Gay marriage and black opposition ... still an issue?

At the time that California voters approved Proposition 8, there was debate over the "whys" of it losing.

Mormons were blamed for pumping a bunch of money into the race, first of all. Whether that had any over-the-top help was unclear.

Some pointed the finger in part at black opposition. I was among those.

And I still am, due in part to research aggregation by Nate Silver at the New York Times' 538 blog.

For projected gay marriage support in Mississippi to be at just 21 percent in 2008, or 26 percent now, involves more than just white Republican opposition.

I'm not saying that black Democrats have the same degree of opposition, but simple demographics says they have to be more opposed than white Democrats.

That's supported by, in order from the bottom, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas and South Carolina being next in degree of opposition. All are "original Confederacy" states, along with Texas, separated from them by just Oklahoma. All have large black populations.

But that's not all.

In Maryland, we saw black elected officials oppose gay marriage legalization, as I blogged here. And, as Matthew Lind noted at the time Prop. 8 won, only 31 percent of blacks supported gay marriage in general, as I noted here.

On my first link, I note the especial opposition of black churches, who are going to be more concentrated in the South. So, this could become more and more of a flash point within the Democratic Party for some time. That said, this is nothing new. The start of both women's liberation and gay rights movements 45-50 years ago saw tensions between white women, or gays and lesbians, and minority members of those groups.