not everyone gets a new puppy

[solarbird]

Congratulations to Barack Obama and his supporters for the strongest liberal/progressive turnout since 1964; congratulations for the historic election to the White House of someone whose ethnicity would've once enslaved him. You've quite the task in front of you, but this election is being called "transformative," and thanks to Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama will be taking office with sweeping and unchecked-by-law powers unknown to presidents before Mr. Bush's tenure, at least some of which Mr. Obama actively and publicly endorsed. I wish this election had been about that in any way, but, well, it wasn't. Still, you might want to remember to thank Bob Barr supporters for your win in Indiana, and, should you get it, your win in North Carolina, even though it turned out you didn't really need either of them.

Most progressive causes did very well; Democrats increased their majorities in both houses of Congress, and I'm rather amused that Joe "Mentum" Lieberman can now be told to go fuck himself. Massachusetts (Obama) decriminalised marijuana, South Dakota (McCain) rejected a draconian abortion ban, Colorado (Obama) overwhelmingly rejected a crazy fundamentalist initiative to define a zygote as a person and rejected an anti-union measure; Washington State (Obama) approved its Death-with-Dignaty/Assisted Suicide measure; Missouri (still too close to call) approved a renewable energy initiative; California (Obama) rejected a "parental notification" initiative.

It would have been nice if the new coalition had decided to include the queers, but, well, for those of us affected by anti-queer initiatives, we got the usual bipartisan boot to the face. Florida (Obama) passed their anti-marriage Florida Marriage Amendment 61.2%-37.9%; Arizona (McCain), which had been the only state to reject a popular initiative against marriage (2006, Proposition 107), passed this year's anti-marriage Proposition 102 - Arizona Marriage Amendment handily, 56.5%-43.5%; Arkansas (McCain) passed their "fuck you, queers" Initiative 1 ban on adoption by a wide margin (56.9%-43.1%), and California (Obama) appears to have administered the coup de grace by ending existing marriage rights for same-sex couples, 52.1%-47.9% with 95.4% returns. And, of course, Mr. Obama has made it very clear every time the question is raised that he opposes full legal equality for lesbian and gay couples.

I'm glad that the country had the sense not to elect a Christianist authoritarian as vice-president; that's important, but I've been telling anyone who would listen that this race was over since September; the markets and economy dictated that result, and indeed, that's the result achieved, so I have relatively little sense of relief on that front. The national issues I cared about most (torture, lawless executive, unchecked power) weren't really part of the election, and the state issues that hit most home (equality under the law) were the usual punches to the face. So as most of you reading this celebrate, please excuse me from it; some of us are just happy that, for another year or so at least, it's over.

Comments

[smeehrrr.livejournal.com]

I hope that the GLBT community uses this as an opportunity to reevaluate their political tactics, because the current course just isn't working - taking a look at the Prop 8 results makes it clear that a sizable percentage of Obama voters still have their panties in a bunch about gay marriage. That's unlikely to change any time soon, and that political energy is best spent somewhere else.

Like, for instance, getting the government out of the marriage business entirely. How about we leave that to churches, and let the government do what it's supposed to do, like enforcing civil contracts. Then everyone gets equal rights and people don't have to feel like their marriage is somehow miraculously becoming less sacred because the queers can do it too.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

Well, one of the things the Yes on 8 side did out here was send around material that prominently featured San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom basically going, "This is here and there's nothing you can do about it!"

I'm sure Newsom didn't help the GLBT community with that, as much as they may have liked it.

[solarbird]

Actually, everybody I know who heard that went, "oh fuck - SHUT UP, YOU DICK."

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people out here loved it, but I could be wrong.

Apparently this prop was heavily supported by blacks and latinos.

[solarbird]

Okay; not being in California, I'll take your word on that. The strong support by black voters was entirely as anticipated, and the latino support is not what you'd call surprising either.

[solarbird]

Government out of marriage business is fine on paper, but in reality, it'll be be "QUEERS want to TAKE AWAY YOUR MARRIAGE." You think straights are going to give up legal marriage for some bullshit equality approach? I don't see it.

And remember, it's only the marriage rights fight that put civil unions even on the table. Civil unions were unthinkable before legal marriage started being fought; now they're the fallback position. If you really want CUs, you have to shoot beyond that.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Consider that the federal government does not recognize civil unions for tax and most other purposes, so any statewide measure that ended marriage entirely for everyone would mean that everyone was unmarried for tax purposes.

Marriage means something that "civil union" does not and never will. As a straight person, I will not accept second-class marriage for myself, or for my friends in same-sex marriages. We need civil marriage equality for everyone.

And for practical political considerations, the chance of getting a federal "civil unions but no civil marriage" law passed is less than the chance of passing a federal marriage equality law. So we need to remain focused on civil marriage, not civil unions.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Marriage is a civil contract. I don't want to be "civilly-unioned." Marriage is also, and separately, and only sometimes, a religious institution. But that institution is unaffected by the status of civil marriage.

The best strategy is to keep going with the current strategy on all fronts until it wins. There is a constitutional challenge to Prop 8 in the making, and it sounds like it rests on solid reasoning and will be well-received by the same court that ruled in favor of marriage equality.

Then there's the matter that every year, old anti-gay voters die off. At some point, if this stands constitutional challenge, another measure can restore these rights.

The idea of getting rid of civil marriage altogether is not going to work, for the simple matter that unlike marriage equality it really is a threat to marriage, and most people who are already married will vote against it. I would.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

As would my family, within our respective countries. As would I, if it came to a vote in Canada (which is unlikely....)

Civil marriage is indeed an important institution, because its very existence is a safeguard against the excesses of fundmentalist religiosity. The very moment that civil marriage ceases to be an option, then people seeking to be wed would be obliged to jump through whatever hoops were being religiously set.

Sure, I'm for the moment ignoring the existence of many different religions within the American cultural mosaic, but then again, some of those religions' leadership want to set the ground rules for everyone, adherents and non-adherants alike.

Being a minority of a minority of a minority, I'm somewhat leery of that trend.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i think that the big point here is that civil rights should not be left up for vote. the citizenry was pissed off enough this time to oust the repelicans, but that's because it was in their individual faces all the time.

i suspect that, as in previous civil-rights endeavors, real progress will come with leadership from the top (the presidency, the judiciary). remember that it was massachusetts' judiciary that said "no, jerks, you don't get to vote on your fellow citizens' rights. bite us." (and yes, there was a movement to get a prop-8-like measure on the ballot here.)

so while i think the good fight continues to suffer from public setbacks, i also think that better leadership will help lead the way. obama's at least not unable to utter the word "gay" close to the word "citizen".

i'm not quite soppy enough to quote langston hughes 1938 to you, but remember that you're respected, as well and loved and missed, back here in the commonwealth. *hugs*

[avram]

I'm telling everyone to expect same-sex marriage in NY State within two years, maybe one. Via the legislature, not the judiciary.

[solarbird]

i suspect that, as in previous civil-rights endeavors, real progress will come with leadership from the top (the presidency, the judiciary)
And we don't have the former, or a party that pretends to be for equality.

[avram]

Well, keep in mind how much Obama likes to compare himself to Lincoln. Lincoln on the campaign trail said that abolishing slavery would be unconstitutional.

Let's hope it doesn't take a war to get Obama to change his mind on this one.

[solarbird]

Yeah, but he also said he was against slavery, and leading an anti-slavery party. Mr. Obama, by contrast, has said, repeatedly, that he is against marriage, and is leading a party that officially does not support marriage.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Yes, and that repetition on his part is fairly telling, because he certainly did not need to Dominionist vote in order to win the election. It was pandering to the bottom of the pond, plain and simple.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed with a lot of the results other than the presidential race. Heck, even there, I was disappointed. For a while I actually thought that I might be able to vote for someone instead of just voting against his opponent. Not yet, apparently.

I just hope that four years of someone who's not actively trying to destroy the country will give us a little bit of room to try and actually get things turning around.

[cacopheny.livejournal.com]

Every interview I heard with Obama on the subject (which was, admittedly, only two) said he was personally not okay with marriage that wasn't man+woman, but that he thought making legislature about it was divisive and discriminatory and wrong. He didn't support Prop 8, at least. No matter what his personal beliefs, he denounced it as wrong.

I'm hoping it gets turned over by someone and something else. I have several people on my flist who are pretty sure the issue'll just keep coming back, and it's not over yet.

[solarbird]

I've never heard him use the word "personally" in that context. I was waiting for it. He always just said he opposes marriage. He did oppose Prop 8, when asked, such as here:

MTV video

...but always bracketed it with very firm statements of his opposition to marriage.

[dianthus.livejournal.com]

I always had the impression that he might say differently if the majority was willing to accept it. IIRC, only one of the super tuesday democratic candidates declared he was for same-sex marriage. The country, unfortunately, is just not ready for the idea, and, just like with desegregation, will have to have it jammed down their throats by unelected officials.

[solarbird]

Desegregation and legal quality on race was in the Democratic platform as of 1948. There was a party officially on the side of equality, at least on paper. Court cases matter, but they mostly matter when you have political support to back it up. And that's simply not true here yet.

[dianthus.livejournal.com]

I'm pissed about it, but I'm still glad that we've elected a President that isn't actively involved in the culture war from the bigot side.

[solarbird]

Last time we didn't have that (Mr. Clinton), we got Federal law declaring queers an unacceptable threat to the military, a real-world implementation actually worse than what had been in place before (previously, you could be queer and in the military if you were abstinent; afterwards, that wasn't okay either), and an enthusiastically-endorsed DOMA, followed by anti-queer bills in most state legislatures immediately thereafter.

Under Mr. Bush, really... anything? Bueller? No?

Court appointments matter and as far as anti-queer law goes, that's an improvement. But in terms of laws actually passed, Mr. Clinton, who campaigned as being on "our side," was actually worse than Mr. Bush.

[maellenkleth]

My gut instinct is that the religious right will make an all-out push to overturn every piece of queer-friendly, trans-friendly, non-religious-right-friendly legislation that they can. Over and over until it's done. I don't usually get sectarian on these things, but then again I recall that the people leading this charge perform symbolic ritual cannibalism at least once every seven days in honour of a deity who collects human infant male foreskins, and that they celebrate religiously-motivated torture with carpentry tools. And at that point my mind boggles.

I expect absolutely ZERO in the way of leadership and support from Mr Obama, or the Dems, or from any extant political party: they are all the same, as far as I can see, except for the labels, the symbols, and the colours of their buttons.

So what this election proved is two things:
1.) that a person of colour, with sufficient financial backing, can be elected as President of the country.
2.) that even self-styled "progressive" candidates, like Mr Obama, still pander to the Dominionists on key issues such as marriage.

Some of us, mostly in the background but we are there, are convinced that the long-term solution for alternative family arrangements is to form private corporations. And so we do. It is nice to be able to stand openly in some places and say, "I am Mrs thus-and-so, and this is my wife," but I do not count on EVER feeling truly safe about saying that anywhere in America.

Apologies for the further downer, but that is sure what it looks like from the northern side of the border.

-- Elane

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I still genuinely believe in my comments here (http://adularia.livejournal.com/439746.html) and here (http://libraryraven.livejournal.com/1171030.html), that what we're seeing in these initiatives is a conservative panic reaction to a change that's already in progress.

Why make a law against something that's *already illegal*, unless you're afraid it's going to happen? Why all the sudden squawking when they were silent before?

This mirrors the civil rights movement. It sucks that it's going to have to happen like this-- shoved down their throats as one commenter here said-- but it's going to happen.

As gement said, the avalanche has started, and the pebbles are trying desperately to vote it back. Also as gement said, the same state supreme court that ruled the marriages allowable in the first place is going to be ruling on *this*.

I know that's hardly any comfort right now; I'm not saying "so yay, forget it all, you have no reason to be disappointed!" Because obviously anyone with a soul should be disappointed in those idiots, and it means harder work fighting them. I'm just saying, don't fall into believing that the idiots actually hold sway over the future.

[solarbird]

The only route I see is to challenge it as actually being a Constitutional revision rather than a Constitution amendment, which would make the process invalid. If it's ruled to be a constitutional amendment, you can't rule constitutional amendments unconstitutional as they're part of the constitution.

However, California constitutional law is extremely strange, because the California Constitution itself is extremely strange, so perhaps someone could explain.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

That's what some Californians have explained to me, more or less what you just said: that if an amendment is a large enough change to be a "revision", then it's not allowed to be made by voter initiatives.

And something denying a large segment of a population some civil and legal rights sounds like an awfully big change to me.

I could be totally wrong, as I'm just relying on what other people (not lawyers) have told me.

[solarbird]

Sure.

My reading indicates that the initiative was already challenged on that basis as an attempt to block it from the ballot, but such challenges do change their character after passage, so there'll be another go. But this is a fundamentally different issue than the marriage ruling; the reasoning won't be the same. So the previous ruling is not a particularly good indicator in this case.

But I'm sure we'll see soon.

[mhaolain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I ain't exactly celebrating either. Voting the lesser of two evils isn't a bad thing, and that was a good speech by the O-man, but the California results really brought me down. Still plenty of work to do, so I ain't retiring my Y-Wing yet. Keep on keepin' on solarbird.

[solarbird]

I was personally really, really disappointed by Arizona. Arizona had been the one counterexample; the one popular vote where we won.

But not anymore.

[solarbird]

I don't want to ETA this post, so I'll put this down here:

http://wintersweet.livejournal.com/1435243.html

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

Nice that she pointed out that some christians didn't go for that crap. Even some of us form out of state :P

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Just to reiterate what I've said elsejournal... I'm of two minds here. I celebrate the fact that we've given ourselves a chance to correct the idiocy of the last eight years. At the same time I recognize that idiocy was committed last night, and I'm offended for you personally, as well as a heck of a lot of other people I know and care for, that people can't get it through their heads that people are people and have the inalienable rights to act like it, states be damned.

We have an opportunity here. It may not be the best opportunity we could dream of, but it's the best one we'll get, maybe ever. I for one intend to make the most of it. Maybe Obama won't come out *now* for marriage rights, for check and balances, against torture. It is my hope - my optimistic hope - that he can be convinced.

I'm reminded of a Tennessee-Wisconsin game at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis. The Badgers were driving on us (UT), into the high end of the Liberty Bowl's saddle. We got loud. Loud enough to get called for delay of game, because the opposing QB couldn't be heard. After hearing what the penalty was for, we proceeded to show them what loud was. We so rattled the quarterback with our 125db onslaught that he threw an interception, and we marched back down the field, scored, and iced the game.

I think it's time to show Mr. Obama, and the several states, what loud is.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Multiple strategies would be wise, at this point.

Still, my uncomfortable feeling, as a married lesbian, is that the chosen nominee of one constellation of trading interests has just been elected in preference to the chosen nominee of another constellation of trading interests.

Dear Goddess, please colour me "wrong" concerning this fear.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Perhaps so, on one set of puppeteers vs. the other. But with this set, I hope, we have a fighting chance to regain some lost ground. And maybe even gain some ground. Certainly I have already stirred the pot to that end.

We had no such hope that I could see with the other set.

I hope my optimism doesn't fail me.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

I think I curse evrything I touch. Seriously, I was so sure this would get shot down in CA. I even gave friggin money to the No group. Everything I voted for last night fell on it's face. I got no puppy and found out my house burned down while I was at the shelter :P

[solarbird]

I think I curse evrything I touch.
Not at all - I estimated that if we didn't have about a six-point lead going in we didn't have a chance, and we didn't have that.

And it's true, I did vote for a couple of winners tonight - I decided I could actually vote for Jay Inslee (he voted against the bailout bullshit twice, and said some choice things about the FISA revisions), and I voted for rail expansion on policy issues, and I voted against Tim Eyman's latest round of bullshit. So I had some good news.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

I don't want to sound like a jerk here, but it didn't help the cause that the same people who flooded the polls as pro Obama are notoriously anti homosexual. I have few black friends, who aren't gay themselves, who don't spit on gays.

[solarbird]

It's a problem, and outside-community outreach traditionally hasn't gone over well. Hopefully people like you and your gay black friends can provide some education by example. Knowing GBLT people personally has traditionally been what convinces people queers aren't evil.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

Yeah I've had a couple of confrontations alongside my friend Terry and they didn't turn out too well.
Well, we did avoid getting our asses kicked at least... Yeesh.

[solarbird]

Been there, had my ass kicked. No fun for anyone. :(

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

It seriously fucking sucks. As does having to talk/kiss ass out of having it happen. Problem being the assholes we ran into might have beaten us rather severely. otherwise I'd take bruises for my friends.

[solarbird]

Having your ass kicked does not make you a better person, I assure you.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

Oh I know LOL If it did I'd be fucking Jesus by the 6th grade.

fucking Jesus by the 6th grade?

[solarbird]

Prodigious little bastard, weren't you?

Re: fucking Jesus by the 6th grade?

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

Yeah there were few people who didn't get a chance to kick my ass in elementary school. I think people may have been bussed in to do it too...