this is not a race issue

uh, why is this a black thing?

Because last I checked, the demographics relating to civil rights for homosexuals had a generational gap for everybody. It pretty much is old people versus their grandchildren, or in some cases, children, regardless of racial or ethnic factors. There are religious factors which impact tolerance here, but since younger people are more apt to leave religious institutions they have strong disagreements with (most commonly over views on abortion and homosexuals; Catholics/fundamentalists with birth control) than people who've been in those institutions their entire lives, there again, these are generational gaps.

So to summarize: blacks are no more likely than any other ethnic group to oppose gay marriage rights. When controlled for factors like religious affiliations and attendance rates, socio-economic status, and so on, and what comes out at the end is a group of people who look just like everybody else on their stance toward gays: old people retain their bias and younger people don't share in it. This was studied to death in the wake of the California ballot last year with the supposed problem that all of Obama's minority voters had voted against gay marriage. It was in fact, older largely religious white people who had (goaded by well-funded scare tactics from the Mormon church and others). The "angle" being used here is pointless nonsense to justify a headline that doesn't alienate the core readers of newspapers: older white people. Who are in fact, on this issue among a few others of late importance to the nation, :cough, health care and social security reform :cough, the problem.

The "rift" story is one of grandfather and maybe father versus progeny. Please stop patronizing us with this illusion that it is somehow only black people who suffer from having older bigots in their voting ranks.