Some of the handful of people out there still angry at me for what they think I wrote about Prop 8—and not, you know, what I actually wrote—sent me the link to Charles Blow's column in the New York Times this weekend.

We now know that blacks probably didn’t tip the balance for Proposition 8. Myth busted. However, the fact remains that a strikingly high percentage of blacks said they voted to ban same-sex marriage in California.

Agreed: blacks didn't tip the balance. I never said that they did; and I never "blamed" blacks for the passage of Prop 8. (Blow isn't addressing me, I realize. But folks sent me the link to his column with notes that basically amounted to "See! You were wrong!") I did note that African Americans voted for Prop 8 at much higher rates than other racial groups—at least according to CNN's widely cited exit poll. I've been admonished for citing exit polls at all, since exit polls can be unreliable. (No one has admonished me, however, for citing exit polls showing that Obama won fewer gay votes than Kerry; exit polls that make gay voters look bad can be freely cited; exit polls that make straight black voters look bigoted cannot.) But Blow, who, unlike me, "gets it all right," according to one person who sent me a link (along with a bullshit accusation of racism), cites the very same exit poll data I did:

There was one very telling (and virtually ignored) statistic in CNN’s exit poll data that may shed some light: There were far more black women than black men, and a higher percentage of them said that they voted for the measure than the men. How wide was the gap? According to the exit poll, 70 percent of all blacks said that they voted for the proposition. But 75 percent of black women did.

I can't remember if I discussed the fact that black women voted for Prop 8 at greater rates than black men. I do recall ranting about it aloud to someone—someone in the office? someone on CNN?—and I found it distressing for the very same reason that Blow does: the homophobia in the African American community isn't just warping the lives of black gay men. It's quite literally killing straight black women. Blow:

More specifically, blacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women’s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. (In contrast, only 13 percent of the white men in the study said they had sex with both men and women, while 14 percent of the white women said that they knew their partners were bisexual.)

By helping to create and maintain a culture that rejects gay black men and insists that "gay" is essentially white—by putting gay black men in the untenable position of having to choose between their racial identities and their sexual identities—black women are killing themselves. (And the racism in the gay community—see the 7% of gay Kerry voters who went for McCain this time out—doesn’t help either.)

Back to Blow: the columnist suggests two "don'ts" for gay groups hoping to reach black women:

First, comparing the struggles of legalizing interracial marriage with those to legalize gay marriage is a bad idea. Many black women do not seem to be big fans of interracial marriage either. They’re the least likely of all groups to intermarry, and many don’t look kindly on the black men who intermarry at nearly three times the rate that they do, according to a 2005 study of black intermarriage rates in the Wisconsin Law Review. Wrong reference. Don’t even go there.

Second, don’t debate the Bible. You can’t win. Religious faith is not defined by logic, it defies it. Instead, decouple the legal right from the religious rite, and emphasize the idea of acceptance without endorsement.

Decoupling marriage-the-civil-right from marriage-the-religious-rite? Gay leaders like Evan Wolfson are careful to point out the difference between civil and religious institutions of marriage; I made that same point about “rights” and “rites” in my post about a bigoted column in the UW Daily. ("Fact is, the state usually has very different concepts about a lot of things—usually broader concepts, to accommodate social and religious differences—than any one church or faith might. That's why we have civil marriage rights and religious marriage rites.") But we should make this point louder and clearer and more often and make sure we’re reaching black voters.

And, no, let's not debate the Bible. As I wrote in February of last year...

We should be out there making this case to bigots like Hardaway and Washington and Dobson and Falwell and Musgrave: No one wants to change your mind about homosexuality. You can think we’re naughty, you can think we’re sinful. And you know what? You can sign off on granting us our full civil rights.... But so long as we conflate liking us—or believing that Jeebus loves us too—with granting us our fundamental civil rights, we make winning those civil rights that much more difficult.

But as to Blow's point on comparing gay marriage to interracial marriage—comparing the freedom to marry the person you love to, er, the freedom to marry the person you love—I have to disagree, even if the comparison turns off straight black women. More on why in a moment.

But first: I was roundly criticized for citing the exit poll data—and my disappointment with the African American vote—without offering up some constructive suggestions for how we—"we" meaning gay people, who aren't all white—could've done a better job reaching out to straight black voters. (And the "No on 8" campaign did an abysmal job reaching out to blacks—straight and gay.) Unlike my first post about Prop 8—which I wrote on Wednesday, November 5, moments after "Yes" was declared the winner—Blow's column, written more than two weeks after the vote, does include constructive suggestions. His "don'ts”, above, and this single "do":

So pitch it as a health issue. The more open blacks are to the idea of homosexuality, the more likely black men would be to discuss their sexual orientations and sexual histories. The more open they are, the less likely black women would be to put themselves at risk unwittingly. And, the more open blacks are to homosexuality over all, the more open they are likely to be to gay marriage. This way, everyone wins.

In other words, tell straight black women that their homophobia, which is grounded in a moral judgment (Blow's column was headlined "Gay Marriage and a Moral Minority"), is hurting them too. Point out that they are victimizing themselves. It's a good strategy, a solid argument. But it's one that eventually winds up back at a debate about the Bible. We can say, "Accept homosexuality—or at least be 'open... to idea of homosexuality'—so that gay black men can come out and live openly. Because the life you save may be your own." But we're likely to get this in response: "But my Bible says..."

Now back to Blow’s “drop it” suggestion about the comparison between interracial marriage and gay marriage:

As the slingers of racism charges have been pointing out since November 5: the African Americans vote in California was too small to have been decisive. It didn’t “tip the balance.” Which is why, they’ve argued, that citing the black vote on Prop 8 amounts to an inflammatory distraction. It's divisive, not helpful, motivated by racism, conscious or subconscious, wocka wocka wocka. But the very next thing of their mouths is this: To advance its political agenda, the gay community—which for the millionth time is not all white—must to do more and better outreach to straight African American voters. We need to do more and better outreach to... a community whose votes did not "tip the balance" on gay rights this year and probably won’t in future years. And Blow argues that to reach out to these voters—these non-decisive voters—the gay movement should retool its message and drop arguments that are apparently working with other, much larger segments of the voting public—whites, Latinos, Asians—including arguments that compare “legalizing interracial marriage with [legalizing] gay marriage.”

The same voices can't argue that, on gay rights, the straight black vote is so unimportant that it’s a divisive distraction to even note it and at the same time argue that the straight black vote is so important that the gay movement must retool its messages to target the black vote—even if it means dropping (“Don’t even go there”) messages that are working on groups of voters that are large enough to “tip the balance.”

I happen to believe that the black vote on Prop 8, while not decisive, has to be noted (and with distress); and that the gay community must do a better job reaching out to straight black voters.