Truth be told, I have no personal investment in the struggle for lgbtq marriage rights. I’m not all that interested in a patriarchal institution historically used to oppress women. I’d rather explore more creative and liberating expressions of queer love, than conform to such a tired old convention as marriage. Yet I do recognize that there are certain privileges associated with marriage, that everyone should have a right to access. Still, this struggle is not on my list of priorities.

Despite this I was yet another of the many people who voted against Prop 8, who were terribly distraught when it passed, and who joined in street protest to express outrage. This is because I was so moved by the obvious and profound level of hate which motivated and fueled the “Yes on 8″ campaign. These people only sought to further poison people throughout our state with hate against our LGBTQ community. They did so in the face of all the work many people have done and continue to do on the daily to make this place safe for LGBTQ people. So that we can one day walk down streets without any fear of suffering attack because of who we are. So when I saw “Yes on 8″ rallies with large groups of kids and children shouting out derogatory slurs and wielding those terrible signs, I could not be but totally overwhelmed by the hate.

So on a Saturday night earlier this month, I assumed I was attending an anti-hate rally. But that could not have been further from the truth. On stage was some white, dinosaur, les-biatch completely berating and tearing down the entire “African-American community”. Blaming us for the passing of Prop 8, she all but outrightly called Black people ignorant and foolish. She continuously used “us” in reference to gay people and “they/you” meaning black people. And to my surprise, all the folks around me were cheering and hollering at her every indictment of the black community. I learned that night that the racist rhetoric at this rally was in response to the divisive reporting propagated by mainstream media that Blacks voted in Proposition 8.

There are two dangerous underlying assumptions insinuated by this woman speaker and all the news reports. Firstly is that homosexuality is White. And secondly, that communities of color are absolutely homophobic. The reason these assumptions are so dangerous, is that they make me and all queer people of color invisible, as if we don’t exist. These assumptions render my perspective and my own life experiences invisible, and they leave no space for qpoc within the lgbtq rights movement. Just like there was no space for me at that rally. If “us” is the queer community and “they” are black people, then where am I? I wonder if you white gays and lesbians could not see the queer black woman beside you, when you rallied that black people had stolen queer rights.

And just to get this out the way, Black people did NOT make the Proposition 8 vote. The media has hyped the exit poll that “2 to 1 black voters supported Prop 8.” Even if that were 100% true, there’s no way Black people made the election. Anyone who bothered to think for themselves, or maybe even look at ALL the facts of the situation, would immediately see the fallacy of that conclusion. While the Black vote may have favored prop 8, the black vote still represents a minority percentage of the total voting population (Less than 7%!).The majority population in this state is still WHITE, and the majority of the voting population is WHITE. Therefore, even more white people voted for prop 8 than anybody else. The total number of black votes for prop 8 alone could NOT have made or broke the election, but 8 would not have passed without white people. DUH.

That this focus on misinformation is an obvious ploy to distract, divide and conquer the lgbtq rights movement, was totally lost on you all. Instead you white gays and lesbians just gobbled up this bullshit and swallowed hard. While I’m tempted to write you all off as ignoramus maximus, I think the fact that white gays and lesbians were so ready to point the finger of blame at Black people, further exposes the racist assumptions harbored within that community, as well as the lack of space for recognition of intersectional identities.

Last I checked the “yes on 8″ people were leading a very successful campaign of lies and misinformation, confusing prop 8 as an issue of child education. Given all the people who voted in fear based on these lies, how is it that the Black community so unanimously voted in hate and bigotry?

And here’s a question, why is it that the most immediate response of the white gay rights movement in this situation, was to start pointing the finger of blame? Are you all in second grade, is this really the most productive thing that could be happening now? Even I know, with my short few years of organizing, that when you come to the end of an unsuccessful campaign, you come together as an organization/movement/etc. and ask yourselves “what did we do well, what could we have done better, and where do we go from here within a larger strategy?” You don’t go pouting in the streets about whose fault it is you didn’t win!?

But this response isn’t all that surprising given that the average gay/lesbian within your movement experiences a great deal of privilege on account of race&class. And typically it is the people with the most privilege that have the most difficulty holding THEMSELVES accountable to anything, and not just blaming everybody else. In fact, the closest any of you have probably ever come to accountability is your white guilt, and Lord knows that’s not even close!

Fox 11 news happened to catch and feature the rally’s ignoramus supreme on the ten o’ clock news. “We (gay/white) people made Obama president, and they (Black people) left us behind! That’s it, we’re the last minority left now!”

This guy (like many of you I’m sure) voted away his white guilt at the polls a few weeks back. And he clearly thinks that the country purged itself of white supremacy in a single vote last week. Now you poor, poor, white gays and lesbians–you are the last of the oppressed! Alas the tables have turned, and it is us Black people barring you from your constitutional rights. We funded the $20 million “Yes on 8″ campaign of lies and misinformation–oh wait, that was other white people? Well, we contributed the largest percentage of total “yes” votes–no? That was white people too!? Well darn, now none of this making sense…

I realize this letter has gotten pretty long, so I’ll finish by saying this. If you white gaze and lesbiannes are so ready to leave Black people out of your gay rights movement, so be it. Who wants to be where they’re not wanted anyway. We’ll take our beautiful brown selves elsewhere, and start a real rainbow movement. And we’ll take all references to our civil rights movement with us. No more appropriating that legacy. Nope, not allowed. Because how you gonna hate on us, and then allude to our struggles in your commercials. I don’t think so.

In the Golden State, Prop 8 passed by 52 percent of the vote. Driven by some $20 million in donations by affiliates of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who a letter in June to each of its churches, asking members to “do all you can to support” the proposition by donating “your means and time,” to insure that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for His children.”

I find this rather narrow interpretation of the holy bond of matrimony ironic given that the last time the Church faced a constitutional question on the issue, it packed up the store and moved from Nauvoo, Illinois to the Great Salt Lake.

Prop 8 is a stunning aberration in California’s legal history, the codification of bigotry and fear into one of our foundational documents and the wholesale disenfranchisement of a vital part of our community.

With exit polls showing up to 70% of black voters backing Prop. 8, it also shows that we’re far from the founding of a rainbow nation, even on a night when an African American managed to overcome a huge obstacle on the 400-year old path to freedom.

To deny legal status to same sex love here in California is antithetical to the arc of our history, which has embraced the outsider long before our founding in 1850. Just go Google Emperor Norton.

What’s even more disturbing about the victory of the marriage amendment is that it was predicated on the values of Christianity, and couched in the language of preserving the nuclear family.

Frankly speaking, the true threat vectors to familial love are not questions of plumbing, but temperament. I fear the angry and drunk father, or the abusive mother of any orientation much more than the love and affection of two daddies or mommies.

To sublimate the obvious love between many gay and lesbian couples, that differs not one iota from the one shared by my parents or myself is a denial of our humanity and an affront to the civil and human rights of our fellow citizens. As Gandhi so elegantly put it, “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”

With the support of Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and several legal challenges to Prop 8, this debate is far from over, but the fact that it is still a debate is thoroughly depressing.

Reopening the closet is not an option and neither is denying the existence of love in all its wondrous forms. Repression and bigotry are not family values, they are not religious values and they just aren’t intelligent.

It’s my sincere hope that this year’s electoral aberration, when overthrown, will fade into the historical mists to join other ill-conceived legal actions like Dred Scott or the Briggs Initiative, which sought the power to fire gay school teachers and their supporters in an ill conceived attempt to protect children from sexual predators.

Prop 8 didn’t win by much, and is proof that despite this setback, the gay rights movement is never going away and it’s goals, which seemed so bold at Stonewall, will be accepted by our children as self-evident, just as my generation accepts women in the workplace and embraces a multiracial society.

I’m going to leave the last word to another of history’s confirmed bachelors, Jesuha of Nazareth. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” – Matthew 7:21-23

I understand where this sentiment comes from, but I cannot say that I agree. I find this slogan problematic: it fosters the idea that racism against the African American community is a thing of the past and it appropriates the narrative of a struggle that is still very much going on, our President-elect notwithstanding. When I first read the reports of voter statistics and saw the overwhelming percentage of African Americans who voted for California Proposition 8, I was immediately concerned about the effect this would have within the LGBT movement; a wounded community would start looking for scapegoats. Seventy percent is a huge number, but people (specifically white gay men) have been far too quick to say “well it’s because of Obama,” as though gay rights were sacrificed for a step forward against racism. There seem to be people who are intent on blaming African American homophobia for Tuesday’s results instead of recognizing the fact that LGBT movement has largely ignored people of color and made queer people of color nearly invisible. As a queer Cambodian woman, I empathize with black gays’ & lesbians’ sense of being ignored and uninvolved by mainstream LGBT activism.

The repercussions of this invisibility and lack of outreach are becoming apparent. A UCLA student wrote to Rod 2.0 that someone at the protest in front of the Mormon temple in Westwood shouted at him: “YOU NIGGER. . . If your people want to call me a FAGGOT, I will call you a nigger.” It is appalling that white people would target black people who are actually participating in a protest against Prop 8 and, worse, that they seem to think that experiencing an act of discrimination is license to discriminate against others. This is not acceptable and only shows that the LGBT community needs to deal with the issue of racism as much as people of color must deal with homophobia.

I did not witness any blatantly racist behavior at the march on Saturday, but I was very aware that there were few black people in crowd. That in itself is symptomatic of the invisibility of black gays and lesbians in both communities. It’s arguable that the black gay community faces some of the most difficult challenges with homophobia, racism, and the inevitable clash of both.

One man at the march held a sign with the 7 of 10 statistic and the words “We supported ur rights.” I couldn’t articulate to him at the time why his sign made me so uncomfortable, but I realize now that it was because of the language. When I read “we supported your rights,” I immediately questioned who constitutes that “We”? The sign implies that racism isn’t a problem in the LGBT community and to say “your rights” is to suggest that there is a distinction between the rights of Black people and the rights of LGBT people–it divides the overlapping communities and plays King Solomon with Black gays and lesbians. The point of civil rights activism is that there are rights which belong to everyone and language like this isn’t going to help the cause gain allies.

Yes, civil rights for gays is the movement of the moment, but let us please not forget that the movement to end racism is far from over, and let us not further victimize each other in this process.