Marriage Equality Fails In Illinois-Cue The 'Blame The Blacks' White Gay Chorus

A not so funny thing happened on the way to Illinois becoming the 13th state to pass marriage equality legislation.   The Illinois legislature adjourned without a vote on SB10, The Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act.

Why am I not surprised that with the surprising failure of gay marriage to pass out of the Illinois House, in their zeal to explain the shocking defeat elements of the white gay community have turned to an old reprehensible tactic to explain this stunning failure after a string of recent marriage wins.

Blame the Black community. 

Specifically, they are blaming the 20 members of the Illinois House Legislative Black Caucus, who have been under tremendous pressure from fundie megachurches and conservafool pastors to kill the bill.

John Aravosis of Americablog wasted no time in this blog post fanning the hell-fire flames of gay bigotry against African-Americans.

The Sun Times says the state House black caucus was a big part of the problem.  A similar scenario played out with Prop 8 in California four years ago (though some have tried to rewrite that history).  Yet, the black vote was not a problem in Maryland where the state voted in favor of marriage equality last November.  And with the support of President Obama, I’m sure a lot of people had hoped that we were beyond worrying about the religious right’s declared desire to drive fissures between the black and the gay community.

Well John, congratulations.  You and the Sun Times have just done NOM's shady work for them by setting off white gays justifiably pissed that SB 10 failed against the Black community cis, trans and SGL that is skeptical about gay marriage as a whole.

The Black community has noted your failure to work intersectionally with other groups inside and outside the LGBT community on issues of concern to them, but hypocritically demanding 100% fealty on the issue of marriage equality.    It has also noted your failures to deal with the racism in the TBLGIQA community and observed that far too many LGBT orgs have leadership ranks that look more like the Republican Party ranks than the ethnically diverse American population.  

Did it not occur to you vanillacentric privileged gays that Illinois also has downstate WHITE Democrats who range from squishy to adamantly opposed about this issue and a politically powerful Roman Catholic Church that worked the halls in Springfield just like those conservative Black pastors you're pointing the finger at?  

To all you white gays hating on Black people (and President Obama) in the Americablog and Towleroad comment threads and other spots in the Gayosphere due to Aravosis pouring gasoline on the smoldering anger from the 2008 Prop 8 defeat and our pissivity over the rainbow bigotry eruption that ensued after it based on a flawed exit poll, thought I'd point out that two of the sponsors of SB 10 in the Illinois Senate were African-Americans in state Sen. Toi Hutchinson and Sen. Emil Jones III.

In the Illinois House two of the legislators sponsoring it were from the same Illinois House Black Legislative Caucus being vilified by elements of the white gay community right now in Rep.Christian Mitchell and Rep Kenneth Dunkin, the chair of the House Black Legislative Caucus. 

But naw, that won't work pointing out those inconvenient facts when you're desperately trying to be 'just like them' and get your lost white privilege spots back . It's also an irrefutable one you are part of the ethnic group that comprises the bulk of the determined opposition to marriage equality

So it's dust off the Black folks are 'uniquely homophobic' meme, blame the Illinois House Black Legislative Caucus for your surprising defeat and deflect the blame from various predominately white run LG equality organizations concerning the failure to make the case why marriage equality should happen in Illinois. 

And the more you fan the hell-fire flames of gay bigotry toward African-Americans SGL, trans and straight, the happier you make NOM and the more you set back the cause of getting marriage equality passed in Illinois and elsewhere in the country where you'll need to build coalitions with Black people to make that happen.