Ranting On...Not Voting

This week, I got into one of the more heated conversations I have had with a friend in a while.  As things do these days, the conversation between a group of us turned to the election, and one of my friends asked who I recommended they vote for in a specific race and what they'd need to do to early vote.  My other friend, though, said quite matter-of-factly that she didn't really want to vote, because it wouldn't make a difference.  As is often the case with my friends, where my fervent passion for subjects is an easy topic of mockery, I assumed she was kidding, but after a while I realized that she wasn't, that she didn't, in a world of corporate funding of candidates, see how there was a difference between the options, and that they are all corrupt & nothing really changes even when you vote.  This is not the first time this has happened to me, and it certainly won't be the last, and as I never react well to this when someone says it, not voting running so fervently against my core belief system, I attempted a quick speech about why voting is important, and probably came across as more angry than poised & convincing.  As I'm more of a writer and more comfortable putting my words down, I'm going to do that now as the answer to this question, as it's something I anticipate will happen again & I want to be clear in the future of why this is personal to me, and something that I suspect you yourself have faced from friends, and might want to share before Tuesday.

Politics is one of my biggest passions in life.  While I love movies more, politics is both a hobby and something that I feel strongly is my civic duty to be involved with and that I need to remain informed.  I think, though, it is impossible to expect other people to share the same fervor I share for electoral politics.  No rational person needs to look at polls every day or understand what a random congressman in a different state's views on term limits are-that shouldn't be an expectation to participate in democracy.  We live in a complicated, fast-paced world, and thinking that you should be required to go into a ballot box armed with a laundry list of opinions on every candidate on the ballot is absurd, and not something anyone should expect from its citizenry.  American democracy is too convoluted and distorted in its current state for that to be reasonable.

And I certainly understand the urge to be cynical about politics, not just in the era of Trump but in general.  Americans live in a country where we enjoy great wealth, but also where most of that wealth, through virtue of birth, race, and opportunity, is concentrated into a small group that is largely compromised of white men whose fathers also had that same wealth and systematic privilege.  Thanks to Citizens United, we have a country where the small donations of 20,000 people can be matched by one billionaire giving a smaller percentage of his wealth than what an average American would consider $20 to their own income.  And it's impossible not to feel anxious, jaded, and lost when climate change, the most pressing issue to mankind, is debated as if it's a "does it even exist?" sort of question rather "how do we make major sacrifices to fix this impending doom?" form of query.  I am not immune from this, and it frustrates me to no end that instead of focusing on the dozens of new problems that compound every year, we are stuck in a circle of debate that doesn't prove enough tangible change to feel like great momentum on important issues.

But my sympathy ends there.  It ends with understanding the cynicism, but it doesn't extend to those who use that cynicism as an excuse to do nothing, to not exercise their most effective tool for change: the ballot box. And it's not because politics is a hobby for me, it's because politics dictates how I am treated as a gay person in this country.

There are a lot of different arguments I could make about how important your choice (or choice not to vote) has been in recent history, but because I'm a member of the LGBT community and am more informed on that subject than others (and it's an easy, clear argument to be made), it's where I'm going to focus right now.  Fifteen years ago, I was making the plan to come out of the closet.  It may feel like an age ago, but it really wasn't, and I think most people would deem fifteen years ago to be relatively modern history.  I think most people would remember that fifteen years ago, gay people couldn't marry in this country, but it's worth recalling that the situation for LGBT citizens was much more dire than just gay marriage.  Gay people couldn't legally adopt in many states, they could be fired simply based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, could be denied housing, couldn't openly serve in the military, and, yes, in some states it was still against the law for two consenting adults to have sex with a person of the same gender.  2003 was the year of Lawrence v. Texas, which finally overruled anti-sodomy laws in 14 states which made it illegal for gay people to even have sex.

Gay rights has seen remarkable progress since then, but it's worth noting that it's not there yet (at all) and that gay rights history is much more recent than anyone really considers when they talk about it publicly.  For example, gay marriage has only been legal in all fifty states for three years (just three) and gay adoption has only been legal in all fifty states for one year.  Gay people have been able to openly serve in the military since 2010, but transgender people have no such protection under the law, and the Trump administration is fighting current Defense Department policy to band trans soldiers from serving in the military.  While current HUD regulations ban discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation as a matter of policy, there is no federal law preventing one's sexual orientation or gender identity from being a reason to deny someone housing-this precedent is entirely dependent on the Trump administration continuing to uphold this, which is cold comfort considering their actions on LGBT rights in the past few months.  Only 21 states have laws preventing such discrimination should Trump reverse the policy.  Only 23 states have full protection for LGBT from employment discrimination (in the other 27, you can be legally fired for either being gay or transgender, and frequently either).  And despite arguably being the population that is most aware of their HIV status (and advanced testing techniques that make the policy archaic), gay men still cannot donate blood in the United States unless they have abstained from sexual activity for at least one year (and the one-year policy, rather than a lifetime policy, only went into affect three years ago).

None of the progress the LGBT community has made would be possible without very brave, almost exclusively Democratic politicians.  People like John Kerry, who stood up to repeated attacks on behalf of the gay community in 2004 when President Bush demonized his support for civil unions.  People like Joe Biden, who brought gay marriage into the national conversation in a way that allowed for President Obama to also endorse the law, and in 2012 become the first candidate for president to support gay marriage and win the White House.  People like Nancy Pelosi, who has been a tireless champion for LGBT causes in her career, and as is evidenced by the 2010 repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell," used her Speaker's gavel to help the community when it actually mattered.  These are people that stuck their necks out, knowing the consequences could mean them losing their elections (in the case of Kerry, that did happen), because it was the right thing to do and they wanted to speak in deed, not just in word.

Because I'm going to be blunt here-if you don't vote when you legally can, you're not an ally to the LGBT community.  Straight, cis people can come to the parades and wear their buttons, but at the end of the day your qualifying yourself as an ally comes with a caveat-you are making a commitment to actually support the LGBT community when you get that praise and include yourself as an extension of our family, and the most powerful way you can do that is to vote.  Because as I said above, LGBT rights are too recent of history to be "established law."  People not voting is the reason that gay marriage is less safe, not more.  People not voting is why Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch sit on the Supreme Court, and they are just as much to blame for the discriminatory policies of the Trump administration as the people who actually voted for Trump.  Elections matter, and they frequently decide the fates of marginalized communities in ways that other people often forget.  LGBT people don't dismiss this because we've seen not only the societal discrimination in place against us, but also the legal barriers we've had to forge through in order to even get to only societal discrimination.

As I said above, I could make this argument from many angles, but it's crystal clear when it comes to LGBT rights, that when you don't vote, you are a hindrance to our cause, another obstacle that we need to overcome to get to a place of equality, and are not an ally to our community.  You can claim your support of gay or trans rights, but if you can't take thirty minutes to get to the polls and help elect people who will protect our rights and expand them to be the same as straight and cis people, then you are not an ally.  You should not come to our parades, you should not come to our bars or weddings and you should sit silently when we talk about our causes rather than nod in concurrence.  Voting is the least someone can do to help a marginalized community, and oftentimes it's the only tangible thing you can do.  Your candidates may not be thrilling, they may not be perfect, but they're what we have and one is better for the causes you believe in than the other.  I don't love all of the candidates I voted for a week ago, but I voted in those races because I know my rights are on the line.  Please remember when you don't vote, you may not feel like it impacts you, but it impacts the rights and legal protections of your friends & family who are counting on you to be an ally when you said you would be.