Civil rights legend U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a strong supporter of gay marriage, spoke at an Atlanta Pride reception earlier this month. (Photo by Sher Pruitt)
Gay marriage in black and white Despite support from civil rights icons, African-American opposition remains strong
Four decades ago, John Lewis stepped out onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to help lead more than 600 activists in a march for voting rights for African-Americans. The police brutality that followed led the March 7, 1965, protest to be forever known as “Bloody Sunday.”
On Tuesday night, Lewis danced to the cheers of supporters at his Atlanta campaign party, celebrating his resounding reelection to an eleventh term in the U.S. Congress. The Georgia Democrat’s lopsided victory over two primary challengers was hailed by gay voters and political leaders, who termed Lewis a “key ally” in the fight for gay rights on Capitol Hill.
To Lewis, one of the few members of Congress to speak out forcefully for full marriage rights for gay couples, the issues are simple.
“I’ve fought too long and too hard against discrimination based on color not to fight against discrimination because of sexual orientation,” he has often said, most recently in a speech at the Atlanta Pride festival’s VIP reception on July 5.
But the Georgia congressman illustrates a paradox that confounds gay rights activists, both black and white: While African-American civil rights leaders are among the most passionate and powerful allies speaking out for gay rights, support in the black population in general hasn’t followed.
Despite growing support for same-sex marriage in the United States as measured by several recent polls, black Americans remain steadfastly opposed to gay unions.
According to research conducted by the National Black Justice Coalition and several other organizations, as many as two-thirds of black Americans are against gay marriage. Although the numbers vary by poll, research shows most blacks oppose both gay marriage and civil unions.
The findings come as some surveys show a majority of whites have dropped their objections to same-sex unions. A poll by Pew Research Center in May showed that fewer than 50 percent of whites object to gay marriage.
H. Alexander Robinson, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, said the continued opposition among black Americans shows that he and other advocates must recommit themselves to their work.
“I don’t think we have a moment to waste in making the case,” he said. “And quite frankly, we have to move these numbers.”
Released in April, the National Black Justice Coalition report notes that blacks “are virtually the only constituency in the country that has not become more supportive over the last dozen years” of gay rights.
It says Asian-Pacific Islanders showed the highest rate of support for gay marriage or civil unions at 55 percent. Support among whites was at 46 percent, among Latinos at 35 percent and among blacks at 23 percent.
The report notes those findings reflected “strong gains in each of these groups except for blacks.”
Some experts have been careful to note the findings should not be interpreted to mean that black Americans are the only ones who oppose gay marriage or civil unions.
“I know that we’re looking at one set of polling data about African Americans and their attitudes on GLBT equality, but let’s not use that data and suggest that gay people only face challenges in the African-American community,” said Cuc Vu, chief diversity officer for the Human Rights Campaign.
“There is a lack of support for LGBT equality in many other communities. In 2004, for example, we witnessed 6,000 Chinese Americans protest marriage in San Francisco. Homophobia is very real in every community.”
But it is, perhaps, best documented among blacks. A survey for HRC in March 2004 showed fewer than one-third of black voters said gays should be allowed to marry.
Twenty percent of that survey’s 600 respondents indicated they strongly believed that gays should be allowed to marry. Another 8 percent agreed that gays should be allowed to marry, but did not hold a strong position on the issue.
According to the survey, 50 percent of blacks strongly believed that gays should not be allowed to marry and another 11 percent agreed, albeit “not strongly.”
Four years later, surveys show the numbers generally are unchanged.
A national survey of 1,505 people by Pew Research Center in May shows 26 percent of blacks favor gay marriage, while 56 percent oppose it. By comparison, the same survey shows 40 percent of whites favor gay marriage and 49 percent oppose it.
SUPPORT NOT GROWING
Rev. Larry Brumfield, a black pastor at Westminster Church of the Brethren in northern Maryland, said he was saddened by the findings.
“I wouldn’t say I’m surprised,” he said, “but I’m a little put off by it because I feel that we have, as a people, as a group, as a demographic unit, we have not educated ourselves and learned and grown.”
Brumfield, who is straight, said too few blacks accept sexual orientation as the immutable trait many scientists believe it to be.
“I think a lot of folk think it’s a conscious choice,” he said. “But like blue eyes or green eyes, it’s how God made us.”
Robinson said although he and other gay activists have progressed in their educational work among religious and secular black communities, support for same-sex marriage has been agonizingly slow to materialize.
“African Americans, in large part, have been very resistant to any notion of discrimination against anyone, even when it comes to same-sex couples,” he said. “But we have not made the case yet that excluding same-sex couples from marriage is discrimination.”
OPINION DOESN’T FOLLOW LEADERS
Black civil rights icons have been among the most outspoken heterosexual allies to support gay marriage, but the opinions of these revered leaders hasn’t swayed the results of opinion polls targeting African Americans.
Among those who have announced support for gay marriage are Lewis; Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., who died in 2006; Atlanta’s Rev. Joseph Lowery; activist and former Democratic presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton; and South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, who won the Noble Peace Prize for his work against apartheid there.
Julian Bond, chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also is an ardent supporter of equal rights for gays, and even declined to attend King’s funeral because it was held at Atlanta’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, which is led by Bishop Eddie Long, in part because Long led a 2004 march in Atlanta against gay marriage.
“Many gays, many lesbians, worked side by side with me in the civil rights movement,” Bond said in 2005. “Am I supposed to tell them now thanks for risking their lives and their limbs to help me win my rights but that they are excluded because of the circumstances of their birth? Not a chance.”
But too many black Americans, Robinson said, are failing to hear the arguments.
“There’s a perception that our relationships are different,” he said, “and those perceptions are based on religious views about marriage and religiously derived notions about the purpose of marriage.”
CIVIL UNIONS ALSO LAG
Marriage aside, the National Black Justice Coalition report and other surveys have found that civil unions also are unpopular among blacks.
In 2004, 36 percent of the HRC survey’s black respondents said they strongly opposed civil unions, while another 11 percent were generally opposed. The total opposed jumped this year to 53 percent, according to the Pew Center’s survey in May.
Robinson said opposition to civil unions runs high in part because the purely legal institution is seen as too close to its religious counterpart.
“Civil unions are seen as marriage light,” he said. “It’s not seen as substantially different.”
Also problematic, Robinson said, is that many fear that civil unions could put gay couples further along the path toward securing marriage rights.
He said many blacks thus advocate against civil unions because they believe “we have to hold this ground, because if we lose here, then everything else falls.”
Brumfield agreed. He said many blacks “think that gay, lesbian, transgender people have an agenda of some kind, an agenda that’s dangerous for our society,” and that agenda must be stopped.
“It’s seen as a first step. ‘If we allow them civil unions, the next thing they’ll want is their curriculum in schools, training our children to be gay,’” Brumfield said.
Robinson said gay rights activists working to win new allies often are challenged to overcome the suspicions and fears that are held by many black Americans.
“They see it as about much more than marriage,” he said. “It’s about trying to normalize homosexuals and homosexual behavior.”
But he said it’s essential that such fears are alleviated before greater problems develop.
“You have to understand how much of a threat that, potentially, these numbers suggest we’re under,” Robinson said. “I can’t help but fear that if left unchecked, that this will begin to erode support for other measures of protecting gay and lesbian people, because that’s how prejudice works.”
Next week: The role that religion plays in shaping black opinion, why discussing gay issues within a civil rights context can be problematic, and how the issues play out in Georgia, where black legislators were the most cohesive group against the 2004 state constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Laura Douglas-Brown contributed
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