When I was about four-years-old, my mother purchased swimming lessons for me. There I was in the locker room getting ready with my bathing suit when I saw him, a boy of maybe 13 or 14 standing naked. Everything in my four-year-old body wanted to go and hug him, but somehow or other, I knew it wouldn’t be permitted. I can recall thinking to myself, "When I grow up, I’ll hug him." It was another 16 or 17 years before I would call myself an out gay man, but that’s what I have been for more than a quarter century. I suppose on Daily Kos, it’s no secret that this out gay man is for Hillary.
I provide this little biography to give a qualification why I celebrate that the nation’s oldest GLBT newspaper The Washington Blade has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for president. The Washington Blade is my hometown gay paper and the second largest gay paper in the United States; I have been reading it for more than two decades.
The Blade gives many reasons for its endorsement: "her intellect and willingness to work hard," her "focus on constituent service," and her chance to be president, which it calls, "the best chance of sending the Republicans into eight years of a well-deserved political wilderness." But at the heart of their argument is this great hope:
She has promised that gay Americans will have an "open door" to her White House, a welcome change from the non-stop demonizing of gays under Bush.
Let me tell you why I believe this will happen. I have seen it happen before, and what is past is prologue. When she and her husband came to Washington in 1993, they opened for us the doors of the White House and met with members of our community about our rights. They made it okay to support the rights of GLBT persons. Washington is a gay-friendly town, but I had never seen two men hold hands, even on 17th Street, the heart of gay Washington. That suddenly changed when the Clintons showed that our rights were important to them. I remember the first time I saw two young men holding hands, and I understood in wonderment the Clintons had changed the culture of the place where I lived.
I have watched Hillary earlier this year at the gay forum and with Ellen when she interviewed Hillary. It was evident in both venues, Hillary is completely comfortable with us GLBT folk. We feel it in our bones, and I think based on my observations of my friends, she is winning our votes in a walk. There is something about her we trust. A survey published at the end of November suggests my intuition about my community is correct. A Hunter College poll suggested that at that time 63% of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual persons who volunteered their presidential preference said they planned to vote for Hillary. If you are a GLBT person on the fence, I ask you to join us. As The Blade suggested:
She’s smart, tenacious, hard working and willing to cede the spotlight in the interest of bipartisan cooperation. She has marched in our Pride parades, promised unprecedented access to her administration and backed nearly all of our issues.
Clinton has earned the support of gay voters in 2008.