This morning I read two conflicting diaries: “I Have to Defend Bill Clinton” (http://www.dailykos.com/... ) and “I Won’t Defend Bill Clinton” (http://www.dailykos.com/... ). One thing I noted was a regional difference; the first diarist related his experience in Mississippi and Louisiana while the second lived on the east coast and in California. I think both related valid experiences and feelings.
Here are my thoughts (beyond the curlicue):
In the 2004 election in Ohio, Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) was Kerry’s best county. He got two-thirds of the vote (448,486 votes). Bush got 221,606 and others candidates got 3,674.
The election of 2004 also contained the vile Proposition 1 - a ballot initiative to amend the Ohio State Constitution to prevent same-sex marriage. Sadly, it passed overwhelmingly – 62% to 38%. It passed in all Ohio counties except Athens County (home of Ohio University). In Cuyahoga County, it passed 335,678 to 294,569.
So, if we assume that every Bush voter in Cuyahoga County also voted for Prop 1, there were at least 110,000 Kerry voters who voted for Prop 1 – in the Democratic stronghold of Cuyahoga County. That’s about 1 in 4, and it is a low estimate; I grew up in Cleveland and there are some socially liberal Republicans who would vote with their tribe for President but against a homophobic constitutional amendment.
We’ve come a long way and changed a lot of minds. We still have a ways to go. Homophobia is a useless, counter-productive but deep-seated fear we must overcome.
I think social change is often both evolutionary and revolutionary. The LGBT rights progress has been driven both evolutionarily (by slow familiarization as straight people meet gay people and realize that they are just people and not scary deviant threats) and revolutionarily (by events or actions which garner public attention and change the perception of swaths of people).
In my opinion, both types of change are important; evolutionary change is often more permanent and reaches more deeply, but it moves with frustrating slowness – revolutionary change achieves greater gains, but can be subject to revolutionary reversals.
I think it is important to recognize that there are organized forces against us who employ both counter-evolutionary strategies (religious indoctrination of the young) and counter-revolutionary tactics (the hyping of adverse new stories as well as ballot initiatives like Prop 1). Both are real and damaging. We need to continue to struggle against both.
I think it is also important to recognize that homophobia has been used as a partisan hot-button in the overall political struggle of the country and that the parties are greatly (although slightly less than utterly) polarized on LGBT issues. While it seems ‘Log Cabin Republicans’ exist, I don’t believe they achieve much against the overwhelmingly regressive and reactionary Republican mainstream. If you hope to find ‘right-thinking’ (and by that I mean ‘correct thinking’) people, you had better first look to Democrats and not Republicans.
Lastly, the great political polarization of our time encompasses more than just issues concerning LGBT rights. As of society, we are more polarized than ever, and we face many vital challenges. This increasing polarization has caused a major shift in a politics from compromise to conflict. We must remember that a ‘total opposition’ model was not always the dominant paradigm and that major party figures in the 1980s and 1990s were expected to build broad-based coalitions and trade horses in a way we can no longer anticipate. Many times the trade-offs were determined by mastering the likely vote count, and a compromise on one issue would not necessarily be optimal if it won only the 45th vote.
So, my wish for all is that we treat each other with a forgiving, tolerant and friendly eye. The perfect is not the enemy of the good; the good is not the enemy of the perfect; evolutionary change is not the enemy of revolutionary change; pragmatists are not the opponents of idealists when they both seek the same end. It is hard to settle for evolutionary change when your loved ones are dying in front of your eyes. It is hard to push for revolutionary change when a valiant loss leads to massive losses on all fronts.
We face a situation where the stakes are high. The Supreme Court is split and hovering on the edge of a change one way or the other. Congress is controlled by Republicans. We hold the executive branch. We can expect no legislative progress without control of both houses. If we lose control of the White House and Republicans retain control of both houses, I predict a blitzkrieg of massive proportions; the Republicans will not seek consensus.
Still, I do not want to wait until redistricting to make progress; 2022 is too far away. So, I want us to win BIG. For that, we need to run as a unified party and demonstrate the sort of internal tolerance that the Republicans just cannot seem to achieve these days. We need to foster internal good will and permit a development of trust. Let us be kind to one another and strive to see from each other’s perspective. We come from different corners of a huge nation; if we are unified, we can all move forward together.