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Second of two parts (See ‘Culver City’s Own First Dude Is Worth Hearing Out,’ Nov. 10. Keywords: Bilson Davis.]
At breakfast on Sunday morning, my oldest son, my wife and I re-opened the question of whether it was valid for me to go against my personal grain and vote “no” on Prop. 8, purely for the benefit of another son, who is gay. Polling the table as the final traces of a runny, possibly jaywalking, egg disappeared from Diane’s plate, the vote was 3 to 0 to endorse my awkward but heartfelt vote.
Without dwelling on my reaction when the Yes side prevailed and gay marriage stood outlawed in California once again, there are delicious ironies to savor about the outcome. The mixed feeling in my stomach evoked the old vaudeville line about not knowing how to react when your dreaded mother-in-law roared over the cliff in your new convertible.
One week ago tonight, white liberals in California were sinking to their knees, thanking the God they normally do not believe in for creating black liberals so they could singlehandedly play hero and rescue them from bondage by voting the best of them into the White House. I heard giddy white liberals shouting almost incoherently that they had snookered those nasty, pasty-white Republicans by making Barack Obama the next President.
But before they could finish drooling, word came that Prop. 8 — the attempt to reverse a judge’s ruling last spring that instantly legalized gay marriage — had won. In the confusing lexicon of ballot measures, this meant the gay community had lost its bid to seal the judge’s much-disputed opinion, and that once more gay marriage was out-of-bounds in California.
Many hours passed, from late last Tuesday into early last Thursday, before suddenly sober white liberals realized that the supposedly monolithic and loyal black community that they had just been toasting, had betrayed them on the gay marriage vote.
Onesided Vote
Pop pollsters tell us that 70 percent of California blacks — all but a couple of whom identify as liberal — voted to re-outlaw gay marriage. White liberals fairly leaped into the vat labeled “conundrum” with this announcement. How could they hoist their glasses high to black liberals on the Obama vote and rebuke them for opposing gay marriage? It’s schizophrenic, I tell you.
And you thought this was a terrific time to be white and liberal in California.
Two reasons of equal weight have been given for the overwhelming black vote on gay marriage . They were heavily offended that gays and their sympathizers had the gall to not just insinuate but to billboard the arrogant, and in their view, false claim that gay marriage merely was a latter-day incarnation of the civil rights movement. The second reason was that American blacks fundamentally are a religious people, down to their kishkes, as we say in my home.
Just as gay marriage is unacceptable to about 90 percent of my fellow Orthodox Jews, the concept is as undebatedly odious to nearly three-fourths of California blacks.
Back to First Dude
To close out our two-day discussion, we return to Culver City’s First Dude, Bilson Davis, best known presently as the stoic-appearing husband of School Board member Saundra Davis. Mr. Davis, typically out of range when reporters are around, emerged on page one of the Los Angeles Times on Saturday morning with a very provocative perspective on Prop. 8.
Opening a third avenue of debate, Mr. Davis, who is religious and not a political liberal, did not need to parry the assertion that it is a civil right of gay persons to marry. He was clear.
He told the Times: “I was born black. I can’t change that. They weren’t born gay; they chose it.”
Looks to me as if white liberals are going to be too busy the next few years trying to educate their so-called black brothers. They won’t have time to sassy-talk Republicans. After years of being poor losers, white liberals are re-demonstrating that they are just as adept at being poor winners.
