I Quit: 2009 Election Wrap Up

So how about that election? Let’s throw the results up and see how it shook out.

• WIN! The trans-inclusive anti-discrimination ordinance in Kalamazoo, Michigan passed by a landslide 24 point margin. An exceptional cap to the campaign that saw our opposition predictably return to public bathroom fear-mongering. Kudos to Kalamazoo for seeing past the nonsense! (photo from mlive.com)
• WIN! According to Chuck Wolfe, 50 of the 79 openly gay political candidates endorsed by the Victory Fund in 2009 have been elected. That’s 50 City Councilmembers, School Board members, Commissioners, and Mayors elected across America, in most cases with their gender preference used as a weapon.
• WIN! (Well, probably.) Washington’s Referendum 71, which approves the Everything-But-Marriage Law passed in May. There are still a few hundred thousand absentee ballots to be counted, a process that may not be completed for several days. The current (Wednesday 3:00 pm PST) count is 51%-49% for passage. We have reason to be hopeful, as election officials have revealed that the majority of uncounted votes are from counties that generally supported the referendum. So tentatively, congratulations to Washington for letting lesbians and gay men get everything except get married.
• LOSS! A major losses for the feminist and LGBT communities in the Virginia gubernatorial election. Liberty University graduate Bob McDonnell handily defeated his opponent, even after his amazingly anti-woman and anti-gay master’s thesis was uncovered. In 1989 he wrote that, “…when the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality, the government must restrain, punish, and deter.” As others (even FOX, for goodness’ sake) have pointed out, McDonnell’s thesis is a blueprint for his record so far as an elected official. LGBT people (and women) in Virginia, be on your guard!
• LOSS! In the greatest loss of the night, Maine voters stripped their lesbian and gay neighbors of their marriage rights. With 98% of votes counted, Maine’s Question One passed by 53% – 47%. Once again the majority has decided that the minority group doesn’t deserve the same rights they enjoy. The Yes on One campaign, funded and directed largely by the Catholic Church (probably with help from the Mormons), ran a campaign centered almost completely around lies, fear-mongering, and more lies. Their television ads focused almost exclusively on statements that state officials and legal experts directly disputed. More details (and photo at right) from Rex Wockner.

We had some good results, but when you ask people if lesbian and gay relationships should be treated like theirs, the answer is still a resounding NO. Even when the Washington legislature passed a law that complied with bigoted requirements, we can barely eek out a majority vote.

And you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of getting excited when a state legislature takes an unconstitutional vote that works out in our favor, and I’m tired of being disappointed when the populace takes an unconstitutional vote that reinforces systemic bigotry. I’m tired of acting like this incremental approach is reasonable anymore.

So I quit. No longer will I work for piece-meal measures and popular votes. It’s wrong, it’s unnecessary, and it allows our enemy to choose the battlefield.

I don’t completely deride incrementalism, by the way. It was a good and necessary part of the national strategy from 1996 through 2006 when we had a hostile president (first Clinton, then GWB) and a hostile congress. Our community kept hope alive for a decade with work on more local levels until we could get theoretically sympathetic majorities.

But now we have those majorities in congress, and we have a theoretically fierce advocate in the White House. The time for the confusing patchwork of laws that change every time we cross the county line is over.

It’s quite possible that a marriage law will be passed by year’s end in Washington, DC, and there’s talk of that possibility in of that happening through special sessions in New York and New Jersey, but you won’t find news of them here. If the fag hag and her closet case from NOM want to go at it on a national level, then fine. Otherwise, I’m not interested.

Either we’re fully equal or we’re not. Either the 14th amendment protects us or it doesn’t. I say we are, and I say it does.

What say you?