Blacks overwhelmingly against gay marriage - Why such hypocrisy?

Great Debates
1

Inspired by this segment on today’s “All Things Considered,” on NPR: Black Ministers In D.C. Divided Over Gay Marriage

It’s about how D.C. is about to approve a proposal to recognize gay couples married in other states, and how blacks in D.C. and across the country are overwhelmingly against gay marriage rights.

This story saddened me greatly because the hypocrisy of these blacks - who have been discriminated against and denied rights for so long in this country - to be so strongly against another minority group receiving the same equal rights. One pastor of a black D.C. church says he:

Similar moral and religious beliefs were used to justify slavery and discrimination against blacks for centuries… like how during slavery, marriage between slaves was not legally recognized. How many families were torn apart because these marriages were not recognized?

And like how interracial marriage was not recognized until recently; like how many people used to believe that whites and blacks being married was “outside God’s plan” and a “sin.”

Gays didn’t choose to be born gay any more than a black person chose to be born with dark skin. How can black people in 2009 - with a black president in office - not get this?

Let’s also not forget that, of course gays and lesbians can “be fruitful and multiply,” and they often do, biologically and by the adoption of children that no one else wants.

Thankfully, one black D.C. pastor was interviewed who did not share this bigoted view, but whose church lost many of their members due to his acceptance of gay families:

Also ironic is how blacks view gay marriage as an affront to the institution of marriage, but at the same time have one of the highest out-of-wedlock birth rates?

So please help me understand, how can the majority of blacks be so incredibly contradictory? Is it a cultural thing, or a religious thing, or what?

2

Both, I’d say. As a group, African-Americans are pretty conservative. And many of them would probably be offended that you suggested their fight for rights was anything like the fight gay people have fighting.

3

So am I just “not getting it,” or am I right that there is some glaring hypocrisy here?

4

It’s not hypocrisy to believe that homosexuality is sinful but being black isn’t.

5

Considering that both are involuntary qualities that harm no one, yes it is. There’s just as much justification for hatred of blacks as there is for homosexuals.

6

Maybe, maybe not. But I definitely find it offensive and hateful.

7

To you, yeah. To me, not really. Maybe a little one that, same as with white folk, a peaceful and respectful discussion with them will help with some, while with others we just (sorry for the starkness of this) have to wait for enough of them to die off to shift the balance. But it isn’t entirely that simple. (wishing I had my references handy) There was a long tradition in poor communities, black and white, of two people of the same sex, especially women, moving in together “for economic reasons,” but as long as they kept their sex lives to themselves (don’t ask/don’t tell) the greater community was fine with it. Some consciously and some because they are totally oblivious; I mean, my parish has a couple who have hyphenated their collective surnames, and it STILL hasn’t occurred to some people that they are a couple.

ETA: This is a response to nyctea.

8

I believe your entire perception of hypocrisy rests on this.

Lots of people believe people are not “born” gay but choose to act that way. If so, then there is no hypocrisy (for them).

“Hypocrisy” is actually not the real question… the real question is “nature vs nurture.”

You can’t determine hypocrisy until everyone agrees that being gay is genetic. On the other hand, everyone already agrees that dark pigment skin is genetic.

9

Except for the people who think it’s a curse from God, which is about as rational as insisting being homosexual is a choice.

10

Believing that homosexuality is invariably a choice is not necessarily bigoted or irrational, Der Trihs. It is certainly ignorant, but that’s something else entirely.

11

I didn’t know that some thought that being black was a curse from God. Jesus wasn’t a white European, so thinking that being a non-white is a curse would be an interesting perspective.

12

What I should’ve said is that there’s no hypocrisy in believing that engaging in homosexual sex is sinful, but that engaging in heterosexual sex with members of a different race is not. I don’t happen to agree with the former view, but it’s not logically inconsistent as was claimed in the OP.

13

Yes, it is. It flies in the face both of observed facts, and simple common sense. As a straight person, I sure know that I never chose to be straight. And from a practical perspective, why WOULD anyone choose to be gay in as hateful a society as ours ?

People don’t choose what they like and dislike; that’s an obvious fact that requires no education to grasp. It requires self delusion or dishonesty to ignore it.

14

There are two schools of “thought” behind that belief. One is that Noah’s son ham was cursed for–well, something–and is the ancestor for the “black race”; this idea depends on the three-race model of humanity currently believed only by nincompoops. The other is that blacks are descended from Cain, who was not Adam’s son but rather the Serpents, having persuaded Eve to do star in a hentai movie in the garden of Eden.

ETA: Also, the persons who hold this belief would very definitely say that Jesus was white.

15

But you can look at it from another perspective - you have different minority groups, which have traits that don’t directly harm or infringe on others, who have throughout history been denied rights to various extents, one of which who after having such rights restored now acts to deny the other group the same rights using the same beliefs that bigots used to use against them.

Why are we so behind in gay rights, and why is the group who should be most sympathetic to their plight, so against it? Why do they cling to the same old backward beliefs that were previously used to justify discrimination against themselves? Why treat another minority group in the same discriminatory fashion under which your group suffered for so long, and against which your group fought so hard? How can blacks not recognize or acknowledge these glaring contradictions? I don’t know whether to be angry or to feel sorry for them for some sort of institutional shortfall of education (for example, such as the one that is supposed to be responsible for the disparity in testing results in the New Haven firefighter case?)

Or is there some sort of pattern seen in history of previously oppressed groups not feeling sympathy for other groups who face similar oppression, or who actively engage in the same sort of discrimination against another group (one example could be Jews/Palestinians…)

16

Sexuality is a lot more complex than you think, Der Trihs. It’s not binary, for one thing. There are men who mostly prefer women but think some dudes are hot, and vice versa, in many different proportions. There are people who can simply go either way and choose oen way or the other because they happen to feel the strongest emotional connection for a particular person, even though sexually they can respond to both genders. There are people who choose never to indulge hetero or homosexual impulses for personal reasons or moral reasons or political reasons or reasons I haven’t thought of in the past 10 seconds.

Note that I’m not saying that the the anti-SSM position is justified. I’m saying that it simply shouldn’t matter, morally, whether homosexual behavior or heterosexual behavior is freely chosen or not. No one has the right to tell an adult whom he or she may or may not couple with, so long as all persons involved are consenting.

17

Yes there are people who believe and religions who believed this. One of them being a major US religion. Not wanting to derail this thread with that subject I recommend you goggle ‘black curse from god’

18

I would venture to guess that this is more an income issue than a black/white issue.

Or, to be more specific, it’s a religion issue. Poor people are more religious and/or more fundamentalist religious. According to historic wisdom, God said homos are evil, not that blacks are.

But again, I suspect that if you compare people by income, the rate will be fairly similar between whites and blacks.

19

By the way, I note that you snipped out a crucial phrase in my earlier post. I’ll quote it my ownself:

I bolded the latter sentence because it was a major part of my point. Der Trish, you are drawing a fase dichotomy if you are claiming that any mistaken belief about human nature is necessarily born of bigotry or evil. It’s possible to be wrong but to be of good will.

20

Or “The Curse of Ham”.

It does matter when the question at hand is the similarity between anti-gay and anti black bigotry, and the people saying there isn’t any insist that part of the reason is because “you don’t choose to be black.”

I was pointing out that it’s obvious that gays don’t choose to be gay; so obvious that it takes willful denial of reality to think or claim otherwise. So there’s dishonesty involved, not simple error or ignorance.

But in this case, they aren’t.