So the big picture, politically, continues to be : that the GLBT voting populace generally has to weigh a candidate...and eventually vote realistically for who will do us the least amount of harm. At least, this has been my rationale since I started voting 28 years ago.
I agree with you to an extent. I do not single-issue vote. Ever. I always strive to chose the candidate I feel will accomplish the most good in his or her 4 years in office. This past election, I could have gone either way... right up until the point where McCain chose Palin as his running mate. As feeble as he looked on some of the debates, I knew there was a good chance of that crazy woman running the country, and there was no way I could justify that. I remember watching a YouTube video of her speaking to her church congregation and telling them outright that God favored her oil pipeline plans above other contenders. I want NO ONE in the Oval Office who is taking their orders direct from the man upstairs, because as far as I know He doesn't have fax or email. It's perfectly fine to be religious and to pray for guidance for your personal life, but if you are the leader of America, I want you making decisions based on the here and now... not the hereafter.
I will admit to one other thing, however, that goes against my attempt to not single issue vote.
I almost always vote Republican for the state of MD gubernatorial election. I really liked our last governor Bob Ehrlich. He was a moderate Republican and I liked what he was doing with regards to schools and the Department of Natural Resources. I would have voted for him again... except... he was adamantly opposed to civil unions or marriage for gays and damn it... I want to be able to be "official" with my girlfriend. We're living together now and it's great... but I still want that moment. I can't explain why and I am pretty sure my family will go through the roof and then not attend, but I want that for us... so for the first time in my life, I chose the candidate least likely to block civil unions/ gay marriages in our state. So far the guy hasn't done much of anything one way or the other, but to my knowlege no one is pushing.
The fact is, Bush did nothing for gay rights in 8 years in office and Obama still has 4, maybe even 8 more years in office to create change. I think it's evident that he is far more understanding and committed than any president we've had in the past 20 years, and he's putting the right people in the right places to initiate change. Everyone's going to want him to focus on their cause, and rightly so, but he is only human and change, inevitably, takes time!.
I am a big fan of "give the man a chance." To be perfectly honest, I think that gay marriage is a lot less important at the moment than our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am still not sure how I feel about health care, but I can tell you that it really pisses me off that Tara will have to work 90 days, three months, in order to get health care from Petsmart, and if she changes to the better job that is opening in August, and goes back to working as a recreational therapist in a nursing home, she'll have to wait ANOTHER 3 months to get benefits. That's BS... if you are working full time you should have benefits for God's sake. You PAY for them! Jesus. When I signed with the county, my benefits started the first day I worked... it is a foreign concept to me for this not to be the case with these other jobs.
Of course we can also come back to the point now that if I were a straight person I could just marry her now and she could have MY benefits. But because I am not straight, I have to demonstrate my level of committment to her by living with her for 12 straight months and jumping through a bunch of other hoops as well. Heck, she can't even change her license over without jumping through these same hoops-- but if we were straight and got married, I could just write a letter saying she lives in Maryland now, deal with it MVA....
Forget Obama for a moment. This is a societal problem, and I think it would undermine the actual demonetization of homosexuals if we blame this circumstance on Obama. Take for example the issue with Miss America stating her views, she became the symbol of ignorance, yet more than 50% of Californians voted to have the same opinion as she did. Let's blame the larger population that creates these injustices, not the most publicized figure.
If you want to go a little further into that, think about the fact that the biggest demographic of voters who voted yes on proposition 8 were Latino voters! For God's sake-- they are the next most discriminated against group in America. It's like the 2nd scrawniest kid beating up the most scrawniest kid on the playground!
But I suspect he will address it sometime in the next few years. The above mentioned case may push it into the forefront sooner, rather than later... So, although I think there is plenty to disagree with our new Prez, I don't think it is time to bash him on this subject, at least not YET.
Well said, Kathy.
