Op-Ed

Gay Marriage in Alabama

Published

10 years ago

February 16, 2015

By Lee A. Daniels
NNPA Columnist

It’s entirely appropriate that the bigoted antics of Alabama’s conservative, publicity-hound Chief Justice Roy S. Moore in unsuccessfully trying to block the right of same-sex couples to marry there erupted in February – Black History Month.

For his actions that briefly led some of the state’s 68 probate judges to not issue licenses to same-sex couples while other state judges did so underscore an enduring dynamic of American history as a whole and one of the central lessons of Black Americans’ centuries-long freedom struggle.

First, Moore’s ploy reminds us—as do such things as the controversy surrounding America’s crisis of undocumented immigration; and the continued rejection by some of Muslim Americans as American citizens; and the Republican Party’s efforts to suppress Blacks’ right to vote—how controversial issues of citizenship have always been.

And they again cast into sharp relief a central lesson of the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s—and of Barack Obama’s election and re-election to the presidency: Just because you achieve significant victories does not mean the forces of bigotry will disappear. It does not mean the struggle is over.

Indeed, the turmoil of America’s post-1960s decades, and especially the last ten years, point to just the opposite reality: That is that even as the victories expand the “space” for tolerance, the forces of bigotry work even harder to maintain the barriers of exclusion.

The most dramatic example of that dynamic over the past decade has been conservatives’ furious and in many instances deranged reaction to the Obama presidency. Close behind has been their opposition to the increased support of the right of gays and lesbians to marry as other American do. The advance of that latter sentiment has been nothing short of extraordinary since the ruling of Massachusetts’ highest state court legalizing same-sex marriage there provoked numerous conservative-dominated states to approve constitutional amendments banning it.

In 2003, only 40 percent of Americans approved of same-sex marriage. By last May, however, support for same-sex marriage reached a high-water mark of 55 percent. Even more stunning were the advances made in legalizing same-sex marriage. In 2013 gays and lesbians could be legally married in only 17 states and the District of Columbia. However, by late 2014, propelled by a flurry of federal court orders striking down states’ constitutional bans against it, same-sex marriage had become legal in an additional 20 states.

Now, it’s widely expected that this June the U.S. Supreme Court will affirm those federal court decisions in a landmark case it accepted for review last fall. Even though oral arguments in that case won’t be heard until the spring, the High Court sent a strong signal of its intent last week in rebuffing Moore’s gambit in Alabama and allowing marriage licenses to be issued to same-sex couples there.

So, one might say a complete victory for legalizing same-sex marriage is at hand. Of course, that will not be a happy moment for those Black Americans who oppose legalizing such unions—just as it won’t be for opponents of other backgrounds. And, it must be said, as several polls have shown, that Black opposition to homosexuality and lesbianism is qualitatively different from that of the White opposition. That’s the reason anti-gay and lesbian sentiment has no significant impact on Black political activity.

But it will be a happy moment for the Black freedom struggle overall, because that struggle has been immeasurably aided over the last decade by the coalescing of the debate about the rights due those one may call “outsider Americans”—not just gays and lesbians and the groups mentioned above, but white women, too. This is the debate over America’s future as a multiracial, multicultural nation, one whose “outsiders” are demanding “in” on terms satisfactory to them.

The rise of this new American society—which, of course, is still very much in formation—has underscored a fundamental point about bigotry. It’s almost always all-inclusive: Those who express bigotry against one group of people “different” from them are likely to be bigoted against others who are different in different ways as well.

That means that “outsider Americans” must pledge allegiance to a fundamental principle: full citizenship and equal rights for all.

Author’s Note: In a recent column on the film “Selma,” I mistakenly stated that two Black teenagers, Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson, were murdered by Whites in the aftermath of the Selma-to-Montgomery March in March 1965. In fact, they were murdered by Whites in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday, September 15, 1963 in the turmoil in that city that followed the infamous bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Lee A. Daniels is a longtime journalist based in New York City. His essay, “Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Great Provocateur,” appears in Africa’s Peacemakers: Nobel Peace Laureates of African Descent (2014), published by Zed Books. His new collection of columns, Race Forward: Facing America’s Racial Divide in 2014, is available at www.amazon.com.
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Related Topics:Alabama gay rights Lee A. Daniels LGBTQ rights same sex marriage

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COMMENTARY: My Sunday School Lesson with President Jimmy Carter

When I saw him, Carter was spry, quick-witted, and kind. The former president wore a bolo string tie anchored by an eight-stone turquoise clasp that dangled below the neck, as he began the lesson on the subject of grief and the death of his 28-year-old grandson. Drawing from scripture (on this particular day, a passage on the persecution of the Thessalonians), Carter said such moments were simply tests of one’s faith, endurance, and hope.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 5, 2025

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy of The White House.

By Emil Guillermo

President Jimmy Carter, at age 100, didn’t make it to the new year, nor the next presidential inaugural.

I’ve always been a big Carter fan, so the news of his passing brought me back to a happy place.

Plains, Georgia, 2016.

I was visiting family not far from the land of presidential peanut farmers. I found myself the only full-blooded Filipino in the room at Maranatha Baptist Church, the spiritual home base for the esteemed No. 39.

President Carter looked fine that Sunday in Plains. But especially fine for his job on that day– to give the Sunday school lesson on what coincidentally was the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

Carter’s health made headlines in 2015 when he disclosed having both brain and liver cancer. It was thought he had just two or three weeks to live.

Everyone’s always underestimating Carter. After treatments, Carter’s forecast turned out not to be true.

“We lack inspiration, we lack the idealism to set our goals high. We’ve been satisfied with mediocrity. And I include myself,” Carter said. People want an average life, instead of aspiring to be, “outstanding, or superb or brilliant or exceptional.”

“I’m afraid that our country and its effect on people of other nations has suffered from the aftermath of 9/11,” Carter said. He “didn’t want to brag,” but said his goal for the country was always to be “superb and be a country that promoted peace and human rights…While I was in office, we never dropped a bomb, lost a missile, or fired a bullet.”

“Since 9/11,” Carter said, “we’ve pretty much abandoned our commitment to human rights as we reacted to terrorism.” He lamented that Afghanistan had become the longest war in American history, a direct outcome of 9/11, as well as the invasion of Iraq, which Carter called “unnecessary.”

Carter, whose administration took us out of an energy crisis, also pointed out how the U.S. is still suffering from a financial crisis that has exposed a deep inequality that has divided us as a people.

“We’ve become distrustful of people who are different from us,” Carter said. “We used to be a proud heterogeneous nation…and now we are fearful…and we’ve become poorer as a country.”

Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002; a fact that belies how many conservatives view his efforts to find a peace in the Middle East as “anti-Semitic.”

Jimmy Carter’s worldview requires open minds to come together. Too often. these days, that seems nearly impossible.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator He was the first Filipino American to host a national news show in 1989 at NPR’s “All Things Considered.” See Emil Amok’s Takeout on www.patreon.com/emilamok Subscribe to him on YouTube.com/@emilamok1

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In 1974, Then-Gov. Jimmy Carter Visited the Home of Oakland Black Black Political Activist Virtual Murrell While Running for President

civil rights icon Georgia State Representative Julian Bond said that Carter, along with governors Reuben Askew of Florida, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Terry Sanford of North Carolina, were all a part of what was being dubbed the “New South” and so supported civil rights and voting rights for African Americans.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 3, 2025

Oakland Post

Virtual Murrell chats with Jimmy Carter two years before Carter was elected president in 1976. Courtesy photo.

By Virtual T. Murrell
Special to The Post

On his way to seeking the presidency, then-Gov. Jimmy Carter visited the Bay Area in his capacity as campaign chairman of the Democratic National Committee in March of 1974.

A friend of mine, Bill Lynch, a Democrat from San Francisco, had been asked to host Carter, who was then relatively unknown. Seeking my advice on the matter, I immediately called my friend, civil rights icon Georgia State Representative Julian Bond, for his opinion.

Bond said that Carter, along with governors Reuben Askew of Florida, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Terry Sanford of North Carolina, were all a part of what was being dubbed the “New South” and so supported civil rights and voting rights for African Americans.

Based on Julian’s comments, I agreed to host the governor. We picked him up at the San Francisco Airport. With his toothy smile, I could tell almost right away that he was like no other politician I had ever met. On his arrival, there was a message telling him to go to the VIP room, where he met then-Secretary of State Jerry Brown.

After leaving the airport, we went to a reception in his honor at the home of Paul “Red” Fay, who had served as the acting secretary of the Navy under President John Kennedy. (Carter, it turned out, had been himself a 1946 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a submariner in the 1950s.)

The following afternoon, the Niagara Movement Democratic Club hosted a reception for Carter, which was a major success. Carter indicated that he would be considering running for president and hoped for our support if he did so.

As the event was winding down, I witnessed the most amazing moment: Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, was in the kitchen with my former wife, Irene, wearing an apron and busting suds! You would have to have been there to see it: The first and last time a white woman cleaned up my kitchen.

A few months later, President Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal. He was succeeded by his vice president, Gerald Ford.

On the heels of that scandal, Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976 represented integrity and honesty at a point in America’s history when he was just what the nation needed to lead as president of the United States.

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Life After Domestic Violence: What My Work With Black Women Survivors Has Taught Me

Survivors sometimes lack awareness about the dynamics of healthy relationships, particularly when one has not been modeled for them at home. Media often minimizes domestic abuse, pushing the imagery of loyalty and love for one’s partner above everything — even harm.

Published

3 weeks ago

December 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Paméla Michelle Tate, Ph.D.

By Paméla Michelle Tate, Ph.D., California Black Media Partners

It was the Monday morning after her husband had a “situation” involving their child, resulting in food flying in the kitchen and a broken plate.

Before that incident, tensions had been escalating, and after years of unhappiness, she finally garnered enough courage to go to the courthouse to file for a divorce.

She was sent to an on-site workshop, and the process seemed to be going well until the facilitator asked, “Have you experienced domestic abuse?” She quickly replied, “No, my husband has never hit me.”

The facilitator continued the questionnaire and asked, “Has your husband been emotionally abusive, sexually abusive, financially abusive, technologically abusive, or spiritually abusive?”

She thought about how he would thwart her plans to spend time with family and friends, the arguments, and the many years she held her tongue. She reflected on her lack of access to “their money,” him snooping in her purse, checking her social media, computer, and emails, and the angry blowups where physical threats were made against both her and their children.

At that moment, she realized she had been in a long-suffering domestic abuse relationship.

After reading this, you might not consider the relationship described above as abusive — or you might read her account and wonder, “How didn’t she know that she was in an abusive relationship?”

After working with survivors at Black Women Revolt Against Domestic Violence in San Francisco, California, I have learned a great deal from a variety of survivors. Here are some insights:

Abuse thrives in isolation.
Societal tolerance of abusive behavior is prevalent in the media, workplaces, and even churches, although there are societal rules about the dos and don’ts in relationships.

Survivors are groomed into isolation.
Survivors are emotionally abused and manipulated almost from the beginning of their relationships through love-bombing. They are encouraged or coerced into their own little “love nest,” isolating them from family and friends.

People who harm can be charismatic and fun.
Those outside the relationship often struggle to believe the abuser would harm their partner until they witness or experience the abusive behavior firsthand.

Survivors fear judgment.
Survivors fear being judged by family, friends, peers, and coworkers and are afraid to speak out.

Survivors often still love their partners.
This is not Stockholm Syndrome; it’s love. Survivors remember the good times and don’t want to see their partner jailed; they simply want the abuse to stop.

The financial toll of abuse is devastating.
According to the Allstate Foundation’s study, 74% of survivors cite lack of money as the main reason for staying in abusive relationships. Financial abuse often prevents survivors from renting a place to stay. Compounding this issue is the lack of availability of domestic abuse shelters.

The main thing I have learned from this work is that survivors are resilient and the true experts of their own stories and their paths to healing. So, when you encounter a survivor, please take a moment to acknowledge their journey to healing and applaud their strength and progress.

About the Author

Paméla Michelle Tate, Ph.D., is executive director of Black Women Revolt Against Domestic Violence in San Francisco.