There has been much ado here and on MyDD about "single-issue voters". By this I presume the definition to be advocacy groups and voters who make their political decisions based solely on one issue. (please correct me if I am mistaken)
What I want to know is, where do gays and the whole glbt community fit in?
I posted an entry a while back on a MyDD diary about how if Brian Schweitzer is opposed to glbt equal rights and marriage equality (including civil unions) then I would not vote for him no matter how much I agreed with him on everything else.
I got a reply that was merely a poignant "way to be a single-issue voter" meant, apparently, to be a perjorative.
However, I think the issue is more complicated than that...
To straight people it may be a "single issue", but to me and a sizeable chunk of the US population (let alone world) it is not a "single issue".
Straight people can say, let's throw gays under the bus and give them "some" rights and call it a domestic partnership, or let's be separate but equal and call it a civil union, but that's VERY easy to say when you are in the majority with all those rights given to you without question. So many in fact that you trivialize them with "who wants to marry a midget" and Jessica and Nick.
I'm not going to get into the issue of civil unions vs. marriage vs. whatever. That's not the point of this post. Frankly, at this point, I'll take what I can get. It saddens me that all the "liberals" and "progressives" out there aren't willing to help fight for us.
Let's say we have the best candidate ever. He's populist, he's charismatic, he believes in the grass-roots, he's plain spoken and the "real deal". Oh, and he's vehemently racist. Would people of color then be "single issue" if they not only didnt support him but also actively opposed him?
I'm gay. It's what I am. I'm sure most of you would never be able to understand what its like to always feel different, unwelcome and dirty because of the way society treats you both actively and passively.
Interestingly enough, we can all rail against the Log Cabin Republicans for being hypcrites and sell-outs. We can indulge in our masturbatory rhetoric over how there must be something wrong with Rick Santorum's chief of staff since he is gay AND black. How could he support Santorum we ask?
Well, I guess he's not a single-issue voter.
So I ask this of Kossacks - if a progressive candidate is anti-gay, or supports anti-gay legislation like these shameful constitutional amendments and I and others of my kind refuse to support him or her because of it, does that make us "single issue"?