Gay marriage and communities of color

via AngryBrownButch, Rinku Sen talks about the myth that communities of color are more anti-gay than white communities:

Transcript after the jump…

It’s one week after the state of California officially began to marry gay couples. I’ve been thrilled to be in northern California for these first historic days. And I’m struck by how many of the week’s celebrations are led by people of color. A friend of mine, a black man who works in Oakland city hall, told me how proud he was to witness 16 weddings, administered by Mayor Ron Dellums, Rep. Barbara Lee, and city council member Jean Quan. […]
I saw photos of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa officiating with a huge grin on his face. Oakland and Los Angeles are cities where the majority populations are black, Latino, and Asian. By contrast, two California counties have stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether, so that they don’t have to give equal rights to same-sex couples. These counties are almost as diverse as the cities, but they don’t have the same number of visible gay communities and families. […]
In the world of sexual liberation, I often hear that communities of color need special attention to become less homophobic, as though we were worse on those issues than white people are. Watching people of color celebrate this week’s weddings helped me to remember that it’s not someone’s race, but their contact with real, live, gay people that shapes their sexual politics.
Rather than fixating on communities of color as though we’re the last of the homophobic holdouts, we should be thinking of ways to bring people together, socially and culturally, across sexual lines.

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