Written by:
Victoria A. Brownworth
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 15#2
Women’s history month brings out the activist in me. It’s in my genes — my maternal grandmother was a suffragist. In this era of red and blue states and the great cultural divide that has riven America, the simplicity of women’s suffrage may seem precious, even arcane. “One woman, one vote” doesn’t resonate for us as it did for my grandmother’s peers. It should.
I was shattered by the results of the 2004 election. It wasn’t just George W. Bush’s accession to a second term that made me cry uncontrollably — it was knowing why people voted for him. They voted for Bush because of his stand against same-sex marriage.
The knowledge that 59 million Americans voted against my civil rights truly horrified me (for even if it wasn’t their primary reason to vote for Bush, it was a significant part of the package). Everywhere I went in the days and weeks following the election, I wondered if the person next to me on the street or in the supermarket had voted against me. Had they — with the push of a button, the pull of a lever or the punch of a card — voted to segregate me from the rest of society, voted to deprive me of the same rights they had, voted me off the island of American democracy?
I have never been privileged. Although I am of European descent, I am also female and queer and currently disabled. I grew up poor and have been poor most of my life. There has not been the place for me at the proverbial table that the neoconservative gay boys talk about with such enraged entitlement.
Years ago, I wrote a column about how lesbians and queers had to separate themselves from Republicans — sever all and any ties we might have to people who were Republicans and to those queer Republicans like the Log Cabinites and their neocon acolytes whose sense of entitlement extends only to each other. If you don’t remember reading the column, it’s because my editor refused to run it. She called it biased and gave me a lecture on diversity. What she failed to realize is that it is Republicans who have the bias.
I don’t know if that editor would make the same decision today, given the evolution of American politics and the red and blue divide that is as acute as the gray and blue divide of the Civil War. The 2004 election codified what I wrote years ago: In the us-versus-them political narrative devised by the Republican-controlled government of the United States, we (queers and women) will never be the state-sanctified straight us. In every state with a referendum on same-sex marriage, the vote against us was overwhelming. The president’s proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is only the next step.
It doesn’t matter what you think about same-sex marriage — whether you think marriage is a patriarchal institution queers should eschew or you think we should all tie the knot — queers deserve access to the privilege of marriage. If straight people can get married on a whim, lesbians should be able to get married after 52 years of being partnered. It’s called equality. It’s in the Constitution. For now.
The 2004 election codified homophobic segregation and all that goes with it, including violence and discrimination. Whether it’s politically incorrect to state it or not, those votes for hate came courtesy of the Republican Party and its various phalanxes, from the drawling evangelicals to the Yale-educated neocons to the Log Cabin sycophants.
Harsh language? You bet it is. When lives are at stake, we cannot afford to parse words politely over our basic human rights. Many of us are still mourning 2004, but we don’t have the luxury of inertia. Elections in 2006 and 2008 are political nanoseconds away, and the impact they could have — to further damage the lives of queer women — is immeasurable.
Soon, the campaigns for 2006 will begin in earnest. In 1994, Newt Gingrich and a coterie of Republicans wrested control of Congress from the Democrats with a platform of change. It’s time to wrest it back with our own platform, and with the votes of women — a 3 percent majority in the population — it can be done. It is time for progressives to set a new agenda.
My grandmother believed if women could vote, the world would be a better place. I’d like to see that vision of suffrage realized in 2006 by voting out those who would curtail the civil rights of millions of Americans, myself included.
The time for action is now. Contact your local queer political or women’s group about local and 2006 elections, and visit www.moveon.org for a list of what’s happening in your area. These are perilous times for women and queers, and so many others, and we can’t afford the luxury of inaction.
Think of all those women who, over the years, worked to enfranchise us. What better tribute than to use our votes to wrest power from those who would disenfranchise us again? Women cannot allow Bush and his henchmen to subvert our place in history. The 2004 election shocked and hurt us deeply. But as Mother Jones once commanded: Don’t mourn, organize.
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