Blogger and reader Kevin J. Jones writes via email:
Thanks for writing your Conservative Politics Examiner article on the black-gay split inside the Dems.
There was an under-reported conflict in the Democratic National Committee between Democratic African-Americans and the Democrats’ LGBT faction, exposed by a lawsuit against the DNC over a LGBT outreach official’s firing.
There DNC Chair Howard Dean says: “I wanted equal representation for gay and lesbian Americans, and I wanted to achieve it in a way that wasn’t offensive to the history of the civil rights movement.”
This likely means socially conservative black Democrats have taken offense at certain activists’ tactless insinuations that such loyal Democrats are the segregationists and Klansmen of the present because of their opposition to gay rights. It is a common conflict; earlier this year (2008) one black woman was even fired by her university employer for writing an article which took exception to the gay rights/civil rights analogy.
While I have not thoroughly investigated the matter, apparently the DNC delegate rules now include affirmative action provisions favorable to the impolitic but effective LGBT crowd. Democratic delegate quotas for youth and women precipitated the demise of the New Deal Coalition, and any similar rules privileging sexual lifestyle activists will further prevent the revival of that coalition’s better surviving elements.
These rule changes had been opposed by many African Americans, yet I doubt this conflict was prominent in the Republican social conservatives’ echo chamber. It seems to have been covered most in the gay press, which shows a deep animosity against African-American Pentecostal minister and DNC CEO Rev. Leah Daughtry.
These DNC “multi-cultural” minority councils are hubs for networking and planning and patronage. Given the Dems’ devotion to identity politics, an Hispanic lesbian minister could conceivably sit on four different committees, pushing her political, racial, sexual and feminist agenda in all of them. “Chimeric” or “hybrid” minorities have the advantage in political action.
