The Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman

Author:Sarah Schulman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

CHAPTER FIVE

The Gentrification of Gay Politics

Election Day, November 2008. It's a new dawn for America. Barack Obama has triumphed at the polls and every constituency of people without rights in this country is united in the hope and determination that our system can work for them. Except one. While most of America is literally cheering, literally dancing in the streets, tears streaming down their faces, thirty-six thousand gay people who got married in California are devastated. On the same date that Obama was elected, four state ballot measures passed banning gay marriage, and two of those states—California and Florida—went for Obama. Arkansas, the political home of Bill Clinton, voted in a ballot measure banning gays and lesbians from being foster parents or adopting children. Over the next few days, the details begin to emerge. Barack Obama agreed with Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and George Bush as they all united in their opposition to gay marriage. Obama even went so far as to say that, “God ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman.” This was the recorded message that Christian activists played over their telephones endlessly to California voters.

Truly spontaneous demonstrations explode in LA and San Francisco. They were not organized by the marriage leaders, who were immediately under scrutiny, but instead were fueled by young people who had believed the phony hype that gays and lesbians had equality. They were shocked at this defeat, revealing how truly effective the placating propaganda had been. It is quickly understood that 70 percent of Black voters in California voted against gay marriage. Racist grumblings start to emerge from white gays who overlook that Blacks are only 6 percent of the state's population. It becomes clear that the pro-gay marriage campaign did almost no appropriate outreach to Asian, Black, and Latino voters, and that Black and Latino and Asian gays and lesbians were not at the forefront of the campaign. Most importantly, it becomes clear that it was white voters who killed gay marriage in California, despite a great deal of white gay rage focused on Blacks and Latinos. Analysis of the marriage campaigners' organizing materials becomes even more acute. Apparently, few of the expensive television spots encouraging pro-gay voters to vote “No On Proposition 8” featured actual gay people talking about their own rights. Most of the ads featured parents of gays, friends of gays, young straight people proclaiming how proud they were to get married in a state where “everyone” has marriage rights. But gay people themselves were almost invisible in their own forty million dollar campaign.

While some gay communities are angry, frightened, alienated, and hurt by these political events, straight progressives are barely aware that any of this has happened. They warn us not to “ruin” the Obama moment, and inform us that “the economy is more important.” It starts to be strangely clear after only a few weeks of Obama-elect that we have returned to a state of mind not seen for thirty years, in

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