People like us.

After the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws, the Gallup Poll did one of its periodic surveys of public attitudes toward gays. The results were so unexpected that Gallup did the poll again, but the findings were the same. For the first time in years, there was growing opposition to gay marriage--and even to legalizing homosexuality. The shift was most profound among African-Americans, but it extended to immigrants, poor people, and rural folks.

Of course, a poll is just a snapshot, not a permanent record. But it would be a big mistake to ignore this impression. If these groups join up with fundamentalists, they could form a potent coalition against gay rights. So wake up and smell the backlash.

Our enemies have been feverishly organizing in black and Latino churches, and they've enlisted a prominent black clergyman, Walter Fauntroy, to be the official face of their campaign against gay marriage. But who speaks for us? Not the many leaders and activists of color who are on our side. The faces making our case on CNN are nearly always white, as are the same-sex couples whose wedding notices appear in the papers. Add to this picture the flood of prime-time shows in which all the gay characters are white, and you've got a popular perception that people of color don't exist in the LGBT community. Nor does the working class.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As the old gay-lib slogan goes, "We are everywhere!" But if you judge from the media, you can easily conclude that all queers are well-off and white. In this age of saturation-point gay visibility, the sizable portion of out community that is neither seems more invisible than ever. That isn't just the media's fault. Our movement colludes in the distortion when it projects a white middle-class image.

There are many reasons for this situation. For one thing, the lion's share of funding for the LGBT movement comes from middle-class gays and lesbians. Consciously or not, they may expect to be represented by people who look like them and consciously or not, the movement may be accommodating them. It hardly helps when gay conservatives pillory organizations that strive for racial parity or chafe at making alliances with other groups and their causes. This me-first attitude is a disaster in the making. How can people struggling to get by identify with us if they don't see themselves among us? Why shouldn't young queers of color fade into their communities, in the trendy name of living on the down-low, if every homo on TV looks like a character on Will & Grace (whose only Latina is the maid)?

It's time to confront this fear of being represented by someone of a different class or race. We can't afford the luxury of unexamined bias. Not when the stakes are so high and not when the Right is pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy on gay rights.

There are signs that this message is being heard. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is devoted to building a multiracial movement. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has launched a people-of-color media program to promote LGBT coverage in African-American, Latino, and Asian media. "We're trying to provide cultural competence by having media managers who are experts in their communities," says the program's director, Monica Taher. GLAAD's annual analysis of TV programming pointedly notes that the networks "have a long way to go to reflect the full diversity of the LGBT community." This is a good start, but we have to go further.

"There needs to be an autonomous, self-sufficient, national LGBT organization for people of color," says veteran activist Mandy Carter. All of us should pitch in to create such a group. It's not just a question of doing what's fair. It's a matter of survival. By embracing diversity, the rights you save may be your own.