When Chris Norberg arrived at San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza to demonstrate against Proposition 8 last Saturday, he knew what point he wanted to make.

“A lot of my friends are really pissed off at minority groups in this city right now,” he said. “They voted against us.”

Norberg, 26 and white, is a furniture builder who married his same-sex partner last June.

Standing on the grass outside City Hall, he held a banner displaying the names of high-profile gay crime victims like Matthew Shepard and Harvey Milk, both of whom were murdered.

“I’m really hoping that minorities catch on that this isn’t just a gay issue,” said Norberg.

“Us” and “Them” have become the de facto terms of engagement for many angry activists since Prop 8 passed on November 4th, following the release of exit polls suggesting that black and Latino voters overwhelmingly supported the measure. In editorials, blog posts and Facebook messages, white gays and lesbians have expressed dismay that other historically oppressed groups would vote to overturn the law permitting same-sex marriage.

It’s an argument that’s frustrating to nonwhite gays and lesbians, many of whom say they feel invisible.

Rafael Delgado, 21, a senior at UC Berkeley, said he was disappointed when Prop 8 passed. But what hurt more, he said, was the reaction of the white gay community.

“A lot of internalized racism came out,” he said.

Delgado said he identifies strongly as both gay and Latino, but that neither community feels completely comfortable to him.

“I feel like I’m invisible in both,” he said. The gay movement, he said, is “a very white movement” with which he has trouble identifying. On the other hand, he said, in Latino communities, his gay identity is not always tolerated.

“I identify strongly with my race,” he said. “But then my queerness gets ignored.”

Delgado said he thought the campaign against Prop 8 was dominated by white gays, and did not adequately address the concerns of communities of color. For them, he said, same-sex marriage is not a high priority.

That sentiment was echoed by Dejanira Cruz, who along with Delgado is a member of YQUE, a queer Latino student organization. Both Cruz and Delgado said that while they support marriage rights, they think that the issue can distract from more pressing social-justice goals.

“YQUE didn’t spend a lot of time phonebanking for Prop 8,” said Cruz, 23. “We spent more time on the propositions affecting our communities.” The ballot measures dealing with abortion rights and prison law, she said, were the most relevant to low-income, nonwhite communities.

The schism between white and nonwhite gay communities is not new, says Reverend Roland Stringfellow of the Pacific School of Religion. Rev. Stringfellow, who is black and openly gay, organized against Prop 8 but said he found many gay blacks unwilling to join his cause.

The reasons, he said, trace all the way back to the 1960s Stonewall riots, which are widely considered to have kicked off the modern gay rights movement. “It was Latino and African-American drag queens who began those protests. They were the ones arrested, they were the ones who suffered beatings and were thrown in jail,” said Stringfellow.

Black gays, he said, felt that white people “jumped on board afterward” and co-opted the movement.

When the AIDS crisis hit, said Stringfellow, blacks felt a similar betrayal. “[AIDS awareness] was largely driven by white gay men. And when cocktails became available for patients, they went to those who could afford it, largely white gay men as opposed to gays of color.”

The same issues, he said, affected the debate over Prop 8.

“Folks of color have many other issues to deal with in terms of survival,” he said. “Gay marriage isn’t even on the radar screen.”

For young, queer people of color, said Stringfellow, finding a supportive community is crucial to navigating the complicated politics of race and sexuality. For Delgado, that community is YQUE, which he said would probably end up being more important to his life than any other experience at Berkeley.

“So many people of color assume gayness is a white thing,” he said. “My job is to say no, it’s in every community. And if you disenfranchise them, you’re disenfranchising someone in your community.”

Stringfellow, Cruz and Delgado all expressed hope that the ultimate result of the Prop 8 debate would be positive.

“Nobody wants to be discriminatory,” said Cruz. “They just need another human being to talk to them about these things.”

American Muslims in Fremont backed Senator Barack Obama’s push for the Presidency, but not his advice to vote no on Prop 8.

Voters of the Muslim faith in Fremont said they were in favor of Proposition 8, the ballot measure that eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry, on the advice of their mosques and because of their traditional values.

Mosques such as the Islamic Center of Fremont urged their members to vote for Prop 8. “If there is something against the religion, then we’re going to vote in one way, particularly for Prop 8. Muslims are supposed to vote Prop 8 yes,” said Mohammad S. Akhtar, who is originally from Pakistan and is a board member at the Islamic Center of Fremont, the second largest mosque in Fremont.

Sam Saleh, a store owner who is originally from Kabul, Afghanistan, said that the prayer leader at his mosque had told members to vote yes on Prop. 8 during the Friday sermon. Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day, but Friday prayers are usually the busiest at mosques, equivalent to Sunday service at church.

Asked why he thought same-sex marriages should be banned, Saleh said: “I have children. God created one man, one woman. I can’t go against God. That’s the way I think is right and everybody in the Muslim community voted yes.”

Tariq Masood, an insurance agent originally from Pakistan, said gay marriage “should be stopped” and that God condemned nations that condoned homosexual behavior. He also suggested that homosexuality was to blame for earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Before he went out to cast his ballot on election day, Masood asked a Muslim friend over the phone for last-minute advice on whether voting yes or no on Prop. 8 meant a vote to stop same-sex marriage and was reassured in his decision.

Mimi Najati, owner of a beauty salon in Centerville who is originally from Afghanistan, said her husband, like the Muslim community in general, was against gay marriage. But she said she would have voted against Prop. 8, if she had remembered to register on time. “I’m not supporting gay marriages but if somebody likes to marry they should be given the right to do so,” she said.

“We as human beings should be given freedom of choice, nobody should be against that. It’s not our business what somebody does. It’s not going to hurt anybody so why should we be against it?”

Volunteers help Chinese voters with limited English skills.

By Guo Shipeng

A steady stream of Chinese residents cast their votes in several polling stations in Oakland’s Chinatown throughout Tuesday, many supporting Obama in line with the community’s long-time leaning toward the Democrats.

But a considerable amount of Chinatown voters cited traditional Chinese family values and voted for Prop 8 that would ban same-sex marriages, disappointing a group of campaigners against the proposition who stayed outside a polling place for a whole day to try to win over people.

“I’ve always voted for the Democratic Party. It has treated Chinese Americans well in the past,” said housewife Candy He, 50. “As an ethnic minority, we are most concerned about our children’s rights in education and employment.”

He said she strongly opposed gay marriage and had asked her three children, the youngest in 12th grade, to vote for Prop 8.

“They agreed a little grudgingly this time. I don’t know how they’ll vote in the future,” said He.

He accompanied a neighbor, a first-time voter who moved to the United States from China in 2000, to the small polling station in the hallway of the Lincoln Elementary School on the 11th Street.

The neighbor, a 50-year-old waitress who would only give her surname Zheng, said she voted for McCain and Prop 8.

“There is a Chinese saying: the older ginger is spicier. So I chose the more experienced one,” Zheng said. “I can’t accept same-sex marriages. It’s always one man, one woman in the Chinese society and after all the mankind has to reproduce.”

The divide on the contentious issue seemed to fall on generational lines.

Albert Fan, 18 and a freshman at the San Francisco State University, voted for Obama and against Prop 8.

“It’s equal rights. They were just allowed to get married fairly recently and now we are going to take the right back? It’s not fair,” Fan said after casting his ballot in the Lincoln Neighborhood Center.

His friend Alex Cheng, a 12th grader months away from 18, said he would have voted for Obama and against Prop 8 if he was able to.

Early voting and the concentration of at least four polling stations around the Chinatown area meant there was not much waiting in both the school and the neighborhood center.

Both stations had Chinese-speaking volunteers to help voters with limited English skills.

Lu Lisheng, 80, has helped in several elections. This time, he was one of the language volunteers in the Lincoln school.

“The procedures and Chinese instructions on the forms are confusing sometimes, so we just tell voters how to do it,” Lu said. “Five out ten voters need our help, but we’ll never tell them whom to vote for.”

Six volunteers from a San Francisco group against Prop 8, including an architect and a lawyer, manned the street corners near the Lincoln Neighborhood Center, handing out flyers and talking to people in the hope that they would vote against the proposition.

Emily Wages, a Mandarin-speaking immigration lawyer from San Francisco, campaigns against Prop 8 outside the Lincoln Neighborhood Center polling station.

Oakland City Council Member Jean Quan and her husband also spent several hours in the cold campaigning for the Democratic Party and against Prop 8.

Quan ran into a group of Chinese women supporting Prop 8 after dark.  When she challeged the group about their sources of funding, the Prop 8 supporters became emotional but things were short of a showdown.

“If you let them discriminate against gay people, then what keeps them from discriminating against Chinese, or women?” Quan said.