Black Gay Leader Tells Mainstream GLBT Community to Back the F*ck Up on Obama

Yesterday, I was listening to Ed Lover's morning show in NYC. The topic was Obama and a caller phoned in expressing his disappointment with Obama over his "lax" approach with Lesbian and Gay Rights. I am paraphrasing what the caller said, but he commented that he could not understand how Obama, an African-American, could not sympathize with the GLBT or LGBT (however you want to flip it). He further said being black and gay were similar in the area of civil rights violations, and it behooved him that Obama was acting so slow on the issues.

Ed Lover flipped the hell out and smashed the notion that being black and gay are socially congruent. He said, "Being black is not being gay. When I wake up, I am black. I cannot scrub that off. Being gay is something that I don't have to broadcast. I don't have a choice being African-American."

With this said, there has been a lot of bad blood between this argument of civil rights around race and sexuality. And recently, there has been a lot of bad blood between these factions. Where I work, white feminists and members of the GLBT committee were blasting black Californians on the recent rejection of the state recognizing civil marriages. As I read these people who were totally incensed with the bogus news reports of "black homophobic" voters being responsible for the bill passing that destroyed civil unions, it was another reminder of how deeply race is embedded in every facet of this society. Regardless of who you do, or screw.

Instead of me going into detail, a poignant commentary by LZ Granderson, who responded to the criticism of Obama by mainstream GLBT spokespersons concerning civil issues around these communities.

Here's the link...blog on EcoSI
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/16/granderson.obama.gays/index.html