Black votes, gay rights and religiosity

Is it "OK" to claim that black voters aren't that much different than white voters on gay rights, and especially gay marriage issues, once you factor out their religiosity?

I say absolutely not.

That would be like saying white voters are more likely to support abortion rights while factoring out their lower religiosity.

Black-white differences on some issues, like, say, a school bond election, will have nothing to do with religiosity. But, on a moral issue, you can't just factor out, or statistically "control out," religious beliefs when demographics show they definitely exist.

But, in light of discussion on the Maryland House of Delegates has essentially killing a gay marriage bill,largely due to black opposition, aside from the expected GOP opposition, this issue has come up again.

A commenter named "s" on this Ed Brayton post about the Maryland bill wants to do that, to the point of caps-lock screaming when I called him out, and mentioned people like black lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding, proprietor of
Pam's House Blend, did the same thing with California's Prop. 8.

"S" first claimed I was mistaken, and that another blogger from her team did that.

Nope. (There was one such blogger, but not JUST him.)

I found the post Pam herself had about black voting patterns and Prop. 8. "S," when I posted that link, refused to address it.

Pam herself essentially tries to separate black voters from their greater religiosity, which the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force also did. The task force engaged in "hand-waving" at exit polls which pointed out the racial difference without trying to statistically debunk them.

And, there's this blog post, where Pam quotes extensively from a black woman (but not explicitly identified as gay) divinity student, who claims white in the gay rights movement are putting blacks at the back of the bus. She quotes the Rev. Irene Monroe:

But when critiquing the dominant white LGBTQ community's ongoing efforts to gain marriage equality and its treatment of blacks as their second-class allies in the struggle a reality check happens - both straight and queer African American communities bond together against their strategy for marriage equality.

I don't know if Monroe is 90, 60, 30 or 10 percent correct on her assessment. But, I do know it's anecdotal.

Contra "S" at Ed's blog, you can't, without losing logical coherency, cite your expertise in statistics to show that ethnicity was not a huge factor while "controlling out" religiosity, and then reject exit polling on Prop. 8 without providing statistically valid reasons for doing so.

And, as I blogged more than a year and a half ago, I'm not the only person by any means to pick up on this.

Even blacks who aren't currently religious, i.e., NONEs, as comments on Ed's blog note, are more likely than white counterparts to be inimical to gay rights. It appears, especially in the case of one black commenter who noted she was largely raised by a grandmother, that black "churchiness" may have made a multi-generational pass-through.

Ignoring this issue won't lessen its reality or make it go away.

Beyond her own post on Prop. 8 and voting patters, we also have, by another blogger that was part of her group blog and maybe still is a post like this, also beating down discussion of the issue, and as a straight white person, apparently engaged in concern trolling, too. And white liberal concern trolling by a "Radical Russ" ultimately probably makes the issue worse.

I'm not black. Nor gay. But, I have black friends, and gay friends, though no black gay friends of which I am aware.

And, it's not just blacks and gay rights. There's black atheists, like Infidel Guy. But, other than him, those with a "name" are few and far between, likely for similar reasons, from what I've seen online.

And, I'm a secularist, which makes me look quite askance at religious people justifying holding down a minority, while themselves being of another minority.

Otherwise, referencing anecdotal stories from or about individual black voters, gay or straight, as Pam does, doesn't erase the statistical evidence on the Ed Brayton post.

As for the source of my comment about Pam's House Blend, and a white liberal concern troller like Radical Russ, who had the particular blog post just above?

A person like Radical Russ exemplies part of the problem, to which you are a contributor, namely, the idea that white liberals, whether gay or straight, simply cannot speak on this issue because we have no "standing." I reject that.

I reject that idea, and I reject that type of concern trolling. That's why I call myself a skeptical left liberal.

Back to Pam's House Blend. Again, not by her, but another blogger of her group, a post that wants to cut off discussion just doesn't cut it. Pam herself, from what I can see on the issue, has blogged little about it; her blog on the Maryland bill is primarily straight news, a little analysis, and no commentary.