Black Folks, Gays, and an Amazing Black Church

There are plenty of white gays running around that swallowed, hook line and sinker, the initial exit poll data from the 2008 election which alleged that 70%+ of black voters in California that voted for Obama also voted for Prop 8. Those same white gays, ahem HRC, ran around screaming and yelling about how Blacks are homophobic and Blacks cost us marriage and Blacks are religious fundamentalists. Their raging, ignorant rhetoric made instantly invisible the millions of Black queer folks in the U.S., including the hundreds of thousands living in California, and then, a few weeks later, in a teeny tiny article in the San Francisco Chronicle, said oops...Black support wasn't actually 70%, it was 58% (check out the great quotation by my friend and loved one Jaime Grant), but it was too late. It was cemented in the minds of white mainstream gays that the Blacks (and Latinos) were out to get the gays.

Of course, it turns out later that this strategy was actually spearheaded by the actually super fundamentalist right wing group the National Organization for Marriage and in 2012 a judge in Maine ordered documents released from the National Organization for Marriage detailing how they willfully and intentionally drew a wedge between the queer community and black folks and have attempted to replicate that work nationally. Of course, the racism so often present within our own queer community helped the spin on that story, which, of course, probably has folks at the National Organization for Marriage clapping and dancing...if, of course, they were allowed to dance.

While there is homophobia and heterosexism present in all communities without a doubt, Blacks and Latinos are no more (or less) homophobic than their white counterparts. The number of whites voting for Prop 8 was 54%, which, ladies and gentleman, is just shy of and just outside the marriage of error of those 58% of Blacks that voted for Prop 8. But it's the sensational stories that thrive on propping up our systems of oppression that get all the attention, no matter how egregiously wrong they are. The stories that give lie to those racist beliefs that we so desperately want to believe in are ignored, marginalized, or relegated to "exception to the rule" status.

I call bullshit. I say that the liberation of queer (and I incude trans in the word queer as was intended by the movement that brought queer back into use in the 90s) folks and the liberation of people of color (and the liberation of queer people of color) is tied up together AND WE ALL KNOW IT!

Let me tell you a story about a man named Rev. Oliver White, pastor of the Grace Community United Church of Christ in St. Paul, MN.  This straight black man stood up, in front of his congregation, and declared openly that HIS church would follow Christ's commandment to love thy neighbor as thine own. His church in a predominantly poor, people of color community in St. Paul, MN was made up largely of working class folks and elders, two categories that actually ARE correlated with higher incidences of resistance to queer liberation (and often for reasons appropriately related including lack of exposure and, frankly, coming from a significantly different time period). This amazing man, took on his own community and the heterosexism he did discover within it. His congregation shrank, and now his church is at risk of losing its building. This man marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he is marching with us.

We are so quick to condemn even the rumor of Black homophobia, but here now is a chance for us to rectify the rhetoric and create unity across communities. The Rev. Oliver White needs to raise $164,000 to save his church by June 9th. Already, the Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ in Dallas, which bills itself as the largest gay church in the US, has sent $15,000 to support Grace Community United Church. That is the type of bridge building we need to do. Let's show our allies what it means when they stand up to their own community, friends, and family and preach the REAL Gospel of Christ and the truth of liberation and fight for the right of all folks to be welcome, safe, and supported in community. Make a gift to Grace Community Church. Support our leaders that support us.

An Open Letter to NY State Senate Candidate Mike DiSanto

I wrote this open letter today to Mike DiSanto a "Democrat" challenging Republican State Senator Marty Golden in Senate District 22 in Brooklyn. This letter was written in response to a statement that Mr. DiSanto published against the building of the Cordoba House mosque near the site of 9-11. Mike DiSanto is openly gay, and until today I was supporting him. I can not in good conscience continue to do so, and it is my hope that the people of District 22 will follow my lead and say no to religious intolerance and anti-Muslim sentiment. The real disservice to the families and victims of 9-11 is continuing the vicious cycle of intolerant rhetoric and judgment that makes us blind to the work of healing.

Dear Mr. DiSanto:

I read your statement today concerning the Cordoba House mosque, and, frankly, I am not only appalled but also rather disgusted.

Using intolerance as a tool to further your own political career is extremely disheartening. It is a tactic used most often by the Right, but I see that it is alive and well here in New York on the "Left." as well. You are a discredit to fair minded and justice focused citizens, and your campaign has done a great disservice to the Muslim community in the area of Brooklyn that you seek to represent as well as to all those working to build cross community bridges.

And, on the eve of Ramadan, one of the holiest times in the Muslim year, your choice to participate in fear mongering and anti-Muslim sentiments is not only disgusting it is reprehensible. It is this sort of blatant intolerance masked as compassion that continues to create real, hurtful, and deep divides not only along along religious lines but along racial lines and, as you know as an openly gay man, along lines of sexual orientation and gender diversity. Your "not in my backyard" attitude is the same that was used during redlining which kept black families from moving into white neighborhoods and the ghetto mentality that kept Jews segregated and made gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities band together for their own protection in geographic isolation.

For the record, I am not a Muslim. I am a Christian, and I support the right of the Cordoba House to be built near Ground Zero not only as an act of religious freedom but also in the spirit in which it is being built: to demonstrate that just as not all Christians are the hateful gay-hating life destroying conservatives the likes of Fred Phelps and his ilk nor are all Muslims jihadis out to take down the United States. The best and most powerful honor that the Muslim community can do to those lost to hateful betrayers of true Islam is to create a space that demonstrates the peace, beauty, and love that is the core of Islam just as it is at the core of Christianity and Judaism. The Cordoba House facility, according to its website, will create a community space open to all New Yorkers and will provide critical access to facilities that are otherwise not present in Lower Manhattan.


As a private citizen, you are entitled to your own opinion. As a candidate for public service, you have shown an overwhelming lack of understanding of the power of words and the role of a community leader. I expect my public servants to rise above the immediate emotions of a situation and look at concerns through a sophisticated lens that respects those that feel aggrieved but protects those that are innocent from mob mentality. The Cordoba House has a right to exist in the location where it will exist.

The LGBT community saw this week proof positive that no matter the feeling of the majority, it is the minority, when their fundamental rights are being challenged, that must be upheld and protected. It is a shame that you can not see the parallels between Proposition 8 and the "majority" of Californians that voted against gay marriage and the mass religious intolerance that says that this mosque should not be built.

If I could stop payment on my donation to your campaign, I would. Seeing that I can not, and considering that I would not willingly make a gift to the campaign of a Republican, I will be making a donation to Cordoba House for the construction of their new mosque and cultural center.

Yours,

W. Brandon Lacy Campos

Why the Prop 8 Decision Really Matters...

Let me begin by saying that the decision by United States District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker in California was a rousing victory. For same-sex marriage advocates, the victory is that the fundamental right to marry has been acknowledged to include same-sex couples. I am very happy for them, but that is the very last reason that I am excited about this ruling. Indeed, and this can be addressed in another blog--and has been addressed widely and coherently by the Beyond Marriage Coalition--the same-sex marriage movement (please note I said the movement and not the goal) is, in many ways, harmful to the overall fight for queer liberation, supports and injects assimilationist values in the queer movement, and has diverted an overwhelming amount of resources into a narrow issue that, while relevant to all same-sex couples, is not a priority for many queer folks particularly many queer people of color, gender queer, polyamorous and non-monogamous queers, people living with HIV/AIDS and so many other segments of the movement and community.

The true victory of the ruling in Prop 8 is what was contained in the judgment and the facts found by the court. These particular findings, particularly if upheld by the 9th Circuit Court, which is where this fight moves next, have the potential to radically and permanently alter the social landscape of the United States in much the same way that Brown v Board of Education and Loving v Virginia did for people of color.

I am not a lawyer, but, as I mentioned recently, reading rulings gives me a woody.

To begin with, Judge Walker establishes the basis for judgment. The plaintiffs assert that Prop 8 denies them both Due Process, which is protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and equal protection under the law, which is also included in the 14th amendment. On page 109, Judge Vauhn makes his first judgment that is critical: he applies the requirement of strict scrutiny.

In the legal system, when making a challenge to a law, there are different levels of examination that a judge can choose to apply to the case. The most stringent of those is strict scrutiny which demands that the government must show a fundamental and compelling argument for why it is enacting laws that restrict a fundamental right. If the Judge had decided that the government must only show rational basis when denying a group of citizens a fundamental right, he would basically be saying, "Come up with a logical argument, you don't really have to have any interest besides your argument, and if the argument sounds good, well, heck...it's good enough for me too." When strict scrutiny is applied the judge is saying, "Not only better this argument be good and rational, you have to prove to me how the state itself would be harmed by allowing this right to be practiced...and when I say harmed...you better give me dollars and cents, floods, famines, plagues, and the spontaneous cloning of Sarah Palin every time a gay gets married..." Amen.

By establishing the requirement of strict scrutiny, Judge Walker sets a precedent for examination of the case that the 9th Circuit is unlikely to overturn, which means that the appeal will also be held to a higher standard and the burden of proof lies with the defendants and not the plaintiffs. This is key.

Then Judge Walker does something that makes me want to lay a wet sloppy one on him. On page 113 of the ruling, he states:

The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage.That time has passed.

Translation: "Get it together....men no longer own women, and women are no longer required to be barefoot and pregnant at home."

But wait, it gets even better when Judge Walker establishes in his ruling the direct connection between heterosexism and sexism! Now, progressive folks have been screaming for years that the root of homophobia and heterosexism is straight up sexism...now...it is part of the judicial record. Why is this important you ask? There is a huge body of case law, and it is clearly established in all 50 states and the federal government that discrimination based on sex is illegal and can not be justified in any way under the Constitution. Judge Walker states, "Sexual orientation discrimination is thus a phenomenon distinct from, but related to, sex discrimination."

And then Judge Walker offers up a coup de grace when he writes:

Proposition 8 targets gays and lesbians in a manner specific to their sexual orientation and, because of their
relationship to one another, Proposition 8 targets them specifically due to sex. Having considered the evidence, the
relationship between sex and sexual orientation and the fact that Proposition 8 eliminates a right only a gay man or a lesbian would exercise, the court determines that plaintiffs’ equal protection claim is based on sexual orientation, but this claim is equivalent to a claim of discrimination based on sex.

This is critical. The judge has now created a ruling that requires that lower courts, when receiving cases challenging based on sexual orientation MUST also recognize them as sex discrimination. While the jurisprudence around sexual orientation is limited in many polities, the body of judicial rulings around sex discrimination are not. The judge has just opened a huge door and expanded the ways in which queer folks should be protected not only based on sexual orientation but on sex.

Next Judge Walker does something that makes me want to go from making out with him to being his number one butt boy...he states that:

The trial record shows that strict scrutiny is the appropriate standard of review to apply to legislative classifications based on sexual orientation. All classifications based on sexual orientation appear suspect, as the evidence shows that California would rarely, if ever, have a reason to categorize individuals based on their sexual orientation. Here, however, strict scrutiny is unnecessary. Proposition 8 fails to survive even rational basis review.

This statement is extremely critical in two respects. The first is that this statement says flat out that any and all future legislation that attempts to legislate based on restricting the rights of queer folks MUST adhere to the standard of strict scrutiny, thereby excising the possibility of rational basis review, and then he smacks the Prop 8 advocates in the face by saying that even if he hadn't chosen to apply strict scrutiny to his ruling that the law was so laughable and so ass backwards that it would not have stood up even against the lowest standard of judicial review. WORK! WORK! WORK!

The judge also tosses out the argument that just because an idea, practice, or legal tradition has an "ancient lineage," meaning that "things have always been this way," is irrelevant to a discussion of a fundamental right, and, in fact, has no place in a legal discussion.

And finally, and I believe this is, in my non-lawyer opinion, the most significant of all:

That the majority of California voters supported Proposition 8 is irrelevant, as “fundamental rights may
not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, 319.

The good judge says that if a right has been deemed fundamental then no body politic, whether it be a state legislation, a city council, a county legislature, a referendum of the voters or the U.S. Congress can vote to alienate those rights.

To summarize, the good judge ruled that strict scrutiny must be applied to questions of sexual orientation; discrimination based on sexual orientation is equivalent to sex discrimination; old prejudices and attitudes, no matter how long they have been held, are not legitimate reasons to deny a group of people their fundamental rights; and moral tyranny by a legislature or the voting public can not be tolerated, and, in fact the public does not have the right to take a way a groups fundamental human rights through an electoral process.

The ruling was 138 pages long, and there was a tremendous amount of thought, examination, and introspection that went into it. The judge backed up his fact finding and rulings with both judicial precedence and peer reviewed research. He systematically ripped apart the arguments of the defendants, and in one ruling wiped out the age old attacks on queers by the Right that says we are not good enough to marry, raise families, or have sex. He uses conservative jurisprudence to bolster his ruling even quoting Bowers v Hardwick, a case that went the wrong way for queer folks, to establish the reasoning behind why Prop 8 is wrong. These are the true reasons why the ruling on Prop 8 is a victory for the queer community. And through a smart, strategic, and nuanced reading of this ruling, the queer movement has a new collection of tools in the fight for our liberation. Marriage was the vehicle....but it isn't and should never be the focal point or the end point. Liberation is the end point, and we need to continue to define what that looks like and create a strategic way for ALL of us to get there without sacrificing or setting aside our history of sexual liberation, gender expression, kink, joy and all around queerness.