Change Comes From the Middle of the Country
As LGBT Americans simultaneously celebrate the civil rights advancement of electing a black president and mourn our movement's amendment losses, perhaps we can employ the wisdom of Middle America in charting the course for a more perfect union.
By Kerry Eleveld
An
Advocate.com exclusive posted November 6, 2008
http://advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid65014.aspWednesday morning, I awoke red with anger and blue with sadness even as tears of joy had graced my face for progress the night before.
This week, voters across the nation affirmed a promise that was launched from Middle America. Barack Obama, half black, half white, raised by grandparents who hailed from the heartland, became the president-elect of a country beleaguered by partisan, socioeconomic, and racial divisions that have haunted our nation for decades and escalated to a crescendo in the last eight years.
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible," President-elect Obama told a rapt crowd in Chicago's Grant Park, "who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."
Yet even as one prejudice fell to the will of the people on Election Day, LGBT Americans awoke the next morning to reports from the West to the South that all but confirmed one thing: We are most certainly second-class citizens in our own country. Even the voters of California -- a state that legislatively approved same-sex marriage rights twice and judicially issued the single most gay-affirming court ruling to date -- appear to have concluded that gay and lesbian partners don't deserve the equal right to commit their love to each other. While I do not agree with the notion that I am undeserving of the same rights provided to other citizens by the Constitution, I cannot escape the reality that a majority of my fellow citizens still feel exactly that way. So perhaps it is time to reevaluate our movement's approach with an eye to the area of our country that just supplied us with the single biggest civil rights advancement in a century.
