Editorial
Editorial
Lighting Torches
Two
years ago I wrote an editorial about counting our blessings and lighting
candles to push back the darkness after disappointing results in the mid-term
congressional and Vermont's gubernatorial elections. I could almost reprint
it now.
On one hand, a gay and lesbian issue has
for the first time played a role in a presidential election. On the other
hand, some analysts suggest that issue - marriage equality - helped lose
the election for John Kerry (as if he needed our help on that score).
As a result, we are being scapegoated by a political establishment that
refuses to look at its own four-year tactical and policy failures. 'Pundits'
- both gay and otherwise - are castigating the lgbt communities for pushing
'too hard' and 'too soon' for equality, for using the courts rather than
legislation, resulting in a 'backlash' that brought Christian fundamentalists
to the polls in record numbers. They're overlooking the fact that we didn't
put those measures on the ballots - Karl Rove did - and he would have
done so with or without the marriages in San Francisco.
Gay commentators are sputtering over the
21-23 percent (depending on the source) of self-identified gay voters
who touched the screen or pulled the lever for Bush, despite his support
for writing anti-gay discrimination into the federal constitution. It's
roughly the same percentage as four years ago.
Meanwhile, we in Vermont are being 'led'
for another two years by a governor who cannot even manage to say our
names, much less sign an official proclamation in celebration of our Pride
Festival. (Now there's a page out of his fearless leader's book: if you
don't like a group's existence, just erase them from your vocabulary.)
And he was opposed by another less-than-organized Democrat whose political
calculations sacrificed our hopes for an affirmation of equal marriage
to his campaign's failed attempts to attract votes from a conservative,
ethnic demographic.
To turn the post-election twilight into
full benightedness, there are those 11 states which have now made it part
of their constitutions to discriminate against same-sex couples - and
their children. Eight of those states banned any official recognition
of 'marriage-like' relationships, including civil unions.
And yet... and yet... although no one has
ever accused me of being an irrational optimist, I do not despair.
There are the bright spots, candles
against the dark: the new and/or newly energized organizations to carry
on the longer conversations it will take to make our case for equality
("Eyes on the prize" was a civil rights cry for a reason). There
are legislative successes in three states (California, Massachusetts,
and Vermont) where marriages or civil unions actually occurred - with
or without legal sanction.
Control of the Vermont legislature
is now in the hands of friends and allies. The gay caucus in the House
doubles with the addition of Steve Howard of Rutland and Jason Lorber
of Burlington to re-elected Representatives Robert Dostis and Bill Lippert.
For the first time we have a gay state senator, former Auditor Ed Flanagan.
And across the lake, Plattsburgh Mayor Dan Stewart, an openly gay - and
pro-marriage equality - Republican, was elected for a third term in a
landslide.
But even so, there's been plenty of email
and website traffic regarding the impulse of frustrated and depressed
Democrats, environmentalists, peace activists, and marriage equality agitators
from within and outside Vermont to emigrate - to Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, among other countries.
I understand the urge to flee a country
that has voted for bigotry and war, and against civil liberties and equality.
I felt the same way in 1984 when Ronald Reagan was re-elected. But I'm
still here, and if anything more visible than ever as an out loud and
proud lesbian. We've been here before - we women, we lesbians, who started
and funded rape crisis centers, battered women's services and shelters,
and grassroots abortion services; we gay men and lesbians who founded
health services and moved armies of volunteers and raised money for AIDS
research. We've been despised illegals and outsiders for a very long time.
We know how to survive this benightedness.
Thirty-five years ago it was illegal in
New York to serve alcohol to a gay person in a public bar. Now we are
in the Vermont Senate and the Vermont and U.S. Houses, and the Plattsburgh
mayor's office. The religious right and the spineless demagogues who carry
their political water cannot make us disappear into mafia-run alcohol-soaked
holes in the wall. We have built and funded our own service agencies without
the government when we had to. And if we have to, we know how to do it
again. We must resist the scapegoating and the urging by our fair-weather
political friends to walk back into the closet. We must never, ever apologize
for seeking equality by whatever means necessary. And we need to keep
lighting those local candles - and then bind them into a strong torch
with which we will ignite a bonfire that will be a beacon for equality
that cannot be ignored.
Resist. Stay involved: when we light our
candles and ignite our torches, the next generation will wonder that there
ever was such darkness.
Euan Bear