Barring recounts, Proposition 8, the California ballot issue that would outlaw gay marriage, appears to have passed.  This is a terrible loss for gays and lesbians not just in that state but also across the country and around the world.  The basic civil right–to marry the one they love–denied them on Tuesday is even more disheartening in the face of Obama’s shattering of the last, long standing racial barrier for African-Americans.

Particularly ironic is the thought that, without the increased black voter turnout brought on by Obama’s exciting candidacy, gays in California would still have the rights they boasted on Monday. As Andrew Sullivan points out,

[e]very ethnic group supported marriage equality, except African-Americans, who voted overwhelmingly against extending to gay people the civil rights once denied them: a staggering 69 – 31 percent African-American margin against marriage equality.

Allied with black Californians against marriage equality was the LDS Church.  The Mormon organization donated millions of dollars to support Proposition 8 and, in so doing, alienated many of its members.  While it’s true that a coming together of blacks and Mormons–a church that, until 1978, was officially racist–is on the surface odd, it makes a great deal of sense in light of their single common factor: strong religious faith.

Religiosity in the black community is significantly higher that among other ethnic and racial groups.  American blacks tend to be strongly God-fearing folk and that religious conservatism manifested in the profound homophobia displayed in the exit polls in California yesterday.

Likewise, the Mormon faith teaches that homosexuality is an awful sin, so it is only reasonable that the LDS Church would spend considerable sums to prevent this ungodly behavior from further spreading–and being legitimated–throughout California.

In effect, marriage equality was banished yesterday in the nation’s most populous state because it flies in the face of certain brands of religion.  This is not, strictly speaking, a violation of the establishment or free exercise clauses of the constitution, but it is certainly an instance of religious morality being written into law.  It doesn’t matter if two gay men–who love each other deeply and want to express that love through marriage–are atheists and, thus, fear no commandments from God against their act.  California will now hold them to the bigoted preachings of black churches and the LDS temple in Salt Lake City.  Because gay marriage is offensive to one conception of the divine, it must not be allowed anywhere.

When the new atheists speak of the damage wrought by religious faith, of the harm adherence by some to scriptural texts causes to us all, this is but one example.  The Mormon Church ought to be ashamed of its egotism and California’s blacks, rightly basking in the victory for racial equality they enjoyed yesterday, should feel only disgust at the civil rights they stripped from another minority.