I haven't diaried for a long time, but this is something that I've been thinking about a lot the last few days since the election.
When do you push the agenda for equal rights to the LGBT community? I know that this election cycle it has been played down by the Dems, letting Iraq and the crumbling economy be the main focus so as to win a lot of the social conservative votes. Granted, that's an excellent tactic to gain the majority needed so they can stop Wannabe King Chimpy in his tracks and start a little bit of cleanup. The only major gay related news have all been about self-loathing closet case refuglicans and extremely negative. It served its purpose in suppressing the evangelicals a bit, but that is not how it should have been.
My question is .. when are we supposed to push for our rights? Should we really wait until Iraq and the economy have settled down a bit? If we do that .. then Gay marriage would become a front and center campaign topic, just like 2004, and energise all the people who would prefer to vote for hate, and we might end up losing that round.
I feel like this is a Catch-22 situation. If you try and push it when the country as a whole is in a mess, you stand in danger of alienating the middle ground voters who are needed to win and maintain the requisite majority. If you wait until the political climate has calmed down, then you risk being the single issue overshadowing everything else, and that would be a repeat of 2004 which we cannot afford.
I may be wrong in my assessment. If so I'd like to know. I just want to know what people on this site think about this, and how do you think that we can approach this issue intelligently for coming political cycle, where I am sure that this will be pulled up as the old faithful bogeyman again by the peddlers of hate.