But either way it goes, it seems, gays and lesbians get screwed. Black and Latino voters drawn to the polls in California because they were excited about voting for Barack Obama boosted the “yes” vote on Prop 8*. But Democratic voters who stayed away from the polls in Arkansas because they couldn’t brings themselves to vote for Barack Obama—dumbfucking crackerass racist piece-of-shit voters—helped to pass that state’s new anti-gay adoption law.

Strong opposition to the candidacy of Barack Obama in Arkansas may have helped conservatives pass a measure blocking the adoption of children by unmarried couples.

The measure, which voters overwhelmingly approved Tuesday and which prevents unmarried cohabitating couples from adopting or fostering children, won strong support from conservatives, exit polls found. The ban affects all unmarried couples but was written with the intent of preventing gay couples from raising children in Arkansas.

Unlike most states, Arkansas shifted to the right politically in this election. Senator John McCain won the state by 20 points compared with President Bush’s nine-point victory in 2004.

“I think white Arkansas Democrats felt cross-pressured in this race,” said Jay Barth, a political science professor at Hendrix College, in Conway, Ark. “They didn’t want to vote for what they viewed as Bush’s third term, but they also couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Barack Obama.

“One response was just to bow out of voting, and their absence probably helped this proposal succeed.”

Before the election polls showed Arkansas anti-gay adoption law failing—by nearly 12 points. Bill Clinton urged a “no” vote, as did the state’s current governor, as did the state’s major newspapers, and its adoption agencies. But evangelicals fired up the bigots in the pews and bigoted Democratic voters stayed home and the ban passed. Good work, bigots. Arkansas has about four thousand children in state care right now, kids who need foster parents and adoptive parents yesterday.

* I don’t say this to place blame! African American and Latino voters only helped to pass Prop 8! But it’s ultimately the gays who are to blame for Prop 8! It was something we did! Or didn’t do! Either way, we’re to blame for Prop 8! Totes our fault! And no one is talking about this except for that awful Dan Savage! Thank you for playing Slog!

95 replies on “Some People Love Obama, Some People Hate Obama”

  1. The fact that other people are wrong doesn’t make your previous posts right.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you for only passive-aggressively stirring up trouble.

    It’s nice to read slog again without holding my breath or being sick to my stomach.

  3. Keep it up Dan. We need to reach out more to African Americans AND convince gay people who are racist douchebags not to be. All good points. However, would Dems in Arkansas who are bigoted enough not to vote for Barack Obama be not bigoted enough to vote for for gay marriage? I’m unconvinced.

  5. did you really think you were the first or only person to notice this in the exit polling data? so nice to that you’ve found a noisy drum to bang to keep the pageviews spiking and your ego stroked.

  6. This is what happens: the Democratic Party has this sales job on various interest groups that the Party represents those groups’ best interests.

    But the only reason they mouth those platitudes is to get elected. There are actual parties that give a damn about gay rights, but we’ve got too many of my fellow liberals “crying with joy” over the fact that an establishment ticket got elected, just because the head of that ticket happens to be black.

    Ridiculous.

  7. What exactly is an “unmarried couple”? Anyone (of the opposite sex) can get the piece of paper. I just don’t get it. Is there some sort of moral superiority that can be obtained by signing a piece of paper? How would the kids know if the parents have the paper or not? I still beleive my parents were married just because they said so. And they, you know, just acted married – until my mom threw my dad out. Then they weren’t married anymore. But I think they still had the paper for a while. It was too expensive to get rid of, I think.

  10. Oh for God’s sake. We said we wanted new voters. We got new voters. We said we wanted minority voters. We got minority voters. We said we wanted the big tent. We got the big tent.

    Therefore, why is it any surprise that, after almost 30 years of GOP bullshit, where the AM dial went from news and easy listening to 24/7 conservative indoctrination, and the big three TV networks went from independent ownership to big corporate ownership, we should be shocked by a rather reactionary voting population?

    We got the turnout for President and congress. That, right there, is huge. Now we have to work on helping these voteres see the light – and see how they’ve been used for the last generation.

    I’m pissed about the results of all these initiatives also, but I’m not naive enough to think that an Obama victory would suddenly make everything wonderful. The election was just the start. We – meaning liberals of every stripe – have a lot of work to do.

    If nothing else, think of this: What would we do if we had had all the same bad news about gay rights and McCain/Palin had won?

    We’ve got a foothold.

  11. I’ve suspected that gays were much more instrumental in passing prop 8 than most people assume. I believe that there is some form of the “Bradley Effect” that applies to gays who are commitmentphobes, so they say they didn’t support prop 8 but in the secrecy of the voting booth they voted yes so they wouldn’t have to take their relationships with their boyfriends/girlfriends to the next level.

  12. Dan,

    Think about it this way: I’m gay. Should my opinion be solicited in front of my family (possibly even wife and kids!), or people I don’t know who might, possibly, maybe, perpetrate violence upon my person, don’t you think I might be tempted to, you know, LIE? For the longest time, standing with the gays=being gay. So I don’t trust that poll one damn bit. Hiding behind the numbers isn’t going to fool me. Remember how many ‘credulous fucking hacks’ you saw fit to uncover? And now you’re relying on cherry-picking stories from the web? Really, Dan? I guess marijuana IS evil after all…so many people have written about drug busts.

  13. THANK GOD that only, like, 49% of Asian Americans voted for proposition 8, because I was not looking forward to being called a “gook” or a “chink” by prop 8 protesters. Even though that’s half of all Asian voters who are homophobic, I guess that’s not enough to to get singled out by the white gay pity party and get blamed for wrecking everyone’s wedding day. Political apathy within LGBT hasn’t been singled out, especially where only 50% of LGBTs in California were registered to vote, and of that group, only 30% even bothered to showed up to vote against the fucking thing. It’s like the home team didn’t even show up to field and play. everyone was probably too busy doing poppers or some such shit. So thanks asian voters! we slipped under the radar again. Sorry black americans, you get the shaft, again, maybe we will pick up the blame-tab for the next botched and poorly managed gay rights initiative.

  14. Reality Strikes!

    The only conservative shit that passed was anti homosexual crap. Abortion didn’t work out this year for them. Senators and presidents arent conservative. fact is, if the conservative media (yeah right cat, yeah fucking right) was actually that conservative you’d see more of a conservative slant in voting patterns.

    so take heart, the only issue conservatives have currency in right now is gay bashing. and that wont last forever.

  16. IMAGINE IF DAN FOCUSED ALL OF THIS ENERGY ON MAKING GAY MARRIAGE LEGAL IN WASHINGTON STATE!
    (Why our we talking about Arkansas? Oh, Dan’s still trying to make up for his racist posts this week… Heh!)

  17. Hey Dan,

    What happened to that post you just linked to where someone insinuated:

    “More than two thirds of black voters voted Yes on 8. Clearly, this is a group who agrees that the majority should be allowed to vote on the minority’s rights. Furthermore, this group also agrees that it is possible to be separate but equal. We welcome them to our coalition, and we also look forward to voting on their constitutional rights.”

    Disappeared, eh? I thought so. What kind of idiot, what kind of fucking asshole, what kind of monster are you? Do you even think before you post? That made absolutely clear what your ‘reachout’ plans consist of. Ask Mudede to write these posts from now on; at least he has an ideology through which to filter his emotions, even if he is a fucking Marxist.

    For the record, I don’t think you’re racist. But you ARE thoughtless in the way that would precipitate that kind of post, which I’m glad you took down. I can only hope that it was the sunlit clarity of my response that caused you to think of the consequences of your rash behavior–something most people would have noticed immediately, as I did.

  18. “The exit polls showed that the one-third of Tuesday’s voters who attended church weekly supported the measure by an overwhelming 84 percent to 16 percent, compared with the 83 percent opposition from the one-fifth of voters who said they never attend religious observances.”

    Eighty-three percent! Guess what, many Black folks go to church. I am Black and queer. I did a shit load of outreach to my Black community–but clearly not enough. Many of us (myself included) spent more time going to Nevada then going door to door in our own home towns.

    Black people ARE queer people. The more white gays blame the black community the more Black straights (and gays) see queer rights as white rights.

  19. I find it hard to believe that Democrats who are so bigoted that they would not vote for a black man would turn around and be open minded enough to vote for “unmarried couples” (or whatever euphemism is being used for gay people)to adopt children. It would have take a miracle or a half-million hanging chads for the measure not to have passed in Arkansas.

  21. @11
    In your wet dreams. Tell that to the 20,000 gay couples who were already married by election day. Or in your dream, erection day. Nighty night, asshole.

  22. There is no single reason Prop 8 passed. There are a multiplicity of reasons, and all bear scrutiny if we ever want to make progress on this issue. To ignore any one of them will hamstring our efforts every time.

    (1) The Mormons bought and paid for a highly deceptive media campaign. They outspent their opponents by a wide margin. They also helped out a lot in the ground game. We can’t ignore the efforts and the sleaze of the Mormons if we want to make progress.

    AND

    (2) The GLBT community didn’t do a particularly good job trying to defeat it. We managed to raise a good bit of money to air competing ads. But the ground game was completely outclassed by the other side. Not enough volunteers, not enough outreach, not enough phone banking, etc. Obama proved that you need both: money for an ad campaign AND a good ground game. Plus, uber-gay San Francisco had the lowest voter turnout in the state. WFT is that all about? If they had only turned out in larger numbers (or even average with the rest of the state), that alone might have swung it our way. That’s stupid and inexcusable. Where were all these protesters BEFORE the vote?

    AND

    (3) No matter how much it offends some people, blacks did vote disproportionately against gay rights. No, that wasn’t the sole cause of it’s passage, but it was undeniably a contributing factor. I confess this caught me a bit by surprise. I have always deeply empathized with the discrimination of racial minorities because of the discrimination I face too. I assumed that they would likewise empathize with discrimination of the GLBT community. But it is now clear that many blacks don’t. That many (not all, obvs) have some of the same fucked up religious viewpoints of the religious right. I don’t think it is racist to point that out. I see this as a religious issue more than a racial issue. It just appears that it is more prevalent in the black community than I was previously aware of. That means we have to work harder to make them understand the similarities in our civil right struggles, and the harm their religious intolerance causes.

    AND

    (4) Even among whites and asians, it barely passed (51%). We came closer in CA than in any other state, but the base reality is that nearly half the population still feels it is perfectly acceptable to deny civil rights to gays. Another percent or two among whites and asians, and the disparity among blacks would have been irrelevant.

    So, the next time this comes up for a vote, we need to cut the Mormon fundraising off at the knees, AND we need a better ground game, AND we need to do better outreach to minorities, AND we need to continue to make inroads in the broader community. Then maybe we’ll make it.

  23. Dan, does logic defy you? You seem to be having a problem with it lately. If the Arkansas Democrats are so racist they wouldn’t vote for Obama…what makes you think they would vote for gay rights?

    And why should Black people automatically vote for Gay rights measures? After all the racist crap gay men pull how can we expect Black people to fight for our rights? Look through any gay dating site at all the “white only” messages and then tell me that non-white people owe gay people diddly squat.

    Here’s an idea….how about we blame gay voters for not turning out, or young liberal voters for not turning out in the numbers we keep promising we will. We can’t always change peoples’ minds but we can always show up at the polls and show the power of our numbers.

  24. @22
    Since when is it the LGBTs community’s responsibility to protect a tiny minority from the bigoted majority? Of course we need to always be as involved as possible, but I reject the notion that this is our fault and responsibility. It is the fault and responsibility of that other 95% of the population that votes on our rights and likes to think of themselves as Good Americans. Gay people may be the target of this crap, but straight people own this failure of government. It is time we LGBTs held the straight world accountable. Going forward, it is not enough for them to be passively “supportive”. If they are real Americans who believe “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t just a scam, then they damn well better act like it by getting off their fat entitled asses and seeing to the restoration of civil rights for all Americans.

  25. Lurleen,

    It is all minorities’ responsibility to stick together. As I have repeatedly stated, the marketing of gay rights wasn’t going to persuade anyone who couldn’t buy the associated products, live in the safest possible neighborhoods, or have enough lovers to account for their flagging self-esteem to be ‘out’. The corporations, facing a boycott from enough people might just cut gays loose. Then what infrastructure do we have to maintain focus on the injustices we face? All of the gay newspapers have been bought out; if they become unprofitable, they will CEASE TO EXIST. Being gay isn’t acceptable–it’s “cool” and it has been marketed accordingly. Closeted people are “bi-curious” which not only leads them to dismiss homosexuality as a choice (for rational choice is what all purchases are), but as a luxury as well, in addition to propagating the feeling that bisexuality is a weak-willed person’s way of ‘selling out’.

    The logical end of all this was that people equated ‘activism’ not with something like ACT-UP, but with sending a check to HRC–a corporation itself, which would GO OUT OF BUSINESS were equality achieved. As this has become more and more commercial, HIV has been ignored; hard drug use has been normalized; what was formerly known as ‘prejudice’ is now mentioned as ‘preference’–all of which can be directly ascribed to the fact that marketing heads now control our movement.

    So, bad news is kept to a minimum–it hurts sales. No one thinks of themselves as gay, but ‘a person who happens to be gay’, like being gay is a restaurant one happens to like. Does the gay community even have the STRENGTH to produce a Harvey Milk? I doubt it. All of that responsibility has been converted into services which dissipate it–psychologists, counselors, sex advice columnists–and the feeling of risk which was inherent to those decisions–the sense of accountability–is now gone. The remaining ethose? “The customer is always right.” Hence, no one seems to mind that this is being laid at the feet of blacks and now Latinos. After all, it couldn’t be OUR fault….

  27. Lurleen @24,

    I didn’t say that the LGBTs community was solely responsible, did I? I laid out a combination of factors that contributed to Prop 8 passing.

    The No on 8 campaign tried, and they raised a lot of money. But they clearly didn’t run as good a campaign as the Yes on 8 did. Yes on 8 raised more money (thanks Mormans), ran more effective (if sleazy and misleading) ads, and had a better ground game (thanks again, Mormans). We can’t pretend it wasn’t so. We have to look critically at the No on 8 campaign, and see what we can do better next time. This isn’t a slam on them. This is trying to learn from our mistakes to improve next time, not repeat the same mistakes.

  28. I don’t think you or anyone else is wrong for bringing this up. As a woman and Jew, I’m always shocked at homophobia, misogyny, anti-Semitism coming from disenfranchised groups that I’ve stood up for. I’m not surprised anymore, but I’m still shocked, and I don’t understand it.

  30. I would like a whole new thread from Adrian right now, please. NO axes, no grinding, no manipulating the reader, just Adrian. Please hurry.

  31. Catalina @10: I’m with It’s Mark Mitchell @20. Well said, as is always the case with you, my dear.
    If I could, I’d marry the both of you, so we could start our own brand of gay marriage. Blacks and Latinos only at the ceremony, though.

    Maybe Riz will DJ? We all know the gay bar that recently canned his sweet and talented black ass for bringing in a crowd that was “too ghetto” and had “too many straight women.” Seems appropriate to mention, given today’s Slog discussions.

  34. @32 — my post linked to that story. My post was a comment on that story. The “no one” stuff was about the Prop 8 fallout.

    @23 — the “logic” I cite was in the NYT piece; it’s how Dems and others in Arkansas are interpreting the difference between the polling on AR’s Prop 1 and the election day results.

  35. First off, thanks for the link! Although I am not sure I should thank you since I now have a steady influx of hateful comments on my blog!

    So, first of all, you are absolutely right! Gays and lesbians got screwed.

    Whoever took away our rights needs to be blamed. And when a statistically significant outlier, like 70%, is seen from any community- that community needs to take some heat. That’s how we roll in America. No one gets a free pass on discrimination, regardless of race, gender or history.

    The people that get to be angry right now are the members of the LGBTQ community. We are the victims. Stop the victim blaming.

  36. “but everyone else is writing this shit! why can’t i??”

    WORST. EXCUSE. EVER. dan!

    do i have to do the mom routine where she asks what you’d do if your friends were all jumping off a bridge?

    you wrote a whole friggin’ book of much better arguments on the topic of gay marriage and family than this. come on! we expect great things from you! we don’t expect it from the AP or friggin’ u.s. news and world report, fer fuck’s sake! we expect brilliant, BITING arguments – from YOU! you can do better, dammit!

    it hurts, okay? it hurts to have your family attacked! we know! do not let them drag you down the low road, man. get your gloves back on and get back out in the ring!

  37. I really love how most of these comments are about how racist Dan Savage is/isn’t but I didn’t read a single comment about how many children are going to go without families because if this issue.

    That’s really quite sad. Marriage is important, yes. Getting children into happy homes is much more important. Who cares if Dad and Dad are married, the kid won’t as long as they love him and care for him. Priorities!

  38. Well – lets just blame everybody for low gay voter turnout, a campaign lacking good TV ads, good field, And no early money gushing.

    IT IS YOU YOU AN YOU, certainly not me me.

    Good polling meant it was safe for bureaucrats to grab the campaign for the glory.

    It has happened all over America. Then out gave people a shelved, the message is soft and not even clever, and tons of money pay for expert opinion to stroke ego – not field organizing.

    We lose, finger point, and next cycle lose again cause the same cadre of self appointed leaders step up to do the next campaign as well.

    Maybe we should boycott SFO if we care about gay marriage. Victory in Calif was going to start a whole new momentum for gay marriage now it is a big expensive step back.

    It seems the infighting and good polling in the beginning told some people they could leave to someone else, after all they run the movement now. It is their job.

    I spent weeeks trying to volunteeer my vacation to go somewhere and work for free. NEVER got a call back, NEVER found a human on a phone. My instincts told me it was a shit operation which was going to buy tons of media from an office in LA and not much more.

    Ah, the media. I saw three ads and they were simply nothing, nothing. Boring nothing.

    So they lost. Over and done. And if we do the same shitty campaign in Washington when the time comes, we will lose as well.

    I am glad to see the anger, but, what will be the result. LET ME GUESS

  39. Dan, no one can blame you for being furious about the passing of Prop 8, or this bullshit law in Arkansa.

    But calling out specific racial groups as being with us or against us isn’t part of the solution. The main factor behind all this is income and education, not race. Homophobia feeds on ignorance, not pigmentation.

    We are getting close to having the majority of Americans on our side, but we’re not quite there. The answer, I believe, is exposure. As more people get to know to homos via media and real life, we’ll get there soon enough.

  41. I am glad to see the anger, sparking new activism, but what will be the answer – SEND MORE CHECKS, ALL IS WELL IF WE HAVE MORE AND MORE OF YOUR MONEY

  42. @23- You know what? White woman and jews stood up for your rights. Hasn’t been a two way street has it? It was great to see the the payback from your community when OJ got away with murdering one of each. Or the demonizing of Koreans? Or the Crown Heights lynching? There was not ONE black man chanting “no justice no peace” in ANY of these cases. By your “logic” NO ONE should advocate for AA’s cause most of your civil rights leaders have worked to INCREASE bigotry towards us. When has a straight black man protested an injustice against women, jews, asians, gays? If people weren’t willing to ignore this you would be standing alone. Perhaps you can be as forgiving of gay racism as you are of black sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.

    @31- Can I ask you where you got this info that he was fired for bringing in to many women and people who were too “ghetto”??

  43. The bull shit shit law in Arkansas is the next wave.

    Having worked gay marriage as a wedge so well, the right wing will now turn to adoption in states where DOMA is already law.

    Those strategic meeting have bee going on for a couple of years, and reported in gay media.

    Just to make THE DAY

    It is no surprise we lost miserablly in Arkansas.

    To regain seats in Congress and Rs back in other office – watch ten state with anti gay adoption in 2012 or forward.

    Arkansas was the test. They won. And they do know what that means.

    Because we lost Calif. We have about zero voter currency – looking close at Calif. and Arkansas and Florida and Arizona, I bet you see a lot of the same players on the other side. And they are delighted this week.

  44. @42

    You are a jerk. First of all, I’m not Black. Second, you want a Black man who stands up for gay people? Look at Rodney King, recently on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab after he had cleaned up he was sharing his feelings about the beating he suffered and one thing he mentioned was that gay protesters stood behind him and rallied with his group before the courthouse, he then spoke on how gay people make this world great. But let me guess…to you he’s the “exception.”

    Dan, look at the company you keep when you make posts like these. Don’t you understand how blaming Black people only incites people like these?

    You didn’t see how wrong you were to support the Iraq War at the time…couldn’t you just fathom that you could be wrong this time too

  45. @18 Blacks already see gay rights as ‘white’ as a result of homophobia/heterosexism in the black community. That’s why there is the DL and MSM phenomenon. And such a huge public health problem with HIV/AIDS in the black community. As TNCoates says, this shit kills. Cathy Cohen’s AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics charts it all out. Highly recommended.

  46. @18 Blacks already see gay rights as ‘white’ as a result of homophobia/heterosexism in the black community. That’s why there is the DL and MSM phenomenon. And such a huge public health problem with HIV/AIDS in the black community. As TNCoates says, this shit kills. Cathy Cohen’s AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics charts it all out. Highly recommended.

  47. @44 I asked you “when has a straight black man PROTESTED an injustice against women, jews, asians, gays?”

    Your example was Rodney King, who said he thought gays were “great” and acknowledged that THEY HAD PROTESTED ON HIS BEHALF. You proved my point. You say gays are so racist… yet Rodney King saw their support. Him saying gays are “great” in not PROTESTING on behalf of gays. If my mom had simply said “blacks are great” but not gotten off her ass to PROTEST I wouldn’t be too impressed.

  48. Something’s fishy. Before the election, no one was attacking black gay men and black lesbians for fearing an ‘Obama effect’: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/10/30/proposition_8/index.html
    But now, no one is permitted to speak of it.

    Moving on from heat to light, the end of this Salon piece provides an explanation of “that which we are not permitted to speak for fear of being labeled racists”: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/11/10/proposition_8/

    Black homophobia has to be understood in order to be addressed, no? And, as the gay black guy (black gay guy?) in the second article attests, black homophobia is a different animal than white homophobia. And THAT has to be taken seriously.

    All this talk about gay activists not doing proper outreach makes me think about the flip side: gay and lesbian African Americans need to either speak up more in their own communities (the gay black guy in the article is afraid to use his name…) or need to clearly lay out the contours of black homophobia to activists. Something beyond whitey-gay-racists-bullshit…

  49. You guys are just pissed because for a whole year you’ve been mooning over Obama’s Dockers, and now you have to deal with the fact that the guy is straight as a ruler and only has an eye for primo snatch.

    I mean, did you see that picture of Vera Baker! How could you not want to hit that?! Yeah, even Michele would have to forgive him — because, yeah, he’s a dude!

  50. Thanks for the links Sean. But the problem is that no one including Savage is demonstrating any awareness or understanding of the the very specific origins or context of black homophobia that are described at the end of the second article you site. And I’m not seeking to excuse black homophobia having been on the receiving end of it as a gay black man but its origin paradoxically really has a lot in common with the nastiness coming from some folks on this site and elsewhere.

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