Ryan Conrad - Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion

Kenyon Farrow

This piece was originally published on March 5, 2004 and has been re-posted on numerous websites.

I was in Atlanta on business when I saw the Sunday, Feb. 29 th edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution that featured as its cover story the issue of gay marriage. Georgia is one of the states prepared to add some additional language to its state constitution that bans same sex marriages (though the state already defines marriage between a man and a woman, so the legislation is completely symbolic as it is political).

What struck me about the front-page story was the fact that all of the average Atlanta citizens who were pictured that opposed gay marriages were black people. This is not to single out the Atlanta Journal Constitution , as I have noticed in all of the recent coverage and hubbub over gay marriage that the media has been really crucial in playing up the racial politics of the debate.

For example, the people who are in San Francisco getting married are almost exclusively white whereas many of the people who are shown opposing it are black. And it is more black people than typically shown in the evening news (not in handcuffs). This leaves me with several questions: Is gay marriage a black/white issue? Are the Gay Community and the Black Community natural allies or sworn enemies? And where does that leave me, a black gay man, who does not want to get married?

Same-sex Marriage and Race Politics

My sister really believes that this push for gay marriage is actually not being controlled by gays & lesbians. She believes it is actually being tested in various states by the Far Right in disguise, in an effort to cause major fractures in the Democratic Party to distract from all the possible roadblocks to re-election for George W. in November such as an unpopular war and occupation, the continued loss of jobs, and growing revelations of the Bush administrations ties to corporate scandals.

Whatever the case, it is important to remember that gay marriage rights are fraught with racial politics, and that there is no question that the public opposition to same-sex marriages is in large part being financially backed by various right-wing Christian groups like the Christian Coalition and Family Research Council. Both groups have histories and overlapping staff ties to white supremacist groups and solidly oppose affirmative action but play up some sort of Christian allegiance to the black Community when the gay marriage issue is involved.

For example, in the 1990s the Traditional Values Coalition produced a short documentary called Gay Rights, Special Rights , which was targeted at black churches to paint non-heterosexual people as only white and upper class, and as sexual pariahs, while painting black people as pure, chaste, and morally superior.

The video juxtaposed images of white gay men for the leather/S&M community with the voice of Dr. Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream speech, leaving conservative black viewers with the fear that the Civil Rights Movement was being taken over by morally debased human beings. And since black people continue to be represented as hyper-sexual beings and sexual predators in both pop culture and the mass media as pimps & players, hoochies & hos, rapists of white women & tempters of white men, conservative black people often cling to the other image white America hoists onto black people as wellasexual and morally superior (as seen in the role of the black talk show host and the role of the black sage/savior-of-white people used in so many Hollywood movies, like In America and The Green Mile , which are all traceable to Mammy and Uncle Remus-type caricatures).

Since the Christian Right has money and access to corporate media, they set the racial/sexual paradigm that much of America gets in this debate, which is that homos are rich and white and do not need any such special protections and that black people are blacka homogeneous group who, in this case, are Christian, asexual (or hetero-normative), morally superior, and have the right type of family values. This, even though black families are consistently painted as dysfunctional and are treated as such in the mass media and in public policy, which has devastating effects on black self-esteem, and urban and rural black communities ability to be self-supporting, self-sustaining, and self determining.

The lack of control over economic resources, high un/underemployment, lack of adequate funding for targeted effective HIV prevention and treatment, and the large numbers of black people in prison (nearly 1 million of the 2.2 million U.S. prison population) are all ways that black families (which include non-heterosexuals) are undermined by public policies often fueled by right wing tough on crime and war on drugs rhetoric.

Given all of these social problems that largely plague the black community (and thinking about my sisters theory), one has to wonder why this issue would rise to the surface in an election year, just when the Democratic ticket is unifying. And it is an issue, according to the polls anyway, that could potentially strip the Democratic Party of its solid support from African-American communities.

And even though several old-guard civil rights leaders (including Coretta Scott King, John Lewis, Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) have long supported equal protection under the law for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community (which usually, but not always means support of same-sex marriage), the right wing continues to pit gay marriage (and by extension, gay civil rights) against black political interests, by relying on conservative black people to publicly speak out against it (and a lot has been written about how several black ministers received monies from right-wing organizations to speak out against same-sex marriages in their pulpits).

But many black leaders, including some Ive been able to catch on television recently despite the right-wings spin on the matter, have made the argument that they know too well the dangers that lie in separate but equal rhetoric. So, if many of our black leaders vocally support same-sex marriage, how has the Christian Right been able to create such a wedge between the black community and the gay community?

Homophobia in Black Popular Culture

Some of the ways that the Christian right-wing has been so successful in using same-sex marriage as a wedge issue is by both exploiting homophobia in the black community and also racism in the gay community. In regards to homophobia in the black community the focus of conversation has been about the Black Churches stance on homosexuality.

It has been said many times that while many black churches remain somewhat hostile places for non-heterosexual parishioners, it is also where you will in fact find many black gays and lesbians. Many of them are in positions of power and leadership within the churchushers, choir members/directors, musicians, and even preachers themselves.

But let me debunk the myth that the Black Church is the black community. The black community is in no way monolithic, nor are black Christians. The vast majority of black people who identify as Christian do not attend any church whatsoever. Many black Americans have been Muslim for over a century and there are larger numbers of black people who are proudly identifying as Yoruba, Santero/a, and atheists as well.

The black community in America is also growing more ethnically diverse, with a larger, more visible presence of Africans, West Indians, and Afro-Latinos amongst our ranks. We have always been politically diverse, with conservatives, liberals, radicals, and revolutionaries alike (and politics do not necessarily align with what religion you may identify as your own). It is also true that we are and have always been sexually diverse and multi-gendered. Many of our well-known Black History Month favorites were in fact Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, or Transgender.