Love, Friendship and the Voting Booth

The Washington Blade has a column which, while aimed at the November elections in the USA, in its larger principles is applicable to every elections worldwide. Namely, LGBT citizens need to get the message across to friends and family that merely being accepting of us in our personal lives (not to diminish the importance of this acceptance) is NOT enough. To be truly gay friendly needs to carry over to the voting booth and ballot box. Politicians and political parties like John McCain and today's Republican Party need to feel the multiplied negative impact of their anti-gay agenda that LGBT citizens and their friends/family members voting as a block can deliver. If friends and loved ones truly want the LGBT friend or loved one happy, they need to STOP voting for those who seek to harm us or keep us second class citizens. Here are some column highlights:

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IT IS HARD to imagine an election more important to the future of our community than the one we face in November. That is why we must do all that we can to prevent our families and friends from voting for candidates who oppose our equality. They must be made to understand that how they vote affects our lives in the most fundamental ways possible; that when they vote for homophobes, they damage our shared bonds of love, trust and friendship.

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While they may be unaware of their candidates’ positions on these most basic human rights issues and are supporting them for completely unrelated reasons, they are nevertheless complicit in a political struggle that seeks to deny us our full equality. Those who see themselves as our friends and yet vote for opponents of our equality need to understand that friends treat each other with respect and dignity, and as equals. They need to know this is not an act of friendship and certainly not one of love. The same is true for family members.

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Friends tell me about their Bush/McCain-supporting Republican parents, but go on to say how accepting they are of them. When I ask how that is possible, how loving parents could support someone who wants to hurt their child, I get a blank look or a glib comment about how “that’s just the way they are.” It isn’t the way they are — they just don’t know any better and it is our job to teach them.

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Sometimes I hear (and sadly, this often comes from gay people) “they aren’t single issue voters and consider many issues when deciding how to vote.” What does it say about our sense of self worth when we accept from our parents the explanation that taxes are more important than our dignity, safety and equality? Why are we are so reluctant to challenge them when their behavior so adversely affects our lives? Ending our silence is the only way to educate the people we cherish most that our equality is important and that it requires respect. Love and friendship demand nothing less.

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If we fail to put a friend in the White House, if we fail to elect a more gay-friendly Congress, if we allow the far right to select the next Supreme Court justices, our long battle for equality will be stalled for decades. This threat is horrifyingly real.