Cheryl Weston once attended a wedding ceremony for gay friends, but on Election Day, she voted for a constitutional amendment to declare marriage in California as only between a man and a woman.
"It was called a holy union, but I don't know how holy it was," said Weston, a Sacramento barber.
Weston, 44, is one of an overwhelming number – 70 percent – of black voters in California who voted for Proposition 8 and helped secure its passage, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.
African Americans, energized by Barack Obama's presidential bid, boosted their numbers at the polls this year to 10 percent of the state's electorate, up from 6 percent in 2004.
"The Obama people were thrilled to turn out high percentages of African Americans, but (Proposition 8) literally wouldn't have passed without those voters," said Gary Dietrich, president of Citizen Voice, a nonpartisan voter awareness organization.
Latinos were 18 percent of California's voters, and through sheer numbers also contributed to Proposition 8's success. But 53 percent of Latino voters supported the measure, a much lower percentage than black voters. Among white and Asian voters, 49 percent voted for the measure.
Opponents of Proposition 8 appealed to voters to reject the measure as discriminatory and unconstitutional.
But messages that opponents hoped would strike a chord with minority voters – and remind them that interracial marriage once was banned – collided with traditional religious views.
"You listen to the African American pastors, they do not buy that argument," Dietrich said. "They do not believe at all that there is a correlation between civil rights vis-à-vis blacks and rights for gays."
In south Sacramento, a largely minority community, about 62 percent of residents voted for Proposition 8, while almost three-quarters voted for Obama, according to a Bee analysis of election data.
Ida Francis, 77, who worships at Kyle's Temple AME Zion Church in Sacramento, is an Obama supporter who voted for Proposition 8.
She grew up in segregated Arkansas, attending segregated schools and subjected to Jim Crow laws.
She said her church on 42nd Street doesn't tell people how to vote – just to go and exercise that right. She based her decision to vote for Proposition 8 on her Christian upbringing and faith.
"If there are people in our society who wish to live together as a man and man, well, that's their own personal opinion," she said.
However, she said, "I don't believe God intended marriage to be between a man and a man, a woman and a woman.
"We're just trying to hold on to what people see in the Bible," she said. "The family, one man, one woman, children."
She said she does believe it would be discrimination to shun gay people at a restaurant, for example, or refuse to give them a hotel room.
Weston, the barber, said she believes the Constitution protects all citizens, including gays, against discrimination in public life.
But she said that she also, as a Christian, believes that marriage is ordained by God and only between a man and a woman. "Maybe if they don't use that word – marriage," Weston said.
Proposition 8, she said, was something talked about "in all the churches."
"Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals, all of them," she said. "We all came together, and we had one common belief in this." She said her faith teaches her not to condemn gay people, though, including her married friends.
They might change one day, she said. "God says, 'Judge nothing before its time.' "
Divisions over gay marriage proved a challenge for African American civil rights groups.
The Greater Sacramento Urban League took a stand against Proposition 8, which was the decision of its president, James Shelby, 66.
"I'm a Christian man," he said. "But I'm also president of the Urban League, and the Urban League has always been a civil rights group. That's what this organization was founded on."
He said it wouldn't be a sign of leadership to go out and "wave a flag and see how it blows" to take the pulse of the black community and then match that. "The law says that they have the right," he said. "I think that the courts are ultimately going to be the ones to prevail on this."
Sacramento NAACP President Betty Williams said her chapter was so divided it chose not to take a position on Proposition 8, although the California NAACP opposed it.
"We were split right down the middle," Williams said, with younger people tending to oppose rather than favor it.
Williams declined to state how she voted but said she believes "having the government tell a person whether or not they can marry someone is discrimination. It is."
She said she doesn't believe any black person, though, would "knowingly" discriminate against anyone else. "They did not walk into that voting booth wanting to discriminate," she said.
Williams said younger members argued against Proposition 8, saying it doesn't hurt anyone if gay people marry.
"They also said that if you're taking away one group's rights, 'Who is next?' "
Call The Bee's Susan Ferriss, (916) 321-1267.
