California ban on gay marriage helped by black voters

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Cheryl Weston once attended a wedding ceremony for gay friends, but on Election Day, she voted for a constitutional amendment to declare marriage in California as between only a man and a woman.

Weston, 44, is one of an overwhelming number -- 70% -- of black voters in California who voted for Proposition 8 and helped secure its passage, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

African Americans, energized by Barack ObamaBarack Obama's presidential bid, boosted their numbers at the polls this year to 10% of the state's electorate, up from 6% in 2004.

"The Obama people were thrilled to turn out high percentages of African Americans, but" Proposition 8 "literally wouldn't have passed without those voters," said Gary Dietrich, president of Citizen Voice, a nonpartisan voter awareness organization.

Latinos were 18% of California's voters, and through sheer numbers also contributed to Proposition 8's success. But 53% of Latino voters supported the measure, a much lower percentage than black voters. Among white and Asian voters, 49% voted for the measure.

Opponents of Proposition 8 appealed to voters to reject the measure as discriminatory and unconstitutional.

But messages that opponents hoped would strike a chord with minority voters -- and remind them that interracial marriage once was banned -- collided with traditional religious views.

"You listen to the African-American pastors, they do not buy that argument," Dietrich said. "They do not believe at all that there is a correlation between civil rights vis-À-vis blacks and rights for gays."

Divisions over gay marriage proved a challenge for African-American civil rights groups.

The Greater Sacramento Urban League took a stand against Proposition 8, which was the decision of its president, James Shelby, 66.

"I'm a Christian man," he said. "But I'm also president of the Urban League, and the Urban League has always been a civil rights group. That's what this organization was founded on."

He said it wouldn't be a sign of leadership to go out and "wave a flag and see how it blows" to take the pulse of the black community and then match that. "The law says that they have the right," he said. "I think that the courts are ultimately going to be the ones to prevail on this."

Sacramento NAACP President Betty Williams said her chapter was so divided it chose not to take a position on Proposition 8, although the California NAACP opposed it.

"We were split right down the middle," Williams said, with younger people tending to oppose rather than favor it.

Williams declined to say how she voted, but she said she believes "having the government tell a person whether or not they can marry someone is discrimination. It is."

She said she doesn't believe any black person, though, would knowingly discriminate against anyone else. "They did not walk into that voting booth wanting to discriminate," she said.

Williams said younger members argued against Proposition 8, saying it doesn't hurt anyone if gay people marry.

"They also said that if you're taking away one group's rights, 'Who is next?'