Advocate turns to blacks to make a case for gays - The Boston Globe

Advocate turns to blacks to make a case for gays - The Boston Globe

By John C. Drake, Globe Staff January 6, 2008
As a plaintiff, he won over the state's highest court.
As an advocate, he helped persuade the Legislature.
Now, as chairman of the state's leading gay rights organization, David Wilson says he is determined to make the case to his own community.
MassEquality, a gay marriage advocacy coalition, has launched a statewide push to increase support for its cause among black residents of Massachusetts. The effort is a priority for Wilson, an African-American who was named the group's chairman in October.
He knows it will be a challenge.
Many black people in Massachusetts and across the country have reacted unsympathetically to the gay rights movement, especially to efforts by gay rights advocates to link the fight for marriage rights to the civil rights movement.
Gay rights advocates say with the battle against a constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage in the state now behind them, they are beginning a concerted effort to speak directly to the black community, hoping the approach can change some minds in the Bay State and serve as a national model for outreach to minorities.
"We have defeated the amendment, and clearly we need to educate the broader community about equal marriage," Wilson said. "We have a lot of work to do, because this is just a step forward in this equal-marriage fight across the country. If we get it right here in Massachusetts, we can expect to use this model elsewhere."
For Wilson, who was among the plaintiffs in the landmark SJC case that made gay marriage legal in Massachusetts and one of the first gay men to be married, the effort is personal.
"Having grown up in Boston and experiencing all of the discrimination as a young boy growing up in the '60s, and now as a gay man, it was a high priority for me to reach out to my own community," he said in a recent interview.
But his experience has made him realize how difficult it is to find gay, black advocates to speak publicly, and to find receptive audiences in black communities.
"I had many one-on-one discussions, but when I tried to call for more of a group meeting, it was very difficult," he said. "First of all they had to identify as a gay or lesbian couple to come to the meeting and potentially be outed by the community and the church. It was pretty impossible to talk to people as a group."
When the Legislature blocked a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on June 14, Wilson noticed that among the excited throng gathered outside the State House, there were very few black supporters.
"There were people of color in that audience, but not the numbers that should be there," he said. "With that number, we should have something similar in the audience."
An August 2007 national poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 27 percent of black respondents favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, compared with 36 percent of the general population. Community leaders and gay-rights advocates say support for same-sex marriage among black churchgoers tends to be lower nationally.
While there have been numerous Massachusetts polls on gay marriage, several pollsters in the state said they either did not gather racial data or the number of black respondents was too small to draw conclusions.
In October, soon after Wilson took office, MassEquality rolled out a plan to distribute among its supporters a pamphlet geared to black residents. It includes statements and stories from black, gay couples and prominent black supporters of gay rights. It also presents the contention that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue, not a religious one.
Even its title, "Jumping the Broom," invokes the way family bonds triumphed over racist legal barriers in black history. During slavery, black couples who could not legally marry would symbolically jump over a broom to symbolize their bond. It is a custom still practiced in many black weddings today. The pamphlet was developed by the National Black Justice Coalition, a gay rights group, for use during Maryland's same-sex marriage battle. It was customized for a Bay State audience.
"It's really going to take this narrow focus of community forums, community by community, and turning it into a message that individuals and groups of individuals can take out and teach on their own," Wilson said, describing MassEquality's plan to send supporters out to lead small-group meetings. "It will be run by people in the community, straight and gay parents who want to help their children and families understand the value of equal marriage for all, not just for white gay and lesbian couples."
The effort's initial steps have sputtered, as evidenced by two sparsely attended forums in Worcester and Boston in October, and a train-the-trainer session at the Harriet Tubman House in the South End, which was canceled in mid-November after organizers arrived to find the doors locked.
Al Toney, the Worcester diversity consultant who was hired by MassEquality to organize the effort, said it was a scheduling mix-up. The session is being rescheduled for later this month.
But Toney, who is black and gay, said cultural and religious opposition to gay rights also has blocked some of his initial efforts to speak to churches. One black pastor in Worcester was reluctant to allow him into his church to speak to congregants, but agreed to accept some of MassEquality's materials, place them in the church's foyer, and announce that they were available at the end of a Sunday service, he said.
"People went back and got the books, but there was such a clamor and uproar from some of the people within his church that he had to remove the books and flier," said Toney, who declined to identify the pastor for fear of damaging a relationship with a religious leader who had at least spoken with him. "We know it's a very tough sell, especially within the black community and the religious community, to even have these discussions," he said.
The Rev. J. Anthony Lloyd, pastor of the Greater Framingham Community Church, the largest majority-black congregation in Boston's western suburbs, said MassEquality probably will continue to face opposition.
He said MassEquality has not yet approached him. "I'd tell them 'Thank you very much, but no thank you,' " Lloyd said. "This isn't just the issue of somebody's arguing about their civil rights, but this is also a religious issue that goes to the very core and foundation of who our church is and what our church is about."
Lloyd said that since gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, he has declined two requests from same-sex couples to perform their ceremonies.
The opposition to MassEquality's effort in the black community is not just based on faith. Even supporters of the group's cause question the timing of the effort, more than five years after MassEquality was founded.
The Rev. Irene Monroe, a Cambridge minister who is black and a lesbian, has spoken against the refusal of some conservative black clergy to support same-sex marriage. She agreed to appear on a panel during the Worcester forum. But she called the effort by MassEquality a token gesture.
She said MassEquality should have been speaking to the black community all along, tying same-sex marriage to the need to strengthen family bonds.
"If the discourse was centered around saving the black family, you would have gotten a lot of black ministers and black people coming on board," Monroe said. "The tension around class and race is so sharp here in this community, this issue is one more way in which it happens. To think of us as an afterthought is not a perception, it's a reality."
Wilson said MassEquality did not launch a concerted outreach effort to the black community until six years after it was founded because officials did not think there was adequate time to have in-depth conversations while it was embroiled in legal fights and lobbying efforts.
"We actually did, from the very beginning of MassEquality, reach out to blacks and communities of color, but the take rate was pretty limited, mostly because of the cultural and religious barriers," Wilson said.
"Clearly if there were going to be other initiatives brought from the back burner to the front, this was going to be one of them for me," he said. "It will require a lot of work, which we're now wiling to do."
John Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com.