselves “endangered” by “angry gay rights activists.”

Gee, maybe a gay person should’ve been asked to respond to those charges. Perhaps a gay person could’ve pointed out that we are under no obligation to patronize businesses that are owned and operated by our enemies, discussed other boycotts launched during other civil rights struggles, and pointed out that gays and lesbians have just as much right as faithful Mormons or devout Roman Catholics to act on our consciences and spend our money accordingly, and, again, that boycotts are a peaceful and legitimate form of protest, not “witch hunts.”

Direct complaints about KGB’s idiotic and unfair “reporting” to NPR’s ombudsman here, or call 202-513-3245.

The Minnesota Independent picked up on Savage’s post (“Hah hah. NPR is actually being balanced? Sounds good to me,” wrote one commenter) and Queerty’s Japhy Grant picked up its torch and also called on people to complain in a piece entitled “NPR Hearts Prop. 8 Supporters“:

Bates goes further, saying that all the protests have given “rise to charges that as gay rights advocates tried to change public opinion, some stepped over the line and turned their protest into a witch hunt”, which is a journalisticly weasel way to insert her own opinion into the article. Watch how easy it is: “Some are now claiming that Karen Grigsby Bates is using public radio to bash gays and lesbians by accusing them of ‘witch hunts’ without bothering to get any quotes from actual gay people.”

He ends the post with, “Yes, that’s right: We’re calling for a witch hunt on Karen Grigsby Bates.”

Ouch!

As of this writing, the story over at NPR has 305 comments, which is pretty huge for an NPR on-line forum.  I wouldn’t dream of wading into it, as the conversation over there has completely devolved into nonsense.  Here’s one exchange so that you may spare yourself the full carnival:

When Time Magazine named Evan Wolfson as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, it was for making an impossible idea—marriage for gay people—conceivable.  Wolfson is the Martin Luther King Jr. of the modern fight for the marriage right.  There is no state or legal battle that does not involve Wolfson’s work, either directly or through his unavoidable precedents.

Wolfson’s organization, Freedom to Marry, is completely geared up to fight the bigots who are trying to overturn California’s marriage law.  They need your donations.  Now.

So Mr. Wolfson, one of the most influential people in the world, I have five questions for you:

A. Israeli — though it would be wonderful to have European citizenship, too

A. Yes, in college I worked to become Speaker of the Political Union.  I was proud to be elected, did some great projects with close friends (who remain friends to this day), and enjoyed serving.  But I remember the feeling of discovery that far from being the pinnacle I had imagined, the actual office meant less to me than the experience and friendships themselves.

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR PEOPLE – A SERIES

• JIMMY WALES – Citizen of the world, sage to millions of editors of Wikipedia, which he founded…I have five questions for you.
• BILLY NAME – Famous Warhol live-in photographer; silverized the Factory; shot the cover of the Velvet Underground’s eponymous album; iconic portraits of Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick…I have five questions for you.