Like so many other millions around the world, I couldn't wait to get home and start following the US election results last night. I was lucky living on the west coast for the results were beginning to trickle in by the time I got home at 5pm. I stayed glued to my computer (not having or wanting TV reception) long after I knew mathematically that Obama was elected. By 9:30 I was so emotionally exhausted that I couldn't stay awake.
Poor Obama. It's hard to imagine all the various meanings put on his election by those who are celebrating, but completely impossible that he can come near fulfilling all their expectations of him. American Democrats are celebrating a great relief after 8 yrs of Shrub & Co., a chance to undo some of the wrongs, a landmark election of a Black man and a likely end to the war in Iraq. They want their country back on track. But ironically to the rest of the world he means much more. The celebrations overseas have no limits, no 48% McCain supporters to placate. Obama means an end to American aggression and intimidation against enemies and allies alike, a chance for the world a reprieve from the "Evil Empire". In many ways, Obama is everyone's President-Elect and the face of the planet from China to Africa to the Middle East is smiling.
But this morning my joy was mixed equally with anger at the success of Proposition 8 in California, successful same-sex marriage bans in Arizona and Florida and further loss of rights for gays in Arkansas. It brought back memories of all the anger and hurt from the 80s when I struggled with other activists to get out from under police oppression and establish gay rights protections across Canada. My signature is on the first copy of the Bill that brought gay rights into the Ontario Human Rights Code in 1986--the first gay rights bill in North America fought in the headlines (Quebec and Wisconsin had already passed protections without media coverage in 1977 and 1984 respectively). When it passed, the politicians who supported it signed the front page of the first copy and the lobbyists signed the last page. That copy sits in the Lesbian & Gay Archives in Toronto.
When same-sex marriage was established here in 2003, the first place to approve it outside of Belgium or the Netherlands, all legal forms of discrimination against gays were eliminated and the need for a gay liberation struggle ended. It was a wonderful but strange new landscape. In my heart I was happy to retire into this new reality.
But the full intensity of my former anger returned this morning. It is more clear than ever in my mind how fundamentally wrong it is to allow the majority to vote on whether a minority should be allowed to share the same rights they enjoy. It is like having an open and binding vote for Germans and Danes as to whether Germany should annex Denmark. Just because Germans out-number Danes 10 to 1 doesn't make that a legitimate democratic vote. That is not democracy; it is tyranny by majority. Each time an initiative is brought forward to a general vote it reaffirms the right for straights to deny us our rights if they want to. Each time we give our power away whether we win or not.
I am not sure what we should replace it with, at least not yet--certainly not violence or any other confrontational method that would further justify their tyranny. But last night's vote underscored the fact that in spite of expectations for Obama, there has been no enlightenment happening south of the border. No awakening yet, no revolution of change. The votes shifted slightly from 50-50 to 51-49 in the climate of a bad economy brought on by greed and mismanagement from 8 years of Bush-dumb, in spite of his heinous crimes committed against American democracy, just enough to cause a few close-vote states to land on the Democrat side of the fence and give the illusion of a landslide. In spite of only a 28% approval rating for Bush, the actual vote shift was less than 2%!
There must be constitutional protections for all minorities in a healthy democracy so that right-wing patriots and frothing fundamentalists cannot strip bare the dignity of their human rights. Mahatma Gandhi once said that while all past civilizations were once measured by their wealth and the size of their empires, all future civilizations will be measured by how they treated their minorities.
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I was downright disgusted when I heard that even CA had approved the homophobic proposition, not to mention AZ and FL, but on the average things are actually improving: next week another united state will have gay marriage (CT), and Obama mentioning that "gay and straight" came together to vote for change actually meant to say: "gays are citizens, gays vote, the vote of gays mattered". I know for countries like Spain or Canada that's just too little, but it shows that whether it comes suddenly or if it takes generations, dignity and equality are on their way.
Let's hang in there. The fight in CA isn't over yet. But in any case, if I was in the USA, I'd move to MA or CT, because I refuse to give my money in taxes to support a homophobic society. That's mostly why I left my native land.
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