OT: Obama and his principled stand on gay marriage

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 12:36 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> There have been several stories since the announcement that went up over
> the weekend and this morning. NYT front page reflects the buzz that
> Obama called eight pastors after the speech. But NYT is also ignoring
> the fact that most polls conducted over the weekend show no specific
> correspondence to the speech--that is, differences between the polls are
> far more influenced by polling house bias than by any actual changes in
> electorate.
>
> The same is true about the WaPo story last week that minority
> registration is down across the country, ostensibly, they say, because
> of the economy (induced migration and all that). The claim has been
> debunked by several sources that suggest that the dataset used by WaPo
> is known not to correspond to actual voter turnout--that is, the changes
> in registration numbers do not correlate to actual votes.
>
> Aside from all this, the fact that except for a few rabid
> fundamentalists, the attacks from the right have largely accused Obama
> of playing politics with his announcement rather than criticizing
> decision of support in itself. This suggests that internal polls
> demonstrate that this is not a workable wedge issue, unless they create
> some other baggage out of it.
>
> Most US demographics have been fairly stable either in long-term voting
> patterns or in long-term trends in voting patterns. That is, the
> percentages of certain populations either have not changed in decades,
> in terms of their votes, or they've been steadily leaning in one
> direction or another. For example, Appalachian whites have been
> increasingly Republican, but only in their Presidential votes. The only
> two demographics that have changed widely are subsets of Latinos (Cubans
> are still largely Republican, but slowly trending toward the middle, but
> the other groups have swung up and down rather wildly) and Arab
> Americans, who used to vote almost entirely Republican, but rapidly
> switched sides.
>
> This should end up being a non-issue in national politics. NYT would be
> correct if they claimed that NC recent vote and Prop 8 largely passed
> because of African-American support. But I am not aware of any reported
> case of a high-profile politician getting or losing /any/ crossover vote
> because of the issue. They are just looking for an angle to keep
> themselves relevant. Don't just stand there, write /something/.

I'm confused. Are you saying that the NYT is mistaken in its
assessment of the homophobic black attitude toward gay marriage that
so shocked California's *white* gay community - IIRC, 70% of blacks
voted *against* gay marriage - not long ago? That I'm mistaken in
pointing out that there is *at least* as much anti-gay sentiment among
blacks as there is among whites - witness a saying critical of
California common among blacks - "Most places, you use fences to keep
the people from eating the fruit. Here [in California], you got to
use fences to keep the *fruits* from eating the *people*!"? Or that
it's a non-issue for Obama being blown out of proportion by the press?

And, BTW, black, showbiz gays of the RuPaul school are lionized by
*white* people. To black people, they're an embarrassing abomination,
because the *real* soul-brother is *not* a do-funny! It's people like
RuPaul and them who got AIDS from white men and then introduced it
into the black community, in the first place! That's another CIA plot,
just like rock (= crack)!

And, just as there are people unconsciously racist, there are people
everywhere unconsciously homophobic, to a greater or a lesser degree.
When a buddy of mine, whom I'd known sine I was six and he was seven,
told me, when we were in our thirties, that he and the
"flaming-faggot" character in "The Boys in the Band" were the same, it
was just noise, some joke whose point went over my head. So, I merely
replied, "Uh-huh," and threw it out of my mind.

About fifteen years later, after getting the word from an
unimpeachable variety of sources, I realized that Weldon had been
trying to come out to me. I had always considered myself to be in no
way homophobic. Yet, when push came to shove, that I had actually been
enjoying a close, personal relationship with a gay person for dekkids,
as opposed to merely seeing gay men around, was incomprehensible.

Finding out that Weldon was gay didn't affect my friendship with him.
But, my mind was *blown*, when I realized that, clearly, I must have
been, to some degree, homophobic, if the fact that a friend of my mine
was gay was so unthinkable that, when he tried to tell me about it, it
was as though he was trying to tell me about his ability to set fire
to water.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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