We had another election last week. Well, Wisconsin didn’t but throughout the country there were several significant elections for the LGBT community. Their impact will be felt.
The results were mixed actually. Kentucky elected a Republican Tea Party governor. No great surprise, considering the 30% voter turnout, although one would have hoped the Kim Davis affair might have been a warning and helped get out the vote for sanity. On the bright side, Salt Lake City elected a lesbian mayor. Remember the SLC-based Mormon Church helped fund California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 campaign. Speaking of lesbian mayors, Houston has one but its Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) was rejected by popular vote. The opposition’s focus was the trans bathroom issue. Exploited and misrepresented, it created fear (as usual) to motivate conservative voters. That, along with a complete lack of Democratic outreach to African American and Latino communities, doomed the city’s protections for all. The downside will likely go beyond local rights issues. Just as Indiana’s dabble with legalized discrimination resulted in corporate boycotts and a national rebuff, Houston may suffer economic repercussions. We’ll see.
The HERO debacle recalls a local anti-marriage amendment TV commercial run back in 2006. In it, a rugged old farmer preaches folksy “gay people are nice” Wisconsinite wisdom from his tractor seat. Tugging at hetero heartstrings might have seemed a good idea at the time, but it obviously didn’t work. Considering the extent of the amendment’s impact beyond the LGBT community (although we were the primary target), the ad should have shown an unwed white guy kept from attending his girlfriend in child birth, or a spinster denied visitation of her dying spinster “roommate” exclaiming “But we’ve lived together for 30 years!” and a nurse slamming a hospice door in her face.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s legislature busies itself with an anti-trans bathroom bill. Sulking over his failed ambitions, Gov. Scott “Havoc” Walker has returned to target LGBTs. As in Houston, the Mad right wants us to believe evil men in dresses (think Psycho) will rape little girls in the ladies’ room. And, there’s still that ongoing legal fight for a married lesbian couple to have them both listed on their child’s birth certificate.
Marriage equality has us quite chuffed in its accomplishment. We can now fuss over the shade of tinted glaze on the petit fours served at our fabulous weddings. But those nuptials do not come with a universal embrace. In fact, just as a black president’s election brought our nation’s simmering racism to the boil, so too has the LGBT marriage victory incited the homophobic mob. And its cadre of GOP candidates is only too happy to hand out torches and pitchforks.
It’s just a year until the 2016 presidential election. Last week’s ballot results show how fragile and fleeting LGBT rights can be. Someone once defended a drag queen’s right to parody Anne Frank by likening it to the musical Cabaret. Ironically, although the comparison is inappropriate, the play is really a very appropriate parable for today’s LGBTs. We can’t sit around our bars blithely toasting ourselves while that mob gathers outside.
