MANY BLACK pastors and black conservative leaders loudly applauded when Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist vowed to prod Congress to pass the federal marriage amendment that defines marriage as between a man and woman.
They say they will do everything to help Mr. Frist get the amendment passed.
They announced plans to mobilize black church groups and to stage rallies in San Francisco and Boston.
They aren't simply bought and paid mouthpieces for Christian conservative groups. A Pew Research Poll taken immediately after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld same-sex marriages last year found that far more blacks than whites disagreed with the court's decision.
The two reasons most often heard for their rabid opposition is a biblical passage decrying homosexuality and deep resentment at comparing the gay marriage fight to the civil rights struggle. But the reason frequently whispered is that gay marriage will wreak mortal damage on a black family deep in crisis.
A higher-than-average divorce rate and a chronic shortage of marriageable men due to double-digit unemployment and the staggering imprisonment and mortality rates for young black men make that argument appealing to many blacks.
But the fear that gay marriage will further shatter the black family hinges on the shaky premises that there are thousands of gay men and women lying in wait to subvert traditional family values and that there is even a recognizable traditional stable family.
No one really knows how many black men or women consider themselves exclusively gay. An estimated 3 million same-sex couples in the United States maintain households, and the number of blacks living in same-sex households is only a small percentage of that number. That pales in comparison with the nearly 60 million traditional married couples in the country.
The number of children in same-sex households could be as few as 1 million. For blacks, the number is probably much smaller.
Even if the rhapsodic 1950s Ozzie and Harriet traditional family was not overblown, gender and race have radically changed family relations in America.
The majority of black women are better educated and more career-oriented, and work outside the home in business, the professions and the trades.
They become parents much later, and more often as single parents by choice.
