It is not on me to make God's case against gay Americans. That's better left to the preachers who are called to wrestle with moral issues. Still, it is difficult to understand how African Americans emerged among the primary opponents of gay marriage.
In California, at least, the impact of the record turnout of African Americans in the general election is being blamed for the passage of Proposition 8, an amendment to that state's constitution that outlaws marriage by gay and lesbian couples.
"Needless to say [Barack] Obama didn't need black voters to win California," said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Last week, Bositis met in Washington, D.C. , with members of the Trotter Group, an association of black columnists, and gave us a post-election briefing about voter turnout.
"He won the majority of the white, Hispanic and Asian-American vote. There was a big increase in black turnout," Bositis noted.
"African Americans represented 6 percent of all California voters in 2004. That number jumped to 10 percent in 2008. If black voters had voted in the share they voted in 2004, Prop. 8 would have probably failed," he said.
Proposition 8 asked voters to affirm that marriage is solely between a man and a woman. It passed with 52 percent of the vote. African Americans are now being cast as bigots.
But I'm not certain that most blacks care one way or the other.
After all, black people are the least likely of all the racial groups to get married. On Sunday morning, only a couple of the dozens of people who called "Chicago Speaks," a radio talk show I co-host on WVAZ-FM (102.7), said they were adamantly opposed to gays and lesbians getting married. More of Anti-gay bias puts blacks in bad company, Chicago Sun-Times
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