Blogs I've been reading since Prop 8 screwed us

I been reading a lot of interesting viewpoints from gay and transgender advocates. Everyone has their own opinion on what we should do to fight forward. Here's my readings:

"Holy Defeat!" - Kevin Naff, writer for the Washington Blade, writes about how we need to deal with religious voters

"No on 8's White Bias" - Jasmyne Cannick, who writes about issues of black rights for blacks of any sexual orientation. I only read the first few paragraphs, but I list it because Kevin's article above makes a reference to it and calls Jasmyne "racsist" for seeming to "all but celebrate Prop 8's passage". Maybe I'm missing something, but the first few paragraphs of Cannick's article seem to diminish Kevin's claim. Anyway, their both here, so you read them both, and be the judge.

More on how race played a role, read, "The arrogance of white gays" - Herndon Davis.

"Why the black church isn't like any other black church" - blogpost by screenname 'say what?' on th blog Pam's House Blend.


As you can tell, there's a theme going on up there (and maybe they're right. You decide). I found some others:

"While we engage in the blame game, the right is laughing" - Pam Spaulding, hostess of the Pam's House Blend. This is getting in reverse chronological order, so this long list of articles might be taking you back in time. Hopefully that means were doing better than "the blame game".

And the first one I read after Prop 8, written Nov 5th, "The day after - the bad stuff and a challenge to the lgbt community", written by screenname 'The Author' on Pam's House Blend.

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If anyone can read the above and tell me any interpretations I don't already know, I'd be grateful. But even if I've heard it before, I'd still listen.

My take,

I think homophobia is bad no matter what the race or religion of the homophobe. I include atheists in this judgment. If your homophobic, you should be held accountable for that homophobia.

But...

Holding people accountable requires engaging them, and each audience is different. I do believe that that, like above, the black church is not like other churches. That doesn't mean we don't engage them, and challenge their homophobia, their bigotry, but we must do that differently than the way we do it for white churches. Not everything has to be different in our tralking style. Much of wht we have to say will be the same. But we have to educate ourselves before going in there.

Isn't this common sense? That we have to know our audience before preaching to them? Even if must tell them the hard truths they'd rather not hear, don't we still have to have some empathic understanding of their culture?

At least if we want the best chance of them opening their ears.

Hardcore black bigots are probably unsaveable. But these represent only individuals among a larger sea of black people. Can we dismiss the majority of blacks as monolithically bigotted to the same degree and all equally unmovable? Just by skin color?

My point: We need to look for the good individuals in every race. That means we must let our minds stay open that these individuals are out there.