Well, well, well John Aravosis. Looks like there's increasing evidence piling up to show that you were loud and wrong as usual.
You were also wrong for peddling that bigoted 'The Blacks cost us marriage equality in Illinois' meme in the immediate aftermath of the non-call for a House marriage equality vote that has been repeated like a mantra in various spots in the Gayosphere and progressive blog comment threads that Black bloggers are now going to have to spend time debunking.
I presume the 'I'm sorry' Americablog post will be swiftly forthcoming to the Black community and the legislators you slimed, but I suspect it'll be a snowy June day in Houston before we see it.
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It's also eerily looking more and more like Prop 8 2.0 in terms of the deja vu all too eager white gay propensity to quickly point the finger at my community for this stunning Illinois marriage equality legislative failure and engage in rainbow bigot eruptions. .
Before the weekend was out I was starting to get confirmation about what I suspected was the real reason the marriage bill failed Saturday morning:
A Gay, Inc organizational frackup.
It turns out that your vanillacentric staffed umbrella marriage org on the scene there didn't even bother to hire more lobbyists to talk to the Illinois Black legislative caucus, when they knew for months it was one of their lobbying weaknesses. The problem wasn't addressed until a day and a half before the vote was supposed to happen and former Illinois Chitown Democratic legislators Paul Williams and Coy Pugh were put on the payroll
Williams and Pugh had they been given ample time may have been able to flip some votes in the Caucus, but they damned sure needed more than a day and half for that task.
The umbrella org also repeated California's failure of not consistently engaging the Black and Latino communities and mobilizing progressive ministers and priests tn the state to neutralize and drown out the bigots in the African American Clergy Coalition and the Roman Catholic Church.
Thanks to TransGriot reader Chitown Kev for pointing me to an NBC5 article entitled 'Don't Thank (Or Blame) Black Legislators For Killing Gay Marriage' and giving me more ammunition to point out why fanning the hell-fire flames of gay bigotry against Blacks is not only wrong but not helpful to your marriage cause.
Interestingly enough that NBC5 story breaks down how the so-called 'homophobic' Black Legislative caucus votes would have probably gone down if a marriage vote had been called
Eleven of the 20 Black Caucus members would have voted YES, four NO and five were undecided.
YES
Ken Dunkin, Chicago
Esther Golar, Chicago
Chris Welch, Hillside
La Shawn Ford, Chicago
Christian Mitchell, Chicago
Rita Mayfield, Waukegan
Al Riley, Olympia Field
Camille Lilly, Chicago
Arthur Turner, Chicago
Marcus Evans, Chicago
Elgie Sims, Jr., Chicago
NO
Monique Davis, Chicago
Mary Flowers, Chicago
Eddie Jackson, East St. Louis
Charles Jefferson, Rockford
UNDECIDED
Thaddeus Jones, Calumet City
Jehan Gordon-Booth, Peoria
Will Davis, East Hazel Crest
Derrick Smith, Chicago
Andre Thapedi, Chicago
As an FYI moment, the six Latino Illinois legislators were considered supporters.
Now compare and contrast that with the 92 white legislators in the Illinois House. I pointed out the fact in my initial Saturday post the bulk of the people and legislators opposed to marriage equality don't look like me and it was borne out in this report.
45 of the 47 Republicans (who are survey says, all white peeps) were opposed to the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act with only two supporting it..
The 45 remaining white legislators in the Illinois House are Democrats. Of those white Democrats 26 were considered solid YES votes, but there were 19 white Democratic legislators identified by the Windy City Times who are either committed to vote NO on the bill, or have not publicly
supported it. Those legislators are Brandon Phelps, John Bradley, Jerry Costello II, Jay Hoffman, Daniel Beiser, Sue Scherer, Stephanie Kifowit, Anthony DeLuca, Katherine Cloonen, Patrick Verschoore, Jack Franks, Michelle Mussman, John D’Amico, Natalie Manley, Emily McAsey, Kathleen Willis, Fred Crespo, Keith Farnham, and Kelly Burke.
So how in the hell does the Black Caucus get the blame or the failure of this bill when all along you had a white Democratic legislator problem?
Easy, when you want to deflect from your own organizational failures.
"Don’t blame the Black Caucus. The Black Caucus has always been with us and so have the Latinos,” said Rick Garcia, the policy director of the Civil Rights Agenda. “They are just using the black people as an excuse.”
So for those of you in the Illinois gay community still squawking about who not to support in the next election cycle, primary challenge or you're petulantly not going to support issues of importance to the African-American community in retaliation for this setback, my suggestion is you don't let the white privilege you're swimming in be the catalyst for writing a political check your azzes will regret cashing.
Seems y'all need to be focusing your attention moreso on the problem you have with white people supporting marriage equality. You need to do a better job building support for marriage equality amongst your fellow white people, get busy building that coalition of progressive ministers you'll need to fight the bigoted ones and quit scapegoating Black people for your failure to come up with an argument that resonates with your fellow white folks.
Because frankly, Black people, and especially Black TBLG folks are sick and tired of being blamed for your failure to do precisely that.
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