With Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow, I’ve decided to list a few things for which I'm thankful:

The Phillies Championship - After more than two decades of
heartbreak, our city finally won a major sports
championship. Even more wonderful is the fact that the city
partied hard without any major incident. 

McCain’s Loss – While I refuse to be swept into the cultish fervor of
Obamarama, I am nonetheless grateful that John McCain is not
our nation’s president-elect. If he were, some of us might
be reporting to the cotton fields for orientation. 

Sarah Palin’s Media Tour – In addition to being wildly
entertaining, Sarah Palin’s current “I won’t point fingers
but it wasn’t my fault we lost” routine is the best
guarantee that she won’t be the GOP’s nominee in 2012.

The McNabb/Reid beef– While some see the current tempest
between Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb as a major downer, I
see it as a gift in disguise. Why? Because it moves the Philadelphia
Eagles that much closer to a painful but necessary
rebuilding process.

The State of the Black World Conference – Last week, a group
of activists, organizers, and intellectuals convened in New
Orleans to critically assess and engage the most pressing
issues in the Black community. The conference suggests that
all blacks are not sitting on their hands in the age of
Obama.

John Forte – In 2001, the rapper/producer (and my friend)
was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for a first time
drug offense. On Monday, President Bush commuted his
sentence, allowing him to return home before the end of the
year. If only we could provide the same relief for all
victims of mandatory minimums…

Kindred The Family Soul – A few weeks ago, one of the
country’s most talented (and underrated) music groups
released its third album, “Arrival”. At a time when the most
artists are playing to the lowest common denominator, Aja
and Fatin continue to raise the musical stakes for an entire
generation.

Reverend Dr. Alyn Waller – In today’s era of “bling bling
gospel,” there are few too many religious leaders truly
committed to feeding their flock. In addition to providing
his congregants with an informed message, the Pastor of Philadelphia's Enon
Tabernacle and his wife Ellyn Jo have committed themselves
to dismantling the international sex trade that has taken
away the life chances of young girls.

Question to the Sexpert:

“I’ve been a reader of your columns for years and have seen more than a few small skirmishes on the Barbershop Notebooks about homosexuality. As a white reader, I was surprised to find that so many African Americans are opposed to gay rights, especially gay marriage. Since the passage of Proposition 8 in California, the media has seized on the theme of Blacks verus. Gays. What is all this about?”

Great! Let’s start a conflagration of hostility between varying minority groups! Awesome. I’m gonna head to the kitchen for a snack. Ya’ll hash this out.

……..

All right, fine. Let’s talk about this like the reasonable people we pretend to be. Or just watch Colbert skewer this for us.

For those of you who managed to miss this nugget of history, Proposition 8 was a ballot measure put before the voters of the state of California in this recent election that asked, in effect, if they wanted to ban same-sex marriage. It had been illegal until the state Supreme Court overturned it in May. This initiative was successfully led by bunch of conservatives, including a formidably large contingent of the Moron Church… I mean Mormon… no wait, I was right the first time…..

I attended a protest in Philly this weekend about Prop 8 actually. Had the loud speakers been working enough so we could hear anything other than our delightfully cheery chants (“Two, four, six eight! How do you know your kids are straight?”), I would have heard the name of a speaker who addressed this Black versus Gay thing directly.

He pointed out that there’s no good done when a marginalized group fighting for its civil rights picks another such group to pinpoint as the source of their oppression.

There are a lot of ways to look at the Prop 8 passage in terms of African American voters. Here are the facts as we have them:

• Obama’s candidacy is credited with the participation of around a million new African American voters in California.

• African American voters in California overwhelmingly supported the ban: around 70%

• The proposition passed with 52% support overall.

• Stats are obviously always open to some interpretation and it’s hard to say anything definitively, but many point to these facts as indicating that African Americans are the big nail that drove into the coffin of Super Duper Gay Wedding Extravaganza USA. Basically, the argument is that Blacks came out to make a historic step towards civil equality and in the process also took a big steaming dump on it.

This is an unfair attribution of blame for several reasons:

• The majority of voters were white.

• The Mormon Church, in a move that screams “Please, please, remove our tax exempt status!” threw a crap-ton of money into the fracas.

• When California voters last took up this matter, the gays lost by a LOT more, so actually they’re making progress.

Regardless, it’s silly to act like African Americans as a group whole-heartedly accepted homosexuality. Even though the same arguments are made for banning gay marriage as were used to keep anti-miscegenation laws on the books until 1967 (“the Bible says so”, “it’s unnatural”), there are plenty of  people who are horrified at the comparison between the plight of gays and lesbians and the historic legal status of Blacks.

And the analogy is clearly imperfect between the two civil rights issues: one is just straight up racism; the other is a mixture of gender roles and sexuality, plus a big dollop of creamy bigotry on top.

There were a lot of folks in the gay and lesbian community who were infuriated that one oppressed group would turn around and lay a wicked bitch slap on the group behind them in line at the Civil Rights Fountain. And in many ways the anger is justified: bigotry is bigotry, regardless of the rationalization. There is simply no argument against gay marriage that can withstand scrutiny other than “Ick. Two guys? That’s gross.” Cause you just can’t fuck with that kind of cogent logic.

So I can’t really give you an explanation of this whole deal and since we’re talking about entire groups of people here, it’s impossible to make anything other than generalizations. But, that said, I’m sure the comments section will do more than enough on that for me. In the meantime let me leave you with two things.

• An anti Prop 8 ad narrated by the effortlessly badass Samuel L.

• The following quote from an op-ed that compared the sordid history of laws around miscegenation and gay marriage:

One other comparison needs to be drawn. Most Americans a century ago were not white supremacists. Many believed that blacks deserved some legal protections, and most knew that miscegenation was unlikely to affect them personally. All the same, these white Americans were ambivalent toward black Americans. They allowed the rhetoric and actions of white supremacists to prevail. They chose to ignore the hurtful — and sometimes fatal — consequences of their complicity. And all Americans continue to pay the price for that quiet capitulation to white supremacy.

Timaree Schmit is a trained sexologist who has also worked as an HIV prevention counselor and sex educator. She has written widely for numerous publications and was recently recognized by Coed Magazine as one of the 10 Most Famous College Sex Columnists in America. Timaree is completing a doctorate in Human Sexuality at Widener University.

Do you have a question or comment? Please email Timaree directly at sexpert@MarcLamontHill.com

Colmes Leaves ‘Hannity & Colmes’

Alan Colmes, the longtime liberal cohost of the Fox News program Hannity & Colmes, will leave at the end of the year. What do you think?

Li Knutsen,
Systems Analyst
“Man, I don’t know what Hannity will do without his intern.”

John Ashford,
Grocery Bagger
“This will allow Alan more time to concentrate on his substitute teaching career.”

Brandon Rautenberg,
Assembly Line Worker
“Colmes was too liberal for me with all his moderate views and support of Rudy Giuliani and such. Good riddance to that leftie wing nut.”

Today’s photo of the day shows Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush. According to reports he will be retained in the Obama Administration. More change we can believe in….

Today’s video of the day is “Rumble in the Jungle” by The Fugees, Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, and John Forte. Enjoy!