Our guest bloggers are Melissa Dunn, an LGBT Research and Communications intern at the Center for American Progress and Aisha Moodie-Mills, advisor of LGBT Progress’ FIRE Initiative for racial equality.

Last week’s insensitive rant by Kevin Naff of the Washington Blade which trivialized race-based hate crimes, and the recent revelations of the National Organization for Marriage’s race-baiting tactics, have shed much needed light on the fallacy of the gay versus race debate. Both of these instances, ironically from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum—NOM being a conservative anti-gay organization and the Washington Blade an LGBT publication—promote the same disparaging myth. That gay = white, and that race and sexuality are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed.

A new issue brief by the FIRE Initiative of the Center for American Progress suggests that this misguided pitting of race against sexual orientation and gender identity has long-lasting consequences for LGBT communities of color who live at the intersections of these identities, and are among the most vulnerable in our society. The brief, entitled “The State Of LGBT Communities of Color in 2012” argues that LGBT people of color have worse economic, educational, and health outcomes than both their heterosexual counterparts and white LGBT people.

For example, the average Latina/ Hispanic lesbian couple earns $3,000 less than Latino/Hispanic oppose-sex couples and black same-sex male couples earn more than $20,000 less than white same-sex male couples. And although white lesbians have a poverty rate of just 4.3 percent, black lesbians have a rate of 21.1 percent, Hispanics 19.1 percent, Native Americans 13.7 percent, Asian Pacific Islander 11.8 percent.

LGBT communities of color also face tremendous health care concerns and challenges accessing culturally competent health care that leads to poor health outcomes. Black lesbians for example are the most likely demographic to be obese, transgender women of color face elevated stress levels, and Latino gay men have dangerous rates of eating disorders. Further, LGBT youth of color have lower levels of educational attainment than white gay students or straight students of color. They are more likely to be bullied in school than their white peers and are more likely to think their teachers will not adequately address their concerns. They are also more likely to end up homeless and living on the streets.

These disparities stem from the compound effect of societal stigma and bias due to race and sexual orientation and gender identity that LGBT communities of color endure. These communities arguably suffer most at the hands of inequality, and have an equal stake in eradicating anti-gay policies. But they are rendered virtually invisible by the gay versus race rhetoric spread by NOM, and Naff, and a few others. Such divisiveness distracts from the real problems that many LGBT people of color of face and the real fight for equality that must be won.

On Friday, LGBT students and their allies will participate in the GLSEN-organized Day of Silence as a form of protest for the anti-gay and anti-trans bullying abuse that takes place in schools every day. Tomorrow, however, is the conservative Christian response, Focus on the Family’s ironically-named Day of Dialogue (formerly “Day of Truth”), which encourages students to express God’s condemnation of homosexuality to their gay peers. Over the past week, various anti-gay groups have promoted the Day of Dialogue’s harmful message while decrying the Day of Silence as anti-Christian intolerance that children shouldn’t be exposed to. Here are some examples:

• A coalition of anti-gay groups promote a Day of Silence Walk Out because “homosexuality and cross-dressing are immoral.”
• The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins said the Day of Silence should be banned because it’s a “cover for the promotion of homosexuality.”
• The Liberty Counsel encourages parents to remove their students from school on the Day of Silence, and the group’s chairman, Mathew Staver, described the day as “a radical and forced agenda of homosexuality.”
• The American Family Association sent out an alert to its subscribers, encouraging parents to pull their students from school because GLSEN promotes “controversial, unproven, and destructive theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality.”
• Truth in Action Ministries described GLSEN’s efforts as using bullying to “promote and essentially indoctrinate children” into the “deadly lifestyle” of homosexuality.
• Barb Anderson (Minnesota Family Council), Peter LaBarbera (Americans for Truth About Homosexuality), and Laurie Higgins (Illinois Family Institute) condemned the Day of Silence as”evil propaganda,” “brainwashing,” and “child abuse” comparable to the Nazi Party and slavery.
• The Manhattan Declaration, a document committed to anti-gay values even if it means violating laws, promoted the Day of Dialogue as a mean for students to “express a Biblical viewpoint in a loving and Christ-centered way.”
• The Alliance Defense Fund hopes the Day of Dialogue “shatters the silence,” countering messages that homosexuality is unchangeable.
• Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is encouraging students to hand out fliers encouraging students to believe their homosexuality can —and should — change.

Indeed, all of Focus on the Family’s materials on the Day of Dialogue encourage students to use the Bible to condemn homosexuality as “broken” and promote ex-gay therapy that is known to be traumatic and ineffective. Given the overt antipathy encouraged against any LGBT-inclusive information, the day is perhaps better described as a Day of Monologue. This is a concerted effort to paint blatant in-school evangelism as welcome free speech and the stark silence of LGBT awareness as indoctrination, intolerance, and an unprotected disruption to school activities.

The Day of Dialogue is nothing short of encouragement to bully. Even if DoD participants do not attack or harass their targets, the stigma they encourage through condemning homosexuality helps maintain an unsafe climate for students with consequences that can last a lifetime. Students who have experienced prejudice-motivated bullying and victimization are more likely to attempt suicide, become clinical depression, or contract a sexually transmitted disease by early adulthood. In fact, simple exposure to stigma can increase the chances that LGBT teens experience suicidal thinking throughout the rest of their lives. Even living in a community that generally has socially conservative anti-gay attitudes can increase the suicide risk not just for gay, lesbian, and bi teens, but their straight peers as well. Minority stress also contributes to higher rates of substance abuse in the LGBT community, one of many negative consequences that can be mitigated by having gay-straight alliances in schools.

The Day of Dialogue is a direct attack on our nation’s youth, a campaign to impose not just religion in schools, but harassment, shame, and a lifetime of consequences. Not only do social conservatives oppose visible day of silence, they don’t want there to be a place in our schools for LGBT students at all.

The Archbishop of Wales threw his support behind the British effort to advance marriage equality today and called on the Church to support loving gay and lesbian couples. “All life-long committed relationships deserved the welcome, pastoral care and support of the Church,” Dr. Barry Morgan told members of the Church in his presidential address. He called to ask itself whether it would “protect and support pastorally, faithful, stable, lifelong relationships of whatever kind in order to encourage human values such as love and fidelity and recognize the need in Christian people for some public religious support for these”:

He said he was concerned about the welfare of gay people whom he feared could feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in churches over the coming months as Government proposals for same-sex marriage are debated nationally. [...]

“My concern at the moment is that in any discussion which might ensue on this, gay people may once more gain the impression that the church is uncaring and unsympathetic….Gays and lesbians claim they are still treated as second-class citizens, tolerated at best and vilified at worst. Very often homosexuality is talked about as if real people were not involved and gays and lesbians complain of being talked about rather than talked to in Church.”

Morgan argued that the Church must prepare itself for a law recognizing marriage equality. “If the legislation to allow civil marriage is passed, I cannot see how we as a church, will be able to ignore the legality of the status of such partnerships and we ought not to want to do so,” he said. “The question then, as now, is: will the church protect and support pastorally, faithful, stable, lifelong relationships of whatever kind in order to encourage human values such as love and fidelity and recognize the need in Christian people for some public religious support for these?”

The UK Coalition Government unveiled a proposal in March that would “allow same-sex couples to marry in a register office or other civil ceremony; allow couples already in a civil partnership to convert it into a marriage; and allow married people to legally change gender. But the plans would not alter the law for religious marriage.”

At least six Catholic parishes in Washington state have ignored the Seattle Archbishop’s call to gather signatures for a referendum repealing the state’s recently-enacted marriage equality law, calling the effort “hurtful and seriously divisive in our community.” “Seattle’s Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church gave the Rev. Tim Clark a standing ovation Sunday” when he announced that the parish would not be participating in the anti-equality effort:

“I am happy to report that Our Lady of the Lake parish-oners have been overwhelmingly and, thus far, unanimously supportive of the decision I made NOT to gather signatures in support of this Referendum,” Clark wrote in response to an e-mail.

“The standing ovation experienced during one of the Masses says less about me and much more about the health of this parish. I only wished the archbishop could have experienced the sustained applause — the ‘sensus fidelium’ — of the people. He needs to listen to this ‘voice.’ That is my prayer.”

The other parishes to opt out of the signature drive include: St. James Cathedral, St. Joseph Church, St. Mary’s Church, St. Patrick Church and Christ Our Hope Catholic Church.

Opinion polls have consistently shown that Catholics reject the Church’s opposition to marriage equality, with nearly three-quarters of Catholics favoring “either allowing gay and lesbian people to marry (43%) or allowing them to form civil unions (31%). Only 22% of Catholics say there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship.”