Gay Rights Activists: Black Voters Are Dumb

We know one of the biggest initial controversies surrounding the Yes on 8 vote in California was the gay activist backlash against black voters, who turned out 70 percent in favor of the initiative.

At some of the first protest demonstrations, black passers-by - and even black gay marriage activists - were verbally assaulted with the "n-word." Jasmyne Cannick, a black-lesbian civil rights activist, even argued that an affluent white gay constituency, in pushing its same-sex marriage agenda, couldn't care less about the economic dislocation and lingering (and real) racial discrimination against inner-city African Americans.

Well, the hits keep coming: It turns out that Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American way, in an essay deceptively entitled, "Blaming Black Voters for Prop 8 Loss is Wrong and Destructive," identified black focus group participants as dumb, as they couldn't "sort out" the difference between civil unions and religious marriage:

People For the American Way Foundation conducted focus groups among African American churchgoers in California in September. Among men and women, and among younger and older groups, we found strong opposition to discrimination against LGBT people in employment and housing. And we found widespread support for legal protections for committed couples. Among all groups there was generally a live-and-let-live attitude toward gay people in their communities and congregations, and a recognition that couples deserve some basic legal protections. People For the American Way Foundation produced and ran three radio ads designed to tap that instinct for fairness and encouraging African Americans to oppose anti-gay discrimination.

But our focus groups also showed us that marriage equality faces a higher hurdle. Many people in our focus groups had difficulty sorting out the difference between civil marriage and marriage as a religious institution. Even some of the most eloquent opponents of discrimination argued that marriage was somehow different because they saw it as an inherently religious act that God had designed to be between a man and a woman [bold italics added].

You know, maybe we should give Kolbert some credit?

Perhaps this is simply a misstatement. She can't possibly mean that blacks are, well, thick!

They just don't, in the immortal words of Al Campanis, have the "necessities" to discern the difference between civil and religious institutions, and that ends up making them, well, bigots. I mean, for Kolbert, it couldn't possibly be that blacks, because of their deep spiritual upbringing in the values of the traditional African American church, might believe - as a matter of faith - that homosexual marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God.

Nope, they must be just stupid: Apparently, blacks simply can't reason through abstract or spiritural notions, such that, for example, we must "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God’s."

Nope, we have to get these people the civil religion of progressive totalitarianism, which obliterates moral distinctions in the agenda of decimating the soul!

One would think that the gay rights backlash against the black voting constituency would be enough of an insult in itself. Yet, on top of that, we see one of the country's most prominent equal opportunity interest groups essentially consigning these black focus-group participants to the back of the bus of intellectual capacity.

This whole Proposition 8 aftermath has been unsettling. But the demonizing condescension to people of faith - and of all colors - really takes the cake.