Wednesday morning, November 5, California gays and lesbians woke to a sobering truth: their African-American “brothers” and “sisters” were not so brotherly or sisterly at the ballot box. I’ve warned about this disconnect for years, but few listened. Now, sadly, gays have to eat a little Jim Crow of their own.

Memo to Gay America: most African-Americans are social conservatives. They proved this conclusively in 2004, when thousands of African-Americans in key battleground areas of Ohio turned out against John Kerry because of the exhortations of their homophobic preachers. Many proved it again in February 2007, by their open, or barely disguised (agreeing with “the sentiment,” but not “the way” it was expressed) acquiescence with the homo-hating vitriol of African-American NBA basketball star Tim Hardaway, who said, "You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I'm homophobic. I don't like it [homosexuality]. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States." And they proved it again on November 4 in their overwhelming support of Measure 8, the California voter initiative whose official ballot title language explicitly stated: “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.”

Let’s not be coy or disingenuous. The clarity of the initiative’s wording says it all: Black voters knew precisely what they were doing on Election Day. As African-American civil rights attorney, and conservative talk radio commentator, Leo James Terrell, said on KABC radio Sunday afternoon: on the very day that Barack Obama made history as the nation’s first African-American president, black voters acted as “slave masters” towards gay people. Clearly, in the minds of most African-Americans, gays are not part of their “Rainbow Coalition,” no matter what Jesse Jackson insists.

Look at the numbers. Though Barack Obama won over 96% of the black vote in California, the No on 8 position received only 30% of the African-American vote. Some liberal black commentators claim that blacks are not to blame for the measure’s failure. After all, almost 50% of Asians and whites, and over 53% of Latinos voted for Measure 8. But the Asian, White, and Latino vote for Mr. Obama was nowhere near as monolithic as the black vote for Mr. Obama. In other words, there were plenty of McCain supporters in the non-black numbers.

So, let’s “keep it real,” in the vernacular of the day. As Sebastian makes clear at OsidianWings.blogs.com, given the extraordinarily high African-American turnout in California, Measure 8 would have failed if only a slightly higher percentage of black Obama-supporters voted against it. It would have been thoroughly repudiated if black Obama-supporters voted against Measure 8 in the same percentage as white, Asian, and Latino Obama-supporters.

But they didn’t. This despite the gay community’s whole-hearted embrace of Mr. Obama in part because his election would advance the rights of all minorities. An early and generous financial backer of Mr. Obama was openly gay David Geffen. Furthermore, gay people played a huge role in getting the sizable number of gay and lesbian backers of Hillary Clinton into the Obama fold. Yet the passage of a gay-bashing ballot initiative is the thank you they get in not only California, but in other Democrat-leaning states that passed or have passed similar gay-bashing measures. These are the facts. And as many black commentators have noted, it is not racist or mean-spirited to say so.

While Measure 8’s ban on gay marriage may never pass muster with the California Supreme Court, it does serve as an important litmus test: Gays should never again make common cause based on ethnicity. With malice towards none, and a friendly acknowledgment that this awkward political marriage isn’t working out, gay voters should finally exercise the electoral and financial leverage they’ve had for decades and threaten to bolt from the Democratic Party unless Barack Obama changes his position on gay marriage and brings his devoted black constituency along with him.

No doubt that seems wrong-headed to many readers. But as the Log Cabin Republicans well know, a sizable number of otherwise moderate and conservative gay men and women stay in the Democratic Party for only one reason: because, over the last few decades, Democrats have been stronger defenders of gay rights. But as an Obama-led Democratic Party swerves to placate its fiercely loyal African-American base and only slightly less homophobic Latino cohort, gay men and women would not be faulted for openly questioning the Faustian bargain they have made.

Here’s the ugly truth. More white REPUBLICANS voted against Measure 8 than black Democrats. If the moral equivalency argument was EVER going to sink in, surely it would be in a year when in a liberal state like California there was both a gay-bashing constitutional amendment AND a liberal African-American presidential candidate on the ballot. I say “gay-bashing” because as even radically conservative black talk show hosts like Larry Elder admit, Measure 8 was not about protecting marriage or children. It was about punishing gay people. It was a blatant attempt to institutionalize the denial of civil rights to an entire class of innocent Americans. Measure 8 was bigotry made legal.

But for some reason, a whole class of people, for whom claims of racial bigotry have been an enduring mantra, did not see it that way. Funny enough, Jewish people made the connection. If there is a group of Americans who could legitimately make the claim that discrimination against gays is not morally equivalent to the horrors their ancestors endured, surely it is Jewish-Americans. Yet, except for a tiny minority of orthodox believers, Jewish voters were among the most unified in their opposition to Measure 8. While for years I never felt the urgency of protecting the right to gay marriage as long as gays enjoyed the same civil rights protections as straights, I have long since seen the light: failure to protect gay marriage would enshrine “separate but equal” status in law. And as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka made clear, we can never as a nation go back to that ugly chapter in our history. Black Americans who risked their lives to end segregation and bans on interracial marriage should know this most of all. But evidently Plessy or Dred Scott are perfectly fine, as long as they apply to “the other.”

It might be high time for all gay men and women, regardless of color, to consider a few alternatives. First would be the un-thinkable: making common cause with the Republican Party. Given the GOP’s openly hostile attitude to gays over the last two decades, this might seem absurd. But when you remember that it is the Republican Party – from Lincoln through Teddy Roosevelt to California’s own Republican Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- that historically pushed for civil rights, it might not seem so preposterous. The Republicans take a long time to see the light, but, when they do, they are steadfast in their defense of civil rights. Sarah Palin’s soft-pedaling of the gay rights issue during the vice-presidential debate was evidence of a seismic shift going on within the G.O.P. as a whole. My discussions with several party regulars at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul revealed the same sentiment: save for a dwindling core of rabid fundamentalists, the G.O.P. is primed for a sea change in its attitudes towards gays.

True conservatives saw Measure 8 as another example of government intrusion into the private lives of Americans. To these patriots, telling a person whom they can marry is akin to taking away his guns, his right to privacy, his freedom of speech, and his right to decide how best to educate his children or whether to join a labor union.

Another option is for moderate and conservative gay people to form a third party. As the two major parties compete to see who can pander the most to their core religious base (black and Latino fundamentalists on the Democratic side, mostly white and Confederate born-agains and Mormons on the Republican side), gay people may soon find themselves left out in the cold, called upon for their fundraising ability, with little in return. If otherwise moderate and conservative gays opened their mind to the possibility, they would find much in common with moderate Republicans and Democrats, who are both turned off by the bigoted religiosity of their respective parties. A third party formed around respect for individual liberty, fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility, protection of natural resources, and freedom from all but the most imminently threatening foreign imbroglios would have appeal to gays of all stripes.

Thomas Jefferson warned, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.” Nearly a week after the historic election of Barack Obama, gay people and their friends are discovering how prescient Mr. Jefferson was.