Monday, November 8, 2010

Brody's Notes... SiriusXM Host Michelangelo Signorile: "You're A Member Of A Minority Group Hated By This Society."

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) NOV 8 | In a recent broadcast on his show two days after the elections, SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile spoke with listeners and voters in the last hour of the programme, asking why they voted Republican. In his daily column on The Gist, Signorile writes:
I asked those LGBT people who voted Republican to call in to the show and explain why. The phones lit up with people calling from all across the U.S.
Exit polling shows gay, lesbian, bisexual voters cast a ballot for Republicans in double the numbers from 2008: from 19% to 31%. True, the sample is small, and any such polling should be taken with a grain of salt. But it's undeniable that many LGBT voters were disappointed with the White House and Democrats, and it's plausable that many stayed home or voted for another party.
And yet, the Republican takeover of the House and many statehouses means there will be no votes expanding gay civil rights protections, in Congress and in most of the states that went GOP (and there likely will be antigay votes, such as in Minnesota where Republican pledge to push a marriage amendment), which begs the question of why gay people would vote Republican in this election. The phones were jammed with people who voted GOP who wanted to offer their explanations for casting votes politicians like David Vitter in Louisiana, for Rand Paul in Kentucky, for Rick Scott in the governor's race in Florida, and for various other, Senate, House and local races.
In response to a video taken from the broadcast that day, one reader from the popular LGBT political website Joe.My.God opined:
The problem with our civil rights became not giving the democratic party too little support, it was from giving the democratic too much support. The gay movement is now split because conservative gays no longer feel captive.  The argument that they should vote for democratic candidates just does not fly for them, because the democratic party failed conservative-leaning gays.  They controlled the government for two years, and delivered nothing.  So why should a conservative-leaning gay stay with the democrats? 
The conservative gays did the democratic party some good by purging the anti-gay blue dogs.
And anyway, gays lost all leverage with the democratic party by giving them unqualified support, so when they achieved control of the government, they took us for granted.  The gay vote was automatic for them, so the calculation in the White House was don't help the gays, it could piss off the independents.
That captivity to one party had to stop.  LBGT no longer can assume one party has their back.  The shine is off the democratic party, and it is never coming back.  They only care about religious independents in Ohio, not gays.

1 comments:

Desmond Rutherford said...

"Money over civil rights," Yep he's a Republican.
I'm really impressed with the way Michelangelo stood up to these people. The Republicans would have no qualms in reinstating homosexuality acts as a criminal offence if they thought they could get away with it. That won't be good for the cheque book.