An unfair attack on white gays

[davidinalameda]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-naff12-2008nov12,0,263271.story

In all the post-election commentary about California's passage of Proposition 8, perhaps none was more offensive and wrong than Jasmyne A. Cannick's Times Op-Ed article, "No-on-8’s white bias.”

Cannick's piece raises important questions about the politically correct double standards that govern debate of gay rights issues. When white evangelical Christians (or Mormons, for that matter) attack gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people, the response is loud and harsh: Bigots! Homophobes! Haters! But when black religious leaders attack gays, which is a regular occurrence in many churches, the response is muted because, well, it's a cultural thing and we white people just wouldn't understand. Bigotry is bigotry, whether emanating from the pulpits of white churches or black ones.

Cannick writes, "But even I wasn't inspired to encourage black people to vote against the proposition. ... I don't see why the right to marry should be a priority for me or other black people. Gay marriage? Please. At a time when blacks are still more likely than whites to be pulled over for no reason, more likely to be unemployed than whites, more likely to live at or below the poverty line, I was too busy trying to get black people registered to vote, period; I wasn't about to focus my attention on what couldn't help but feel like a secondary issue."

The argument that many black voters are too preoccupied with more practical matters to think too much about gay marriage is not entirely illegitimate. But it's an argument for apathy, not a rational or legitimate justification for actively supporting discriminatory laws.

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When I first read Cannick's column on Tuesday, I was thinking many of the same things as this author did

why are we afraid to call out bigots no matter what color they are?