Pray Brethren

Pray Brethren

Monday, May 21, 2012

Gay Marriage and the Minority Vote

While Harvard geopoliticist Samuel Huntington defined America’s identity as white, Protestant, and English-speaking, the United States is becoming increasingly Latino, Catholic, and Spanish-speaking. Huntington’s fear – as is the fear of many conservatives – is that the influx of non-white, non-Protestant, and non-English-speakers will only turn the United States into a cleft country, a nation deeply split along cultural, religious, and linguistic divisions. Coupled with the fear of minorities and their tendency to vote for liberal politicians, both Huntington and conservatives fear a fundamental change in America’s identity. They forget, however, that immigrants and blacks are far more loyal to the defining characterists of American identy: the worship of God, the bonds of brotherhood, and the male-female character of marriage. As minorities now make up more than half of all children born in America, conservatives must re-evaluate their position on how they define American identity and who among us exemplifies that identity.

Are not radical feminism and homosexuality far greater threats to America’s identity than an influx of immigrants and minorities? Should the conservatives cede the minority vote and allow the Democrats to be the party of the immigrants? Can the GOP finally cut itself loose of the Log Cabin Republicans and the pro-choice politicians in its own party and reach out to immigrants and minorities who share the same traditional moral outlook? If the NAACP and Barack Obama want to tie themselves to gay marriage and thus betray the natural law and religious character of the Civil Rights Movement, so be it. Let the Republicans return to their party platform of 1856, which pledged to end the "twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery", and once more be the defenders of marriage and the Civil Rights Movement.

Consider these examples. The black vote is a monolithic bloc which the Democrats have consistently drawn on for decades. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry all claimed more than 85% of the black vote. And it shouldn’t surprise us that Barack Obama received over 95% of the black vote in 2008. But at the same that black Californians voted in Obama, 7 out of 10 of them voted to ban gay marriage in the state. Flash forward to 2012 and within 24-hours of Obama’s newfound support for gay marriage, Black voters rejected gay marriage in North Carolina by 2 to 1. A close look at the image below tells us the shared story of California and North Carolina: it is the minorities who uphold marriage and the college-educated whites who stand against it.


But it’s not just blacks and Latinos who stand alongside conservatives in this culture war, we see it in immigrants coming from Asia, Africa, and South America as well. Unlike European nations, the vast majority of immigrants coming to the United States have been Christian - indeed, immigration has made America more Christian today than it was fifty years ago. One caller to a New York City radio station shared his opinion on Obama’s acceptance of gay marriage: “I'm totally against it. I mean I'm born and raised in New York. My parents are from Guyana. That would never go in Guyana.” Manny Pacquiao, a well-known Pilipino boxer, has come out swinging – pardon the pun – against gay marriage. But publically sharing any views contrary gay marriage is one closet no one is allowed to come out of. In the name of “tolerance” Yahoo! News has declared Pacquiao “homophobic” and “intolerant” while The Grove shopping mall in L.A. has banned him from its premises.

It is time for conservatives to set aside their nativist proclivities and see how Asians like the Pilipino Manny Pacquiao, the Christian immigrants from Mexico and Guyana, and the deeply religious black community here in America, are much closer to our national identity than the white, Protestant Log Cabin Republicans. As the Catholic Church begins shifting its American cardinals from the northeast to the Latino southwest, drawing more and more on minorities to fill the ranks of priests and bishops, so too should conservatives re-evaluate the immigrants and minorities in their midst. It may just be that they have more in common than they originally thought.


UPDATE: The Coalition of African American Pastors concurs with the assessment of Orate Fratres in that there has been a "hijacking of the civil rights movement by homosexuals, bisexuals and gender-confused people." Rev. William Owens, the President and founder of the CAAP declared,"We who marched with Rev. King did not march one inch or one mile to promote same-sex marriage," and that the "NAACP has abandoned its historic responsibility to speak for and safeguard the civil rights movement." The readers of Oratre Fratres should support Rev. William Owens and the CAAP by signing their petition to protect the male-female character of marriage.

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