This is another Obama campaign video, and it’s the one that I take the most personally. It’s called “Obama Pride: LGBT Americans for Obama”, and the YouTube description says:
“Jane Lynch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Billie Jean King, George Takei, Wanda Sykes, Zachary Quinto, and Chaz Bono share why they're supporting President Obama and why Mitt Romney isn't the choice for them.”They make some really good points, especially that having a president who is an advocate for LGBT people can make a world of difference to young GLBT people. That’s certainly true, and President Obama has an incredibly strong record to run on.
Contrast that with the other guys: They want to amend the US Constitution to forever ban marriage equality in all 50 states. They have no problem with splitting up families by deporting the same-gender partner of a US citizen. Their party platform supports all that, and a whole host of other things listed in what can only honestly be called a virulently anti-gay agenda. If the Republicans are elected, I have no doubt whatsoever that the US will go backwards—on all issues I care about, but particularly on LGBT issues.
Let’s get real: There’s no way in hell that a video like this would ever be made for the Republican candidates, nor would they ever allow an independent video to be made because the American Taliban that controls the Republican Party would forbid it. While I have no idea what Mitt really thinks about GLBT people or our rights (or anything else, for that matter), I’m convinced that Ryan is anti-gay, and their party, with no doubt whatsoever, is absolutely anti-gay.
So, if the Republicans are elected, it’ll no longer be “It Gets Better”—it’ll be “It Might Quite Possibly Get Better Someday”, because they will turn the clock back decades—or a century.
The stakes are too high to sit this election out. The stakes are far too high to let the Republicans win.
2 comments:
I trust "the gay community" (never liked that term, any more than I like "the black community") won't hold Obama's "slowness" on this issue against him.
Look at the evolution of JFK's position on civil rights, from nearly ignoring it to using federal force to sustain it.
Many in the gay communities (I always used the plural when I was an activist to indicate there was no single community, but several, each varied and multifaceted) DO hold it against him. In my personal opinion—and it is only that—many of them are either hard-core Hillary Clinton supporters or hard Left. Like the US population generally, though, most GLBT people are somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum, though the majority clearly leans slightly to the left, at least on some issues.
I think your comparison of President Obama on these issues to JFK and the civil right movement is a really good one—and, I'm embarrassed to say, it's one that I hadn't thought of before.
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