While people across the country are rightfully upset about the passage of the anti-gay Prop 8 in California, the GLBT community in Florida is also mourning the passage of an anti-gay marriage amendment in our state that has gone under the national radar for the most part. But I have a sliver of good news from election night to lift our spirits a bit: Hillsborough County, which is the home of the city of Tampa, is poised to elect the first openly gay member of the Hillsborough County Commission. The Commission has a recent history of anti-gay actions, so this is big news indeed.
In case you missed it amid the sad news out of California, Florida residents voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to amend the state's constitution to ban gay marriage. A whopping 62 percent of Floridians voted for the measure. Same-sex marriage was already banned in Florida law, but that wasn't good enough for the homophobes. So now same-sex marriage is banned in Florida's constitution, further decreasing the chances that gays will ever have equal rights in the state. As in California, African American and Hispanic/Latino voters passed the anti-gay measure by huge margins.
But amid this depressing news, there is a sliver of good news to report. Voters in Hillsborough County appear to have elected openly gay candidate Kevin Beckner to the Hillsborough County Commission, defeating homophobic incumbent Brian Blair. I say "appears to" because Hillsborough County is still counting its votes, due to a major voting machine foul-up thanks to our incompetent election supervisor Buddy Johnson. But Beckner currently holds a 53%-47% lead, with 377 of 383 precincts reporting, so it looks good for him.
Beckner's win is considered a major upset. He would be the first openly gay member of the Hillsborough County Commission, which has a history of thumbing its nose at the GLBT community and denying equal rights to GLBT citizens. The Commission made the national spotlight three years ago when it voted 5-1 vote to ban gay pride displays on county property. County commissioners also voted to rescind previously granted discrimination protections for gays and lesbians.
Blair was certainly a leading homophobe on the county board. Just this past April, he wrote parents asking them to pressure the Hillsborough County School District to ban student-led silent protests against the bullying of gays.
On the eve of the election, Beckner faced some slimy negative attacks that tried to scare voters away from him due to his sexual orientation and spread lies about his positions. In a robocall, conservative political activist David Caton claimed Beckner would seek to legalize gay marriage in Hillsborough County if elected, which is not true. And in a mass e-mail, Caton claimed that Beckner was part of a radical agenda to force pastors to sanctify gay marriage.
So even though GLBT equality took a huge step backward in Florida and our country on Tuesday, perhaps Beckner's historic election here in Hillsborough County shows that all is not lost. Even though most straight folks don't want us to have the same rights and protections that they do, at least they're willing to elect us to public office. I guess that's progress.