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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
But yes, if the gay marriage bill is defeated in MD, black will be blamed for it, even if they're not to blame. Just like in Cali.[/quote]I had not heard about the prop 8 data being wrong. Can you link to correct data?[/quote]

I can and I'm very happy to do so. Also, I'd like to point out that black people make up a little more than 6 percent of California's population, so the blame they received for the passage of Prop 8 was both laughable and predictable.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/06/BANB154OS1.DTL

Also, here's an article from 2008, when it was still thought that 70% of black voters in CA supported Prop 8. The writer made a very interesting point, although one that most people ignored in favor of blaming black people.

[quote]Some conservative commentators, who didn’t have much else to gloat about, dwelt lingeringly on what they evidently regarded as the upside of the huge, Obama-sparked African-American turnout. “It was the black vote that voted down gay marriage,” Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, insisted triumphantly—and, it turns out, wrongly.[b] If exit polling is to be believed, seventy per cent of California’s African-American voters did indeed vote yes on Prop. 8, as did upward of eighty per cent of Republicans, conservatives, white evangelicals, and weekly churchgoers[size=18]. But the initiative would have passed, barely, even if not a single African-American had shown up at the polls.[/size][/b][/quote]

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/12/01/081201taco_talk_hertzberg?printable=true#ixzz1uU12iBzv

Again, religiosity, not race.[/quote]

Thank you.  Based on this, I identified the original research referred to in the story:  http://as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/4819/marriagedivides.pdf

Unfortunately I am not really comforted by it.  First, the study still predicts 58% support for prop 8.  That's not great.  Second, the evidence used to contradict the exit poll is not better exit poll data.  They are making statistical inferences on the behavior of black voters in precincts based on the overall vote totals in that precinct.  Check out Figure 2, and you will see that this is far from a slam dunk conclusion.  And even this study concludes: "Nevertheless, the analysis here indicates that those hoping to advance the cause of same?sex marriage must contend with a substantial gap in support between Latinos and whites on one hand and African Americans on the other—a divide that has only increased since the nation’s attention turned in earnest to the issue in 2003."

And there is truth in that last statement.  I wish it were not true, but it is.  There is a gap between the positions of black and white Americans on this issue, and if it is more like 60% or 70% it's still a big deal.[/quote]

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