Apr 28, 2006  |  By: IRENE MONROE  | COMMENTS     

EVER SINCE PRESIDENT Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives of the 1930s, African-American voting allegiances have switched from the Republican Party, the "party of Lincoln," to the Democrats.

But the Democratic Party, particularly of late, has become more and more an uncomfortable fit for some African Americans.

"What have the Democrats done for us all that time?" beloved black mystery novelist Walter Mosley asked in the Feb. 27 issue of the Nation. "We are still segregated and profiled, and have a very low representation at the top echelons of the Democratic Party. We are the stalwarts, the bulwark, the Old Faithful of the Democrats, and yet they have not made our issues a high priority in a very long time."

Exploiting the unease African Americans feel in the Democratic Party, the GOP has seized the initiative to speak to black audiences by any means and lies necessary.

The religious outreach to African Americans by the GOP has been both unprecedented and unrelenting. George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives target conservative African-American churches, and his right-wing Christian evangelical ministers exploit racial and socioeconomic ills by blaming them on gays.

By stoking the homophobic flames among African Americans, the Republican Party now appears to be the party concerned with ameliorating the plight of black America.

"YOU WANT TO know what the single biggest problem facing inner-city black neighborhoods is? Homosexuality," stated Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, the white leader of the Traditional Values Coalition, a staunchly anti-gay organization, in a speech to a black congregation.

And herein lies the problem for both African Americans and gays as we jockey for a political place in the upcoming 2008 presidential election by casting our ballots with the party best representative of our interests.

Our issues both as African-American and gay voters will go unaddressed if ballots are cast for the "party of Lincoln." And with a "moral values" platform steeped in homophobic rhetoric that speaks to the fears and social ills of black people, the GOP has craftily tapped into the once-upon-a-time solidly black Democratic voting bloc that is now decidedly divided.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute has just published a report, "False Promises: How the Right Deploys Homophobia to Win Support from African Americans," to expose the Republicans’ duplicitous strategy.

The report shows how pitting gay civil rights against black civil rights is a diversion tactic to sow division and draw focus away from issues truly important to African Americans, like police profiling, housing discrimination, unemployment, health care and education.

The report shows how, according to both the conservative Black America PAC and the progressive Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies, the GOP’s lauded "moral values" platform was of no significant concern for respondents in the 2004 election.

And despite the Republicans’ attempt to use gay equality as a wedge issue, especially among blacks, 47 percent of African Americans would support some form of legal recognition of same-sex relationships, according to the JCPES poll.

Both polls revealed that jobs, poverty, homelessness, hunger, incarceration, health care and education are the real top priorities among African Americans.

With overwhelming evidence showing that African Americans are not gays’ political enemies, why then is the prevailing misconception packaged as truth?

The voting records of Republicans from six states with the highest population of black people-— Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and South Carolina — show that they have the worst record addressing African-American concerns. Not surprisingly, the voting records of these same Republicans score high on conservative measures and a near zero score addressing gay rights.

Present-day Republicans of the "party of Lincoln" aim to win the 2008 election with 30 percent of the African-American vote on a campaign platform of emancipating all Americans from the "immoral" gay rights agenda. And they will deploy any homophobic means necessary.