Dan Walters Supports The Zombie Meme

Dan Walters, a well-known Sacramento Bee columnist is apparently also a "zombie lover." How else to explain his support for the "zombie meme" that "Black people are more homophobic than other people and are thus responsible for Proposition 8's passage" which radiates throughout his column today? In "Yes, minority voters axed gay marriages," Walters attempt to refute the Egan-Sherrill report which estimated the percentage of Blacks voting for Proposition 8 at 58 percent (with an error of 1 percentage point) instead of the widely repeated ludicrous number of 70 percent which came from a notoriously inaccurate exit poll. Clearly, from the title of his column, Walters doesn't agree that the Egan-Sherrill report debunks the "zombie meme."

Well, no, it doesn't. In fact, it confirms that both black and Latino voters favored Proposition 8 by substantial margins. Although it says the reported 70 percent support among the former is "no more than 59 percent," even if true that's still more than enough to prove the original thesis that had it not been for extra-high turnout among those two ethnic groups, Proposition 8 would likely have failed.

The Obama phenomenon's additional black and Latino turnout, even by the project's own numbers, generated at least 600,000 extra votes for Proposition 8.

Since the researchers' statistical findings didn't do the job they wanted, gay marriage advocates more or less changed the subject, claiming that higher levels of church attendance among minority voters largely explain their propensity for opposing same-sex unions. "The study found that when religious attendance was factored out … there was no significant difference between African Americans and other groups," the report said.

That's a distinction without a difference, implying that gay rights advocates wish so many church-attending African Americans hadn't voted.

Huh? It's a distinction without a difference to say that "when religious attendance is factored out..there [is] no significant difference between African Americans and other groups"?? How is that presumably intelligent people can not understand this concept? Let me try and spell it out again: If you have two people who are equally religious, then African Americans have a statistically insignificant different voting rate for Proposition 8. This completely debunks both prongs of the zombie meme simultaneously: Black people are NOT more homophobic than other people and they are not responsible for Proposition 8's passage more than any other group.

Secondly, there were 13.4 million people who voted on proposition 8 (7 million YES and 6.4 million NO). The Egan-Sherrill report estimates the African American percentage of the total vote at 7% of the total. How is it possible that 7% of the electorate could be responsible of the passage of a proposition? Where are these extra 600,000 voters that Dan Walters is talking about? On what page of the report does this fact appear? Do the math.It's not possible. Why is this such a hard idea to understand?

Thirdly, there is a huge difference between a particular voting bloc having 59% support for a measure as opposed to 70% voting for it, particularly when the measure passed by 52% overall. As a political reporter, Dan Walters knows that, and to discount this important result that Egan and Sherrill have found is peculiar at best, and irresponsible at worst.

The only thing I can conclude, when faced with evidence of irrational behavior which appears impervious to factual data and logic is to assume some kind of animating bias. What other reason would numerous people (who it must be noted, all appear to be white men) refuse to acknowledge that the thesis that "Black people are more homophobic than others and were responsible for Proposition 8's passage" has been repeatedly refuted?

I encourage readers to explain it for me, because I truly can not.