OAKLAND — By the time Shidiva and Sherri Black-White were married at Oakland City Hall in June, they had spent two years trying to help their families adjust to the idea of their lesbian relationship.
Shidiva's relatives in Contra Costa County came around.
"I kind of put it to my family, if you make a decision that you can't deal with my sexuality, you're really going to be losing the relationship you have with me," she said. "Over time, they got used to me."
Sherri's family resisted.
"Mine is still in the working phase," she said. "We're a very opinionated family."
Their uncomfortable long-distance phone calls and holiday dramas were nothing new among gay and lesbian couples seeking recognition and a sense of normalcy from loved ones. But the battle over Proposition 8 also brought their private discussions into the highly charged sphere of state politics. California was as divided on the concept of same-sex marriage as the family of Shidiva and Sherri Black-White was on the concept of their individual one.
"They look at us as the kind of wild, lost kid," Shidiva Black-White said of her relatives. "The ones swinging from the chandelier," her wife added.
But as sisters, daughters and aunts who know the thoughts of their family members better than anyone, the Black-Whites think they found common ground with most of their relatives through frank discussion and honesty.
Having a gay relative "makes them Advertisementfeel different. It makes them have to think," Shidiva Black-White said. "It's easier to stay blind than if you have to look at something."
While her sister will not come to terms with their marriage, said Sherri Black-White, her 80-year-old mother, living in a Southern California convalescent home, came to appreciate that her daughter was the only one in the family who wanted a traditional wedding ceremony, with all the formal bells and whistles.
"She said, married to each other? You girls? They do things differently in San Francisco, don't they? And then she was, like, OK," she said. "She was excited about the whole thought of her daughter getting married."
It's the sort of discourse, they said, that the statewide debate on Prop. 8 could have used more of, especially when addressing values-oriented, deeply religious African-American families like their own.
"We can argue about morality, and no one ever wins," said Sherri Black-White, who teaches high school history in Alameda. "What we do understand is equality and rights."
In the days after the election of Barack Obama, family members shared excited phone calls about the historic moment. But what they also discovered was that some family members, such as Sherri Black-White's sister, had voted in favor of Prop. 8, eliminating the right to marry that the lesbian couple had taken advantage of just months earlier. It was a personal blow, they said, but not unexpected.
"The No on 8 campaign really lacked the visibility and voice that can speak to African-Americans," Shidiva Black-White said. "Had there been more commercials, ads that showed a variety of black folks and other folks of color who are gay, the consciousness would have been raised that this isn't really about those white people. This isn't about whether it's holy and sanctified. This is about they're taking away those rights."
Sherri Black-White said that her family was symbolic of "the group I think 'No on 8' didn't address, and when you don't address it, they fall back on the morality issue. "... When the NAACP stood up against (Prop. 8), and it became more of a fight for constitutional rights, I had more faith that my family would vote against it from an intellectual side." Some, but not all of them, did.
Much has been made of exit polls conducted after the election that show 70 percent of black voters favoring Prop. 8. But even if accurate, says the Rev. D. Mark Wilson, a gay minister who presided over the Black-White wedding, trying to pin Prop. 8's victory on minority voters would be missing the point. He said there have been many inroads over the years in the marriage rights movement reaching out to clergy across racial groups, but he said there is also room for improvement.
"The challenge for the churches is are we really going to be the church of the status quo that Jesus spoke out against and railed against, of throwing folks out of the temples, or are we going to be the institutions of love and hope that are modeled after Christ?" he said.
Growing up a member of the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in West Oakland, Wilson said it was always clear to him that no one should "use the pulpit to beat up on anybody."
"When I grew up there, I learned a lot about love," he said. "There were people there who remembered slavery. I took it all in. I still believe in that kind of love."
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