How is the point valid? The point is that the philosophy of giving everyone equal legal rights has been applied to increase legal rights of women and blacks, and the same philosophy applies here.
What's to be gained by this approach? The hope is to encourage the support of people who now support women's and blacks' rights.
How could this sign be rephrased to make it not inane? That's a difficult one... how about: Equal in the eyes of the law: [check] Caucasian men [check] African-Americans [check] women [ ] LGBTQ
Yes, this still ignores the fact that these groups overlap, but there's something to be said for having a simple sign.
How do you feel about the comparison, often made, with the rights of a white and a black person (of opposite genders) to marry each other?
The numbers you've seen about blackfolk are practically made up, anyway, based on a single exit poll, with no way to confirm or deny it. Ok, but you're conflating POC (what I said) and blackfolk (what apparently lots of people are saying and is apparently not a tenable assertion). My statement was based on a discussion I heard on NPR. It seems this CNN poll (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=CAI01p1) is the poll they're all referring to, which you describe as "practically made up." Googling, most analysis (e.g. Daily Kos) notes that there just aren't enough black folks in California for them to swing the outcome, even if this poll is accurate. Which is not the same as saying there aren't enough POC. Of course, as I was trying to note earlier, there are lots of ways to slice the numbers; it seems like age and religious affiliation probably make more sense than race. Are you also going to accuse me of bias if I note that the poll below found more opposition to Prop 8 among those with a college education and those with higher incomes? Here's (http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=860) a better poll; PPIC is quite a reputable organization in my book, more interested in truth than news or partisanship. See page 12 of the full report. They found 50% of whites, 61% of Hispanics, and 57% of Hispanics, blacks and Asians combined, voted yes on Prop 8; their sample sizes for blacks and Asians were too small to report the results separately.
And your baseless suspicion of recent Hispanic immigrants isn't too pretty, either. A lot in this story isn't pretty. My "baseless" assumption is in fact, based on an awareness that the average immigrant is more religious than the average Californian, and personal experience with recent Asian immigrants (for them, religious means Buddhist), and the general awareness that immigrants are often coming from cultures where gayness is much more frowned on, and they often hold those views themselves at least for awhile. In Sacramento, some of the most actively anti-gay people are recent Russian immigrants (I lived in Sac for a few years) and the police have had to deal with clashes between the two. In fact, what I was trying to emphasize is that for some POC (not so much blacks, since not many of them are recent immigrants) the "POC are less supportive of gay rights" assertion may describe recent immigrants but might not describe as well people who've been here longer--i.e. it's more about where they're coming from recently, than about their race per se. I haven't seen any poll data reflecting immigrant status so I have no idea if the numbers bear up this hypothesis. But thanks for assuming that I was only referring to Hispanic immigrants and had no basis for my assumption.
And even if it did (which no reputable source is claiming), what does that have to do with insipid signs like this one? "Oh, the POC ruined this vote for us, so we get to use them on our signs!" I didn't mean the latter at all. What does it have to do with these signs? Good question. Not as much as it has to do with this discussion--yes, I was making the point that there are those in communities of color, who aren't very supportive of queer rights, just as there are those in the queer community who aren't very supportive of racial equality. The street runs both ways.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-07 08:24 pm (UTC)The point is that the philosophy of giving everyone equal legal rights has been applied to increase legal rights of women and blacks, and the same philosophy applies here.
What's to be gained by this approach?
The hope is to encourage the support of people who now support women's and blacks' rights.
How could this sign be rephrased to make it not inane?
That's a difficult one... how about:
Equal in the eyes of the law:
[check] Caucasian men
[check] African-Americans
[check] women
[ ] LGBTQ
Yes, this still ignores the fact that these groups overlap, but there's something to be said for having a simple sign.
How do you feel about the comparison, often made, with the rights of a white and a black person (of opposite genders) to marry each other?
The numbers you've seen about blackfolk are practically made up, anyway, based on a single exit poll, with no way to confirm or deny it.
Ok, but you're conflating POC (what I said) and blackfolk (what apparently lots of people are saying and is apparently not a tenable assertion).
My statement was based on a discussion I heard on NPR. It seems this CNN poll (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=CAI01p1) is the poll they're all referring to, which you describe as "practically made up." Googling, most analysis (e.g. Daily Kos) notes that there just aren't enough black folks in California for them to swing the outcome, even if this poll is accurate. Which is not the same as saying there aren't enough POC. Of course, as I was trying to note earlier, there are lots of ways to slice the numbers; it seems like age and religious affiliation probably make more sense than race. Are you also going to accuse me of bias if I note that the poll below found more opposition to Prop 8 among those with a college education and those with higher incomes?
Here's (http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i=860) a better poll; PPIC is quite a reputable organization in my book, more interested in truth than news or partisanship. See page 12 of the full report. They found 50% of whites, 61% of Hispanics, and 57% of Hispanics, blacks and Asians combined, voted yes on Prop 8; their sample sizes for blacks and Asians were too small to report the results separately.
And your baseless suspicion of recent Hispanic immigrants isn't too pretty, either.
A lot in this story isn't pretty. My "baseless" assumption is in fact, based on an awareness that the average immigrant is more religious than the average Californian, and personal experience with recent Asian immigrants (for them, religious means Buddhist), and the general awareness that immigrants are often coming from cultures where gayness is much more frowned on, and they often hold those views themselves at least for awhile. In Sacramento, some of the most actively anti-gay people are recent Russian immigrants (I lived in Sac for a few years) and the police have had to deal with clashes between the two. In fact, what I was trying to emphasize is that for some POC (not so much blacks, since not many of them are recent immigrants) the "POC are less supportive of gay rights" assertion may describe recent immigrants but might not describe as well people who've been here longer--i.e. it's more about where they're coming from recently, than about their race per se. I haven't seen any poll data reflecting immigrant status so I have no idea if the numbers bear up this hypothesis.
But thanks for assuming that I was only referring to Hispanic immigrants and had no basis for my assumption.
And even if it did (which no reputable source is claiming), what does that have to do with insipid signs like this one? "Oh, the POC ruined this vote for us, so we get to use them on our signs!"
I didn't mean the latter at all.
What does it have to do with these signs? Good question. Not as much as it has to do with this discussion--yes, I was making the point that there are those in communities of color, who aren't very supportive of queer rights, just as there are those in the queer community who aren't very supportive of racial equality. The street runs both ways.