link, don't be racist idiots

Arnold Schwarzenegger has had an up-and-down relationship with the gay community. He's officially opposed marriage equality, favoring civil unions; he has vetoed two bills to legalize same-sex marriage, claiming that the courts should settle the constitutionality first; he has spoken out against Prop. 8 and for maintaining the right to marry; and he is now telling us not to give up. Basically, he's always been on the side of the status quo. But it's nice to have him publicly with us, this time, especially because I wrote to him the other day asking for just that -- the Governor of California is not, evidently, blind to his people's pain.

Here's an interesting look at the race statistics that are being bandied around, and why they might be completely misleading. It addresses the "blame the blacks" strategy, so I'd like to say something about the blame for the Latin@ and Asian communities.

I don't remember when the first Yes On 8 ad came out in Spanish, but it was a month or two before the election. The first Spanish-language No ad came out... a week before the election. Basically, Latin@s had lies pouring in, unchallenged, for weeks there, and probably by the time we got around to remembering their existence they'd mostly made up their minds. So isn't it an amazingly good sign that they were, by the available data, pretty evenly split on the issue?

Then there's the Asian community. I see people tossing in "Asians" with Latin@s and African-Americans in their discussion, which I think shows where they really come from because the Asian community, according to polls conducted before the election, overwhelmingly opposed Prop. 8. And I trust those polls a little more.

And the moral of this blog post, ladies and gentlemen and others, is "don't be racist -- it's stupid."