My Gay Problem, Your Black Problem

LOS ANGELES Gay activists and blacks showed their ugly side during two Prop 8-related events last week in Los Angeles.

Blacks were reportedly cursed and taunted with the "N" word on the fringe of one of several massive protest marches held recently in Los Angeles against the passage of Proposition 8. That's the initiative that encodes in the California Constitution wording that defines marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.

A few days after that, several blacks took the microphone at a town hall on black and gay relations and lambasted gay activists for comparing the gay rights struggle to the black civil rights struggle. One of the speakers emphasized the point by spewing out the words "sissy," the "F" and the "P" words to refer to gays. Some in the audience gasped, but other blacks didn't flinch at the epithets.

I did, but I also flinched when I heard the report about some blacks being verbally assaulted with racial epithets at the anti-Proposition 8 march. Both stirred deep and personal disgust. Not solely because the slurs in one case came from blacks and in the other from white gays, but because the assailants said what many others on both sides of the gay and black divide feel. The gulf between them has been hinted at, and even on occasion openly talked about by a handful of black gay activists, but not much more. That is until it exploded to the surface with Proposition 8, and blacks got the blame for helping to pass the initiative.

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