The Republic of T.

OK, I’ve gotta do this before I get all sappy and weepy, etc. But six years ago today, an incredible little person came into the world, just a couple of days before I even knew he was coming into my life, and every day since then he’s grown into and even more incredible, not-so-little person.

So, pardon me if I go all “proud, doting dad.

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Well, the NAACP has shut my mouth on this one. I was pretty hard on them this summer, when I got wind of a PFOX exhibit at an NAACP event. But it looks like the outcome off the proposition 8 vote has raised some alarm with civil rights groups, including the NAACP. [Via Kip.]

Meanwhile, five civil rights groups asked California’s highest court Friday to annul the ban on the grounds that Proposition 8 threatens the legal standing of all minority groups, not just gays.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and two other groups petitioned the state Supreme Court to prevent the change from taking effect.

The petition is the fourth seeking to have the measure invalidated. But it’s the first to argue that the court should step in because the gay marriage ban, which overturned the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay unions, sets a precedent that could be used to undermine the rights of racial minorities.

Eva Paterson, president of the San Francisco-based Equal Justice Society, said the election raises the specter of voters deciding to bar illegal immigrants from public schools, disenfranchising black voters or otherwise using the ballot box to promote segregation.

“The court ruled that to discriminate in the area of same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and violated our guaranteed equality,” Paterson said. “Why should a slim majority of Californians be able to put discrimination back into the California Constitution?”

OK. there’s one thing that bears repeating here.

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I’ve known for a while now, through the grapevine that Wanda Sykes is a lesbian. I’m just glad she said it out loud

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• AIDS, Me & Us: 25 Years Later
  (tags: race aids politics)
• Blogging While Brown, Cont’d
  (tags: race blogging diversity)
• Blogs, Diversity & Moving Forward, A Proposal
  (tags: race blogging)
• Michael Steele Thinks Black People Are Stupid
  (tags: race maryland politics)
• Justice, Not “Just Us”
  (tags: race homophobia)
• Ujima - Collective Work & Responsibility
  (tags: race aids kwanzaa)
• Un-Reconstructed Racism?
  (tags: race racism religion history segregation jimcrow)
• Africa, Homophobia & Colonized Minds
  (tags: race africa homophobia history)
• Marriage, Money & Race
  (tags: race gayrights marriage money)
• Owned
  (tags: race history slavery genealogy)
• All in the Family
  (tags: race family history)
• Blogging While Brown, Part III
  (tags: race blogging politics diversity)
• Abstaining From Reality
  (tags: race religion africa aids)
• Father’s Day, Family & Familiar Silence
  (tags: race parenting media)
• Queerying the Color of My Love
  (tags: race relationships)
• Reparative Therapy for Racism?
  (tags: race racism)
• Who Are Your Heroes?
  (tags: race books)
• Mandigo Sex Tours
  (tags: race sex)
• Look Away, Look Away, Look Away…
  (tags: race law discrimination jimcrow georgia)
• Let Them Eat Sludge
  (tags: race politics science government)
• My Father’s Eyes
  (tags: race politics law crime)
• The Color of Adoption
  (tags: race politics adoption)
• History
  (tags: race politics)
• Ain’t Mad at a Sistah: On Angry Black Women
  (tags: race politics)
• Great Balls Of…
  (tags: race politics)
• Racism: Water Under the Bridge?
  (tags: race politics)
• Someone (Else) is Missing
  (tags: race politics)
• Held Suspect
  (tags: race politics)
• America: Yours, Mine, and Ours - Pt. 1
  (tags: race politics)
• "That one."
  (tags: race politics)
• Meeting Obama
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• A Change
  (tags: race politics)

Wow. It’s kind of unbelievable, really. You take something away from people, and they get angry. Take away hard won rights, and equal protection for those they love, and people get really angry.

In the week since, California has seen an outpouring of demonstrations ranging from quiet vigils to noisy street protests against Proposition 8, including rallies outside churches and the Mormon temple in Westwood as well as boycotts of some businesses that contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Many of those activities have been organized not by political professionals and established leaders in the gay community, but by young activists working independently on Facebook and MySpace.

The grass-roots activism is a tribute to political organizing in the digital age, in which it is possible to mobilize thousands of people with a few clicks of a mouse. It has generated national attention — and set up a series of Saturday demonstrations that organizers hope will attract tens of thousands of people to city halls throughout California.

But the demonstrations also have raised questions about whether the in-your-face approach will alienate voters, who may be asked one day to approve gay marriage. Twice in the last eight years, voters have rejected it.

“I think the No on 8 forces have devolved into mob justice,” said Jeff Flint, a campaign strategist for the Yes side.

Mob justice? Please. Man, you haven’t seen mob justice. If anybody got mobbed, it was the couples who saw their marriages voted — and their civil right to marry each other — voted out of existence. If that doesn’t make you angry, there’s probably something wrong with you.

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It has been a strange couple of weeks. Just last week, I saw something that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, and felt like I was witnessing it for all my ancestors who didn’t live to see a hope fulfilled. But — with a “twoness of being” that DuBois probably didn’t imagine when he coined the term — it was a deeply conflicted moment.

As a Black man, in that moment I felt like more of an American than I ever had before, like a barrier to full citizenship and belonging had been raised. As a gay man with a husband and a family, however, I ended up feeling like less of an American than I ever had before; divorced from the celebrating and even the historic significance of the moment by a barrier to citizenship and belonging that fell more firmly into place even as another one was lifted.

My response to the events of the past week have been informed by that “twoness of being,” and a conflict that demands I prioritize one part of my identity over another. It’s nothing new to Black gay Americans, and we often come down on different sides of that struggle. Lines are drawn, and suddenly I have to be careful of what I say. While I can’t say which side anyone else should come down on, some of the rhetoric of the past week — particularly around race and marriage — is troubling.

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In fact, too few to mention?

Quick, what — of all that’s happened in the last eight years — do most regret? Of all that’s happened during the Bush years, what do you wish hadn’t happened? We’ve all got a few, and we could all probably start a list right here, right now.

But what does Dubya regret? Very, very little.

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• Coming Out of the Closet to Declare My Humanity
  I believe in moral coherence. And Rule No. 1 is, you cannot assert your own humanity, then turn right around and deny someone else's.
  (tags: race marriage civilrights gayrights gaymarriage samesexmarriage)

Dead, but baptized, Jews.

Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database that will make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must “implement a mechanism to undo what you have done.”

“Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable,” said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.

Hey California, these are the people who decide your policy. Or the people you let drive your policy. Good luck with that. Really.

It’ amazing how many people don’t.

“…Just because this is the only world we have and the other guy counts too….”

It’s been a week, and — well, I’m more convinced than ever that, no, we didn’t.

Ed. Note: I plan on writing something about black voters, the passage of proposition 8 in California, and the discussion that has ensued about whether the former failed in part because of the latter. In the meantime, I thought I’d republish some old content that might be relevant to the discussion.

(Originally posted on March 19, 2007.)

More homophobic than whom? More homophobic than whites? More homophobic than the general population? Or all of the above?

One of the things I wanted to blog about last week, but didn’t get a chance to was this Alternet post featuring video from the National Black Justice Foundation’s 2nd Annual Black Church Summit, in which Michael Eric Dyson addresses the question that’s been on my mind a lot in as I’ve been reading stuff online lately: “Why are black people so homophobic?”

Pam supplied the video as part of her excellent coverage of the summit. I was invited to cover the summit, but due to family responsibilities was unable to make it. So, I particularly appreciated Pam’s coverage, and will return later to some things she addressed.

I also caught Keith’s post “Why Are Whites So Homophobic?”, in which he states:

Every time a Tim Hardaway or an Isaiah Washington or an unknown black preacher makes an anti-gay comment, reporters call me up and ask why are black people so homophobic. But when high-profile white people make homophobic remarks, nobody ever asks why are white people so homophobic. They should, because the answers to the two questions are related. African Americans are homophobic because white Americans are homophobic. We all live in the same homophobic society, and in this case the prejudice starts from the president on down.

I understand where Keith is coming from, but for a while now I’ve not been willing to defend African Americans anymore against charges of being more homophobic than other groups. I know it’s controversial to say that black people are more homophobic than other people, but my personal experience has been that most black people are more homophobic than are most white people I’ve encountered, and defnitely more homophobic as a group than is the general population. I still haven’t seen or experience much that’s convinced me otherwise.

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• Royalty.nu - The World of Royalty - History, News, Books
  (tags: royalty history)
• Rulers
  (tags: rulers politics government)
• World Rulers - Kings Presidents Prime Ministers of the World
  (tags: government rulers)