Brody's Scribbles... Okay, LGBT Equality Took An Electoral Hit, Now What?

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Nov 5 | "It ain't over till the fat lady sings..." A tired cliche to be certain but applicable. I spent alot of time yesterday revisiting and rehashing the results of elections from all over the U. S., particularly Maine's, with various LGBT folks that I know. I became quite disillusioned as the day wore on because it seemed that some people were throwing the proverbial towel in and walking away from the fight for LGBT Equality.  I will note though that there also were those that are even more energised to carry on and pointed out that in tallying the results yesterday across the country, at a local and state level, the LGBT Equality fight was a measured success as LGBT persons & ballot issues were approved by the citizens of the places where they appeared.

Gay activist L. Page “Deacon” Maccubbin, who has given lesbians & gays in Washington D. C. visibility and a public presence, & well-known as the founder and owner of Lambda Rising Books in the heart of Washington's thriving LGBT community in DuPont Circle, said:

"I don't see Maine as a total loss. It simply means that we need to work smarter and harder to convince people that Gay people are no less deserving than they are. It was so close anyway, we won in Washington [state] and in many local races."

Deacon was not alone in his assessment as noted in the following article by Diane Silver, the nationally syndicated author of the column "Political IQ." Diane's take on this appeared in The Bilerico Project yesterday.

Our Muddled Electoral Mess

By Diane Silver (Lawrence, Kansas) Nov 4 | Anyone who says they know exactly what yesterday's election results mean for the future of LGBTQ people is a blowhard and a liar. Yesterday's results were decidedly muddled.
Marriage equality lost yet again, this time in Maine. For anyone who's counting, and that is all of the MSM, that's 31 defeats for equality. Damn.
"Everything But Marriage" won in the state of Washington. The victory was narrow - 51.03 percent vs. 48.97 percent - but it was still a victory for LGBTQ people and our families.
In Kalamazoo, Mich., a landslide of voters - 65 percent - shouted "NO!" to the right's effort to be able to legally fire or refuse housing to us.
Throughout the country, and in some surprisingly moderate-to-conservative places, out lesbian and gay candidates did very well. They range from Annise Parker's first-place finish in the Houston mayoral race to victories for out candidates for city councils in Detroit; St. Petersburg, Fl.; Akron, Ohio; Salt Lake City; and Maplewood, Minn. The mayor of Chapel Hill, N..C., is now the openly gay Mark Kleinschmidt. On a day when the fear of gays in schools helped defeat marriage equality in Maine, voters in Canton, Ohio, elected openly gay Eric Resnick to the Canton Board of Education.

I have no real answers about the true meaning of these results, but I do have some first thoughts.

• Some folks are already saying that we should give up on or de-emphasize marriage equality, but I don't buy that. I personally believe that marriage is too important to the safety and security of our families for us to back off. Also, civil rights struggles are measured in decades, even centuries, and the marriage fight is still young. I believe we will never have full equality until people can see us as being fully human, and being fully human includes the right to marry.
• The temptation is great to find a scapegoat for the loss in Maine. Some will target the No on 1 campaign. By all accounts, the No on 1 campaign did a good job. Nate Silver (no relation) may well be right when he notes: 
  

"I certainly don't think the No on 1 campaign can be blamed; by every indication, they ran a tip-top operation whereas the Yes on 1 folks were amateurish. But this may not be an issue where the campaign itself matters very much; people have pretty strong feelings about the gay marriage issue and are not typically open to persuasion."

• Some are already attacking Barack Obama and the DNC-controlled Organizing for America for failing to rally voters to vote no in Maine. I personally suspect that if Obama, or OFA had intervened, they may well have moved the vote a bit in our favor. Whether that would have been enough for us to win is unknown. All of which means nothing about how I think we should approach Obama and the DNC. I say hold their feet to the fire. Enough is enough.
• Our losses show that we're still politically weak, particularly on the issue of marriage, but our victories show that we're gaining strength. The success of openly lesbian and gay candidates is a clear sign that bigotry is beginning to go out of fashion. I'll be keeping a close watch on the run-off election in Houston. Conventional wisdom would normally make Anise Parker the frontrunner, but we'll have to wait and see if voters flinch at the last minute at the idea of having a lesbian as mayor.

I have no patience anymore. I am sick to death of people voting on my rights, on my humanity. I agree with David Mixner that we now live in an unacceptable state of gay apartheid.

And yet, I've lived long enough to see that even yesterday's decidedly mixed results show progress. There was a time when any victory for lesbians and gays was unthinkable. Yesterday an entire state gave us a victory and conservative, little Kalamazoo stood up to say discrimination is wrong. Running as an out candidate was once political suicide, particularly in places like Texas and Ohio, but look at all our victories.

Is the glass half full or half empty? Do we give up or fight on? Should we change our tactics or strategy? What do you think? 

Diane Silver is the nationally syndicated author of the column "Political IQ." A former newspaper reporter, magazine editor and political activist, Diane has published in The Progressive, Salon.com, Ms Magazine, and other national publications. These days she is searching for the meaning of life, politics, spirituality, science fiction & women’s basketball.