RuPaul says: “Chill out! All of yous!”
Look — **high horse alert** — I’m as exhausted and disappointed by the blechy Prop 8 win as anyone with an ounce of humanity in their body. And I’m a queer radical who was kind of against this whole struggle to begin with, until I saw how happy it made my friends. Heck, I was even considering popping the question to the big bf on his birthday next year. And yes, I will probably follow up this post with a few hot satirical jabs at the ign’nt homophobes that are driving around in SUVs yelling “faggott” and blaring awful hip-pop while celebrating their “victory.”
But something needs to be addressed right now: The latest blogospheric trope of trying to suss out the no on Prop 8 failure in terms of racial breakdown. I understand we’re angry. Did I make jokes all last week about burning down Oakland if Prop 8 wins? Yes, I did. But let’s stop. Let’s get some perspective.
I’m not saying that there isn’t anything there if you look at the numbers. Blacks supported Prop 8 by 69% — and Latinos by 51% — according to (risky) exit polls. And many flamboyant black preachers came out for Prop 8. And the conventional wisdom, the bitter conventional wisdom, seems to be coming to a consensus that if we hadn’t tried so hard to get out the black vote for Obama, we wouldn’t have been defeated in the polls. Those wily negroes didn’t do what we wanted them to do! We helped them, why didn’t they help us?
But what appear to be the facts aren’t always the truth, duh.