When it comes to gay marriage, Marion Barry makes too much sense.
“All hell is going to break lose,” Barry predicted to reporters at the Wilson Building the other day.
One must weed through the underbrush of the council member’s verbiage, his backtracking and obfuscations. But when you take the time to examine why he was the only vote against the council’s measure this week to recognize same-sex marriages, you arrive at some basic realities of religion and politics in our town.
“We may have a civil war,” he added. “The black community is just adamant against this.”
Never fail to honor Barry’s take on politics in D.C. He may be old, he may speak as if he his jaw is wired together, parts of his brain may be addled by decades of hard living, but he has a keen sense of public sentiment.
Barry understands that the black middle class is inherently conservative when it comes to matters of morality and religion. Black Washingtonians might be Democrats to the left of Obama on education and job training, but many would walk arm in arm with Pat Robertson on what the GOP calls the social agenda.
I took one of my unscientific polls this week of some friends and acquaintances in D.C.’s black middle class. I would call them old-school, native Washingtonians whose families go back a generation or two.
On gay marriage, one said to me: “That’s not civil rights; that’s a civil wrong.”
Over and over I heard people carving the controversy in their fashion: Civil rights and discrimination are matters of laws; marriage is a matter for God and preachers.
“You cannot order me through legislation to recognize gay marriage,” one friend told me. “Marriage is between God and man.”
And woman, I reminded him.
Let’s assume Barry has it right, and D.C.’s black middle class is in a rage about legislating on gay marriage. How might it play out? Will there be consequences for politicians who vote to allow gay marriage?
First, the power of the black clergy ain’t what it used to be. Gone are the preacher titans like Bishop Smallwood Williams at Bible Way or the Rev. Beecher Hicks at Metropolitan Baptist or, going back to the 1950s, Charles “Sweet Daddy” Grace at the United House of Prayer. These giants could speak on Sunday and lock down the city. Most have either died or moved to the suburbs.
I doubt whether black churches can muster the same discipline they once commanded; but I do believe solid middle-class communities in Michigan Park and Ivy City and Fort Totten could draw a political line over how their representatives vote on matters of marriage.
Who could pay? Any council member who votes for gay marriage. Even Mayor Adrian Fenty becomes vulnerable.
Many observers have discounted Barry as the representative of just Ward 8; on gay marriage, he speaks for people all over town.
