For many of us who are neither white, rich, nor straight, four more years of George W. Bush is a nightmare come true. Bush’s social policy is as bad for women and queers as his foreign policy is for Muslims. We should be cursing the Democrats for not having deeper pockets, for not getting out the Youth Vote, or the Black Vote, or whatever vote it was that was supposed to defeat him. We should be angry and frothing. But we’re not. Not really.
In truth, we’ve been steeling ourselves for this let-down. We were never really more than cautiously optimistic that Kerry could win. When it comes down to it, he probably wouldn’t have even been much better. Just more equivocal and likely to use softer tactics.
In the end, Bush’s straight-shooter schtick might actually be easier to live with. We can call it “keeping our enemies close.” We’re already familiar with most of his plan: war on terror, restore family values (read: ban abortion and gay marriage), and build missile defense.
We’re getting used to Bush’s unabashed displays of his beliefs and his religion. We hardly gasp anymore when he ends a speech by saying “God bless.” We’re realizing that he isn’t really imposing his guns ‘n’ god beliefs on the country. He’s speaking for a segment of the American population that is increasingly making a space for itself in politics: the Christian Right, the Far Right, the evangelicals. It’s no secret that the Republicans believed they could lure more of them to the polling booths by holding referenda to ban gay marriage along with the Tuesday’s elections.
Queer advocates were in a tizzy over states like Arkansas, Georgia, Michigan, Utah, and Oregon holding referenda to ban homo-matrimony. These referenda ensured that voters who were passionate about “moral and family values” had extra incentive to show up and cast a vote. And not surprisingly, in those states there weren’t many people who were passionate about queer family values.
But on Wednesday morning, when the ban had been supported in all eleven of those states, fags and dykes weren’t really any worse for the wear. Gay marriage wasn’t allowed in those states in the first place, so it hardly changes anything to have it suddenly “banned.”
Attempts to legalize gay matrimony have only served to rally social conservatives together so that they can respond together. Fighting for queers’ rights law by law would be easier if we tackled the opposition before we raised the question.
The single greatest factor in combating bigotry is firsthand experience. It’s easy to think all sorts of depraved things about queers when they aren’t your brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, and co-workers. Until people are faced with the reality of gay and lesbian couples living with kids and dogs just like other families, it’s pretty easy to take a big dump on same-sex marriage or any other queer issue.
This isn’t advocacy. This is intermingling. Queers are going to have to get to know folk in the Republican midwest, and to let themselves get friendly.
American queers have two options: they can go undercover and insinuate themselves into every aspect of the American social consciousness, quietly colonize the countryside, annexing everything between New York and San Francisco, with all the age-old tools of gayness at their disposal: Streisand records, track lighting, and amyl nitrate.
Or they can defect and join the resistance, pack it in and move to Canada. Here, they can get married, move to the suburbs, and like us, define themselves primarily by how much they are unlike our neighbours to the south. It’s time to steel ourselves up north for Brain Drain in reverse.
