Missouri Democrats account for just eight of the Senate chamber’s 32 lawmakers, but their numbers didn’t stop them from taking a gutsy stand for equality this week. After filibustering a bill that would put LGBT rights to popular vote for 39 consecutive hours, Republicans used a rare procedural maneuver to finally shut down the debate and force a preliminary vote.
Those same Democratic lawmakers, incensed by a tactic that has only been used 16 times since 1970, continued to grind the chamber to a halt most of Thursday, though SJR39 finally passed in the evening.
It was a heartening show of solidarity from a small group of lawmakers who profoundly disagreed with the notion that certain organizations should be able to refuse services to same-sex couples on religious grounds.
In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal filibustered for nearly eight consecutive hours before leaving to shower and get some food. When Sen. Jamilah Nasheed was quizzed by her GOP colleague, Sen. Ed Emery, about which part of SJR39 was discriminatory, she replied, “All of it!” adding that simply reading “every word in there” would direct him to the discrimination. Emery also pressed Sen. Jill Schupp on why she wouldn’t let the measure go to ballot so people could vote on it. "I think this is so wrong at its core," Schupp explained from the floor, "we need to stop it right here."
It’s worth noting that at least two of the Democrats who blocked the bill have gay relatives—Sens. Chappelle-Nadal and Scott Sifton. The power of being known should never be underestimated. But similar to the uproar caused by Indiana’s hate bill last year, Missouri provided a bright light at a moment when the LGBT movement is being swamped with attack bills. It also shone a national spotlight on the issue during an election season that hasn’t centered much around LGBT issues.
After the filibuster attracted national headlines, the Missouri House will face increased pressure to scrap the bill as representatives from the state’s business sector like Dow Chemical, Monsanto, and the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce weighed in against the bill. As did both Democratic candidates, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
That however, is one of the few good pieces of news from the campaign trail for LGBT advocates. Though both Democratic candidates have weighed in here and there on LGBT issues, only Washington Blade reporter Chris Johnson has landed an interview with one: Bernie Sanders, nearly a year ago. By this time in 2008, both Clinton and Obama had granted an interview to The Advocate and Clinton had done a string of interviews with local LGBT papers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, among others. (Please Note: This piece was completed Friday morning, before Hillary’s gaffe on the Reagans starting a “national conversation” on HIV/AIDS. I’ve added an addendum at the end of the piece.)
By contrast, issues related to the Black Lives Matter and DREAM movements have proven much more salient this election cycle. In fact, long before Sens. Chappelle-Nadal and Nasheed held forth on Missouri’s senate floor this week, both became outspoken activists on BLM issues after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. And given the horrific string of Black American deaths at the hands of law enforcement officials and the continued raids, deportations, and separations of immigrant families perpetrated by our government, perhaps that’s simply where the need is the greatest right now.
These are the movements and the activists that have continually demanded the most of our Democratic candidates and that will be seared into the brains of the press corps that covered them on the trail—along with all the candidate promises they extracted—should Bernie or Hillary be elected president.
A New Yorker profile of BLM activists this week ended on a note suggesting that the movement’s influence may wane as Barack Obama’s presidency comes to a close.
A year from now, Barack Obama will leave office, and with him will go a particular set of expectations of racial rapprochement. So will the sense that what happened in Sanford, Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, and Staten Island represents a paradox. Black Lives Matter may never have more influence than it has now.
On that note, I am more hopeful than the piece’s author, Jelani Cobb. If a Democrat is elected president, the movement will be at the height of its power, with the ability to leverage all the work activists did during the election into meaningful change in governance. In many ways, those activists will have the momentum behind them that the LGBT movement did after 2008’s contentious primary and the heartbreaking passage of Proposition 8 filled queer activists with the urgency of now. Importantly, BLM activists and DREAMers will be ready to fight from Day 1.
Where that leaves the LGBT movement in the next Democratic administration is difficult to know. But it’s hard to see how something like the Equality Act becomes a top priority after an election where we’ve mostly been missing from the conversation.
(ADDENDUM: The eruption over Hillary Clinton’s comments on the Reagans and HIV/AIDS has provided a prime opportunity for the advocacy and media spotlight on LGBT issues that has been sorely missing. LGBT reporters, who have no doubt been chasing Hillary for an interview, might be able to capitalize on the heat she’s taking on this. And equally as important, activists—not the Human Rights Campaign—should demand a meeting with her, just like veteran HIV/AIDS activist Peter Staley suggested on his Facebook wall. With permission, Staley, in part, wrote: “Let's turn this into something positive for AIDS activism [...] Let's demand a meeting, and hash it out with her [...] Let's use this fuck-up to demand specific commitments." And just to be clear, a meeting with the Human Rights Campaign to patch things up will not suffice—the organization disqualified itself as an honest broker the moment it endorsed Hillary before a single vote had been counted. The Human Rights Campaign cannot possibly bring the urgency and inspiration that true AIDS activists can.)