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243 12 Black and Latino Same-Sex Couple Households and the Racial Dynamics of Antigay Activism SEAN CAHILL For two decades the antigay movement has portrayed sexual orientation nondiscrimination laws as special rights that threaten the civil rights of people of color, especially Black people. They have portrayed the gay and Black communities as mutually exclusive and pointed out the obvious difference between race and sexual orientation, accusing gay activists of hijacking the civil rights legacy of the 1950s and 1960s. While antigay bias and racism are indeed different, legal protections for gay people and families do not threaten the civil rights of people of color or anyone, for that matter. The cruel irony is that the antigay policies of the Christian right pose a disproportionate threat to Black and Latino same-sex couple families because Black and Latino same-sex couples are twice as likely as White same-sex couples to be raising children (particularly female same-sex couples), earn less, and are less likely to own their own home. The Racial Dynamics of Antigay Activism Antigay activists have attempted to convince the public that sexual orientation nondiscrimination laws and legal protections for same-sex couple families are a threat to the civil rights of people of color and the heterosexual majority. In fact, the antigay movement’s political project poses a disproportionate threat to Black and Latino LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people. What Is the Antigay Marriage Movement? The antigay marriage movement is merely the latest phase of the antigay movement , which has been active since the 1970s. It is an assemblage of national and local antigay groups who generally reflect premillenarian Protestantism (Herman, 2000, p. 10).1 Among the leading Christian right groups are Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and the Traditional Values Coalition. In addition, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, 244 SEAN CAHILL some Roman Catholic archdioceses across the United States, and the Christian Coalition play central roles. Many local groups are also active at the state level. In Massachusetts, as of this writing the only state other than Connecticut where marriage is legal for gay couples and where the antigay movement has invested a great deal of resources to repeal same-sex marriage, local antigay groups include the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the Massachusetts State Council of the Knights of Columbus, the Bay State Republican Council, the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Family Institute, a local affiliate of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family. The antigay Christian right is financially strong and politically influential. Some twenty-nine Christian Right organizations cosponsored the October 2003 Marriage Protection Week2 a series of political activities targeting marriage equality for gay couples as well as more limited forms of partner recognition, such as domestic partnership and civil unions.3 The week of antigay prayer rallies and lobbying was endorsed by President George W. Bush. Of the thirteen Marriage Protection Week cosponsors for whom income data were publicly accessible, a total of $211 million in income was reported to the Internal Revenue Service in 2002. These groups range from Focus on the Family, with $126 million in revenue, to Citizens for Community Values, with a mere $89,000 in income. In comparison, the thirteen largest national gay political organizations reported a combined income of $53 million in 2002.5 Not all evangelicals or Roman Catholics are active in the Christian right. Some church leaders have prioritized poverty, the environment, and other issues, and millions of congregants in nominally conservative churches do not vote based on the directives of the Christian right. For example, 56 percent of Catholics voted Democratic in 2006, 63 percent support civil unions, and only 19 percent strongly oppose same-sex marriage (Keeter, 2006). Pitting Gay People against People of Color For two decades, the religious right has sought to pit gay and lesbian people against people of color and to portray the two communities as mutually exclusive .6 For example, one flier distributed by antigay groups in Miami claimed that Martin Luther King Jr. would be outraged by the manner in which “homosexual extremists” were abusing the civil rights movement to get special rights (Ross, 2002). Such rhetoric pits one community, the Black civil rights community, against another, the LGBT civil rights community. It implies that there are no Black lesbian or gay people experiencing discrimination because of their sexual...

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