How the Media Wrongly Cast Blacks as Villains in the Struggle for Marriage Equality

Mainstream media coverage of the ban on same-sex marriage in California has done a grave disservice to the African-American community by wrongly citing support from black voters as the deciding factor in passage of Proposition 8.

The state ballot initiative, enacted by a 52.2 percent to 47.7 percent margin in the 2008 election, established a ballot proposition and constitutional amendment stating that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

Over the past three years, the media has repeatedly reported that 70 percent of California’s black voters supported the measure. With black voter turnout reaching record levels in many jurisdictions nationwide to support Barack Obama’s historic quest for the presidency, the media latched onto what appeared to be a juicy, contradictory story: African-Americans widely perceived to be liberal leaning take a conservative stand in California and provide the critical votes to ban gay marriage there.

That just isn’t true.

Moreover, misconceptions stemming from the erroneous media coverage created serious tension between the African-American and gay communities, rifts that leaders of both are still trying to mend three years later. This is an example of flawed media coverage having a strong impact on society, pitting two demographics that have been on the same side of many progressive causes.

Where did the media go wrong?

When major news outlets such as CNN and the Los Angeles Times suggested that African-American voters were responsible for passage of the ban, they relied largely on questionable exit polls. More important, their reporting didn’t reach out to enough diverse sources—experts on gay rights, voting patterns and the black community who could have provided broader perspectives and demonstrated the absurdity of citing black votes as the deciding factor.

For instance, subsequent analysis commissioned by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force showed that just 58 percent of blacks approved of Proposition 8, a figure similar to those of other minority groups. Yet many news agencies failed to report this information, helping to perpetuate the theme that African-Americans are singularly homophobic. As recently as a month ago, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote about gay organizations trying to shore up black support and repeated the questionable analysis that between 58 and 70 percent of California’s black voters backed the same-sex marriage ban.

Advocates for gay, bisexual and transgender people of color say such articles ignore the fact that black and gay communities aren’t mutually exclusive and at times have stood on the same side of equal rights issues. Many also believe that African-Americans of all sexual orientations would benefit from expanded rights for gays.

“I call it the zombie meme that will not die, this idea that blacks are more homophobic than other people,” says Ron Buckmire, board president and co-founder of the Jordan/Rustin Coalition, a black gay advocacy group in Los Angeles. Buckmire doesn’t deny that homophobia exists in the black community, as in every demographic, but maintains that the media has missed a key part of the story: the impact of religion on how many blacks feel negatively about gay marriage.

In a 2008 study, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 88 percent of blacks are religious believers, compared with 71 percent of the general population. That puts in perspective findings in the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force report that religious background overshadowed race in voting on Proposition 8. In fact, religious voters stood out as a demographic, along with political conservatives, uniformly in favor of banning same-sex marriage.

If the media had contacted experts like Buckmire, they could have cited his contention that religious voters were far more significant to the outcome of the ballot initiative than African-Americans. But experts say holding religious voters responsible wouldn’t have generated as many headlines as pitting African-Americans and gays.

“It was too juicy of a narrative—blacks versus gays—and having it on the same day the first black president was elected,” Buckmire asserts. “It was too irresistible for the media not to say blacks ordinarily don’t vote but they voted for the black president and against gay marriage. Then it went beyond that, and blacks were responsible for Proposition 8’s passing. That’s where it stated getting crazy.”

Blackmire means that the numbers simply don’t support the contention that black voters were the deciding factor in the outcome, something that the media should have known.

The percentage of African-Americans in California’s population was 6.2 as of the 2010 census, far too small to be the deciding factor in banning same-sex marriage even if 70 percent of black voters had supported the initiative. Buckmire notes that that initial exit poll data did not include a large enough sample of black men to provide credible conclusions about African-American support of the ban.

“Somebody needed to be villain,” says Earnest Winborne, executive producer of NoMoreDownLow.tv, an online television series that highlights the experience of the black gay, bisexual and transgender community. He says widespread media reports holding blacks responsible for the ban resulted in some gays lashing out at African-Americans.

Winborne says that rather than single out African-Americans, the media should have examined why gay rights groups did not reach out to blacks about the ballot initiative until the days immediately before the election.

Furthermore, Winborne adds other perspectives on the issue that are often missing in mainstream media reporting on black attitudes toward gay marriage.

For instance, he says journalists should also consider that blacks may not identify with the gay rights struggle because whites are too often the face of the movement. He says news articles about gay marriage and related issues typically feature whites.

“African Americans don’t feel like the gay community is their community because they don’t see people who are like them,” Winborne says. “They’re not relating to the struggle.”

Winborne, who has worked for shows such as “The View,” “Access Hollywood” and “E! News,” says he decided to launch NoMoreDownLow.tv to put the media spotlight on black gays, bisexuals and transgenders because they are often overlooked.

For years, he says, the only time he saw black gays on television was in relation to something negative, such as being sexually irresponsible or unfaithful in relationships.

Maya Rupert, federal policy attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, says that when the media overlook existence of black gays and lesbians or pits the African-American community against the gay community, the former suffers in silence. She says this is particularly disturbing because gay minorities have been among those most affected by policies such as “don’t ask, don’t tell” or same-sex marriage bans.

Rupert says that disproportionate numbers of black lesbians faced discharge from the military because of their sexual orientation and that black gays, bisexuals and trangenders are more likely than their white counterparts to have children and financial struggles, making marriage equality of key importance to them.

She says that when stories appear on the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy or marriage equality, the media typically focus on white men. In addition to emphasizing how blacks suffer from such policies, Rupert says the media can point out how marriage inequality harms all African-Americans, gay or straight.

North Carolina’s proposed same-sex marriage ban, she says, has the potential to adversely affect not only the gay community but heterosexual couples who cohabitate. Voters will decide on the proposal during primaries next May.

“It’s detrimental to couples who aren’t married,” Rupert says. “A huge number of couples aren’t married in the black community. They’re the unwitting casualty of this. It disadvantages any nontraditional family, and blacks tend to be in nontraditional family units. But they aren’t linked with same-sex marriage.”

By fashioning the African-American and gay communities as rivals, Rupert says the media absolve those truly to blame for longstanding institutionalized oppression of gays and lesbians. Because of the narrative casting blacks as anti-gay villains, she says, right-wing policymakers can shirk responsibility for discriminatory action against gays.

They can say, “It’s actually not us,” Rupert says. “It’s really one minority oppressing another minority. They can both attack the black community for being narrow-minded and behind the times and also shield themselves from blame.”

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