Council, Residents Bid Hall Farewell
School District Hires ‘Coach’ For New Superintendent
Charter School Gets State Stamp of Approval
Local Nonprofit to Host Holiday Gospel Concert, Toy Drive
Burke Honored During Final Board of Supervisors Meeting
Boys’ After-School Program Receives Federal Grant
Ethel Bradley, Wife of Former L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, Passes
Nap Without Guilt: Study Suggests It Boosts Sophisticated Memory
Ron
Dowell:
Compton’s Sheriff’s Contract: A Clearer Look at the Confusion
Is Gay the New Black? Marriage Ban Spurs Controversy, Debate
ByJesse Washington
NEW
YORK—Gay is the new Black, say the protest signs and magazine
covers, casting the gay marriage battle as the last frontier of equal
rights for all.
Gay marriage is not a civil right, opponents counter, insisting that
minority status comes from who you are rather than what you do.
The gay rights movement entered a new era when Barack Obama was elected
the first Black president the same day that voters in California and Florida
passed referendums to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying, while Arizonans
turned down civil unions and Arkansans said no to adoptions by same-sex
couples.
Racism was defanged by Obama’s triumph, leaving gays as perhaps the
last group of Americans claiming that their basic rights are being systematically
denied.
“Black people are equal now, and gay people aren’t,” said
Emil Wilbekin, a Black gay man and the editor of Giant magazine. “I
always have this discussion with my friends: What’s worse, being
a Black man or a Black gay man?”
“Civil rights have come much further than gay rights,” he said. “A
lot of people in the gay community have been condemned for their
lifestyle and promiscuity and drugs and sex, so it’s odd that when
they want to conform and model themselves after straight people and have
the same
rights for marriage and domestic partnership and adoption, they’re
being blocked.”
In a cover story for the Advocate magazine titled “Gay is the New
Black,” Michael Joseph Gross wrote, “These past few years we’ve
made so much progress that we’d begun to think everybody saw us as
we see ourselves. Suddenly we were faced with the reality that a majority
of voters don’t like us, don’t think we’re normal, don’t
believe our lives and loves count as much or are worth as much as theirs.”
Yet even some gay leaders are reluctant to directly tie their fight
to the African-American legacy. They acknowledge significant differences
in the experiences of gays and Blacks, ranging from slavery to the relative
affluence of white gay men to the choice made by some gays to conceal their
sexual orientation, which is not an option for those with darker skin.
“I believe we are very much in a modern-day civil rights struggle,” said
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s
largest gay rights organization.
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