Girly mandate.

AuthorClinton, Kate
PositionUnplugged - Gay voters

The Friday after the election, I was in a free-food-at-five courtesy suite at a hotel in Sacramento, eavesdropping on a group of disgruntled straight professionals who were frothing about the unthinkable of the unthinker getting elected. I got up and stood by their table, and they went silent. Good to know I have not lost my high school teacher/cafeteria monitor mien.

"I'm sorry we were getting so loud," one woman said.

"Oh no," I answered. "I'd love to sit shiva with you." I joined their Coalition of the Wailing, and as one woman quietly banged her forehead on the table, we dahvined for democracy. After stating a liberal tautology, one of the men concluded sadly, mystified, "But I guess I'm now in the minority on this." And I thought, "Well, how do you like it?"

But I did not say it because I didn't have the energy to come out as a lesbian and then explain to their perplexed faces how it was that 23 percent of the gay vote decided to win another girly mandate for that son of a Gipper.

For you, I'll explain. In the catastrophic success of the 2004 election, some gays said Bush's war on terror was more important to them than his war on gays. Some said that they felt radical gay activists had pushed the issue of gay marriage at the wrong time. Others denied that Bush had manipulated anti-gay marriage sentiment and blamed it on activist judges and radical gay activists. Some said gay issues were only 20 percent of what they based their vote on: More important were issues like a flat tax, school vouchers, or privatizing Social Security Others said they did not vote for Kerry because he copped out on gay marriage, so they voted for Bush on other issues with which they agreed. To summarize: What's the matter with Kansas? Dorothy.

More to the point, unlike the straight vote, 77 percent of the gay vote went for the Democrats. They did not deserve it. Their public silence on the anti-gay-rights initiatives in eleven states was shameful. If eleven states were attempting to pass initiatives limiting the civil rights of Jews or African Americans or Hispanics, there would have been an outcry. If the federal government...

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