Prop8 Includes Black Queers

I am SO fucking frustrated.

How is it that I am hear shit from queers about how “they” could vote for a Black man but “black people” didn’t vote for Prop8?

SAY WHAT?!

Like, even if one does the math and assumed that EVERY black person voted (including those who inellgible like children), and EVERY black person voted democrat, it still wouldn’t have been enough votes on their own? JEEEZ people do some math at least.

As a black woman I have worked hard on queer rights and visibilty. As a queer, I support the right for people to be deterministic about their relationships. And if marriage supprts and entrenches particular aims then I supprt that. Marriage ain’t for me but I don’t have kids and property either. My life isn’t tied up with another in ways that might invlove unsupportive family members involving themselves in ways they wouldn’t/couldn’t if I was in a hetero relationship. I’m Canadian so I couldn’t vote, but I would see it as supporting a piece of myself and as the morally right thing for me to do as a human being walking the planet.

As a queer woman I have not always benefited from the energy of non-POC queers. How many times have I had to explain my damned self over and over and over and over…? Had to justify myself. Defend myself. Be smaller than myself? Stand alone in the face of? How many times do I have to tell non-POC queers an illustrative story from my life? Offer up some piece of horror to get validation of my reality? Another peanut with your cocktail?

I wonder how this historic moment became one about “our” civil rights vs “their” civil rights. Why are folks mixing historical racism up with homophobia/ pro heteronormativity? Why are people mixing national with local politics? Why can’t people do the math?

I’m fucking disgusted. Unpack the shit people. Do the fucking work and get the framing right.

One the night of the election I was SO proud. I teared up. I stood up in my living room spontaneously following that speech and aplauded. And the next day I woke up and wondered how long it would last. How long before the shit would start to hit the fan. What the shit woudl look and smell like. Looks like round one is here.