I’ve covered politics for a long time. I’ve seen shrewd polling and message-framing turn issues and elections upside-down. Eventually, I came to believe that the most potent force in politics wasn’t spin but science, which transforms reality and our understanding of it. But I’ve never seen a convergence like this. Here we have a left-leaning constituency (blacks) that has become politically pivotal on an issue (homosexuality) and is susceptible to a reframing of that issue (seeing sexual orientation, like color, as inborn) in accord with ongoing scientific research.
From prenatal hormones to genetics to birth order, scientists have been sifting data to nail down homosexuality’s biological origins. As they advance, it will become easier and easier to persuade African-Americans that being gay is a lot like being black. The lesson of Proposition 8 isn’t that blacks have stopped the march of gay rights. The lesson is that when they turn, the fight in blue America will essentially be over.
Ta-Nehisi takes issue with Saletan labeling African Americans "left-leaning":
Any writer who’s spent significant time in the suburbs of Atlanta, on the South-Side of Chicago, or here in Harlem, knows that black people aren’t "left-leaning"–they just think the GOP is racist. Surveys may show blacks leaning-left on certain issues (minimum wage? ending the war?) but take it from an actual black leftist, there is a conservative streak running through black America wider than the Mississippi. Don’t confuse "enemy of my enemy"-ism, with actual sympathy.
The Dish 