NAACP Out-of-Step With the Black Community

Last fall 70% of black voters in California supported Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that ended gay marriage in California. That opposition stirred up a significant amount of hatred from the gay activists toward blacks.

Today the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People) is coming out in support of Proposition 8 and gay marriage:

Back in November, the wounds in the black community over California's Proposition 8 were still fresh. The community was divided between more conservative leaders, often clergy, who oppose marriage equality for religious reasons, and civil- and human-rights activists who saw the ballot initiative to prohibit same-sex marriage as a civil-rights violation they could not countenance. While the California chapter of America's oldest civil-rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had come out in opposition to Prop. 8, the national office had remained silent.

The NAACP has been walking a tightrope on gay rights. Polls show that African Americans overwhelmingly oppose gay marriage, but much of the high-level leadership of the nation's oldest civil-rights organization opposes legal efforts to deny gays the right to marry. Last week, the national office of the NAACP leapt into the fray when it sent a letter to California legislators urging them to support legislation that would repeal Prop. 8. After meeting with the Black Justice Coalition, a black gay-rights group, and the leadership of the California State Conference, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and NAACP President Ben Jealous agreed to come out publicly in support of repealing Prop. 8.

The move thrusts the NAACP into the middle of a fight that, until now, it has largely avoided, because of the risk of alienating both board-level leadership and rank-and-file members. The California legislature approved a nonbinding resolution yesterday describing Prop. 8 as an improper revision of the state constitution. The resolution contends that Prop. 8 should have passed a two-thirds majority of the legislature before being placed on the ballot. The California Supreme Court is scheduled to hear challenges to Prop. 8 on Thursday.

What this move makes obvious is that the NAACP isn't really interested in supporting the views of blacks, but of supporting whatever is politically correct at the moment.

This move will not make blacks suddenly fall in love with gay marriage. They overwhelmingly dislike it, and an out-of-step organization is not going to convince them otherwise.