Gay marriage and the black vote

Posted on August 22, 2008
Filed Under Gay News Blog

At a Democratic presidential forum on gay issues last year, The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart prefaced a question to Sen. Barack Obama this way: ”Now, you and I both know that there’s a homophobia problem in the black community.” Capehart seemed to suggest that he was disclosing a shared secret, but the belief that blacks are disproportionately hostile toward gays and lesbians is widespread.

That notion will be put to the test Nov. 4, when black voters in California — expected to turn out in record numbers to support Obama — also will face a proposition to put a ban on same-sex marriage in the state Constitution. The foregone conclusion, expressed by prominent gay journalist Andrew Sullivan and others, is that this means trouble for gay newlyweds.

Don’t bet on it. Although ordinary polls report lower levels of support for same-sex marriage among blacks than among whites, views on same-sex marriage are a rapidly moving target that’s tough to pin down, even for experts.

And a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box in the last presidential election. When constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage were on 11 state ballots in November 2004, blacks in Arkansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio and Oklahoma were at least one percentage point less likely than whites to vote for them, according to CNN exit polls. Only in Georgia were blacks slightly more likely to vote for the amendment. (The remaining four states had too few blacks to make a meaningful comparison.)

Blacks, like whites, are divided on the issue. In March 2000, when Californians voted on Proposition 22 (the statutory ban on gay marriage that the state Supreme Court struck down in May), a Los Angeles Times exit poll showed that levels of support were very similar among the major ethnic groups, with Hispanics slightly more opposed to allowing gays to marry, Asians and whites slightly less opposed, and blacks right in the middle.

Gay marriage and the black vote
MiamiHerald.com, FL