Homophobia leads the polls.
Election Day always brings surprises, but what happened in Houston and Kentucky was no surprise. Or shouldn’t have been. LGBT people are leading the polls–as a reason to vote Democratic candidates and civil rights policies out.
Since the 2000 election, Democrats have been losing ground politically, particularly at the state level. The party of civil rights has been undercut by gerrymandering, redistricting, extremist culture wars and regrettably lax voting on the part of registered Democrats.
Barack Obama’s resounding win in 2008 looked like it might turn the tide for Democrats after the just-missed presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004, but that was a fluke.America’s first biracial president brought out voters who had never voted in their lives and galvanized a youth vote that hadn’t been similarly galvanized since the 1992 election of Bill Clinton.
But what became clear in 2010 was if Obama wasn’t on the ticket, Democratic voters didn’t vote and Republicans and Indpendents would vote resoundingly against Obama’s policies. Democrats lost the House–and with it, the first female Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. In 2014, Democrats lost not only the Senate, but also many governorships and state legislatures.
So when the governorship of Kentucky shifted from Democrat to Republican for the first time in 40 years on Nov. 3, it wasn’t the shock some reported. Only 30.7% of registered voters actually voted and more than half were Republicans. The math was clear: In Harlan County alone, the difference in votes was 3,000. Votes presumed in polls to be Democratic–except the Democrats didn’t show up.
But Republicans did.
Conservative Kentuckians weren’t pleased about the treatment of Rowan County clerk Kim Davis who was jailed for refusing to grant marriage licenses for lesbians and gay men. The Republican candidate for governor, Matt Bevin, was a strong supporter of Davis and campaigned on an anti-gay platform.
Democrats thought they had the Kentucky gubernatorial. There was no reason to think otherwise. Polls just a week before the election had Democrat Jim Conway up by ten points–well within the margin of error. And outgoing Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has been a popular two-term governor.
Yet Bevin won by nearly the same margin at which polls had Conway winning.
And now Bevin is making good on his election promise to Davis. On Nov. 6 Bevin held a press conference where he defiantly declared that he would remove clerks’ names from marriage licenses via an executive order. Citing a conflict with her faith, Davis had refused to have her name on marriage licenses of lesbian or gay male couples and so would not issue them.
Outgoing Gov. Steve Beshear had refused any such action. The Democrat rejected requests from Davis and her attorneys at the far-right Liberty Counsel to remove the clerk’s name from marriage licenses of lesbian and gay couples.
In fact, Beshear and Davis still have a pending legal case: Davis claims Beshear violated her religious freedom by ordering all county clerks to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling making marriage equality legal throughout America.
Bevin’s tone post-election couldn’t have been more clear: “One thing I will take care of right away is we will remove the names of the county clerks from the marriage form,” Bevin told reporters Nov. 6 at the state Capitol in Frankfort. “That is going to be done. [http://www.wlky.com/news/bevin-says-hell-remove-clerks-names-from-marriage-licenses/36301312] The argument that can’t be done is baloney–we’ve already changed those forms three times, for crying out loud.”
Bevin is scary. He’s virulently anti-gay. He’s anti-woman. He’s also determined to shut down Obamacare in Kentucky–even though the ACA has been incredibly successful in that state. If Bevin succeeds, he will be closing off accessible and affordable health care to thousands of women.
In Houston, the vote against the so-called “HERO” law was far wider than the ten percent in the Kentucky gubernatorial.
It was a crushing defeat.
The results of the vote were called in favor of the veto less than 45 minutes after polls closed on election night. The final vote was 61% against, 39% for.
Houston voters overwhelmingly rejected the city’s anti-discrimination law.
Enacted by city council in May 2014 by a vote of 11-6, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or HERO, provided non-discrimination coverage to 15 classes of people. The ordinance bans discrimination based not just on gender identity and sexual orientation, but also 13 classes already protected under federal law: sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, pregnancy and genetic information, as well as family, marital or military status.
The ordinance, which was on the ballot as Proposition 1, would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity especially “in city employment, city services, city contracting practices, housing, public accommodations, and private employment”–criteria not covered by federal anti-discrimination laws because ENDA has been languishing in Congress since 1994.
Businesses that serve the public as well as private employers, housing and city contracting were all subject to the law, which had small fines–$250 to $500–for violations. Religious institutions were exempt. The ordinance was in effect for only three months due to legal challenges and in July the Texas Supreme Court ordered that the law either be repealed or placed on the ballot.
HERO was considered the most comprehensive such law in the country, but was controversial from the outset. The city’s mayor, Annise Parker, an out lesbian, was a huge proponent of the HERO initiative.
.png)
The vote over the initiative spurred national attention. The White House, Texas officials and candidates for president–notably Hillary Clinton and Ben Carson–weighed in. Opponents of the law alleged that it would allow men dressed as women, including sexual predators, to enter women’s restrooms. “It’s better to prevent this danger by closing women’s restrooms to men, rather than waiting for a crime to happen,” said Houston Astros baseball star Lance Berkman, the father of four daughters, in ad against HERO.
Supporters of the law, including Parker, argued HERO expanded protected classes from discrimination.
Opponents–including feminists and religious leaders–focused on the bathroom issue, arguing that there had been enough cases of men raping women and children in public restrooms to excise that aspect of the case.
Lt. Gov Dan Patrick applauded the vote, saying, “It was about protecting our grandmoms, and our mothers and our wives and our sisters and our daughters and our granddaughters. I’m glad Houston led tonight to end this constant political-correctness attack on what we know in our heart and our gut as Americans is not right.”
Patrick said, “I want to thank the voters in the City of Houston for turning out in record numbers to defeat Houston Prop 1–the bathroom ordinance. The voters clearly understand that this proposition was never about equality–that is already the law. It was about allowing men to enter women’s restrooms and locker rooms–defying common sense and common decency.”
Parker had a very different take. “No one’s rights should be subject to a popular vote,” Parker said, noting how many times her own lesbian rights had been voted on in Texas, “It is insulting, it is demeaning, and it is just wrong.”
She also put the “bathroom bill” in perspective. “This was a campaign of fear mongering and deliberate lies. Deliberate lies. This isn’t misinformation, this is a calculated campaign of lies designed to demonize a little-understood minority, and to use that to take down an ordinance that 200 other cities across America, and 17 states have successfully passed, and operated under.”
Parker said of the ballot question, “This was not a narrowly-focused, special-interest ordinance. This is something that the business and civic community of Houston was firmly behind.”
And spawned a new debate: Should the T be dropped from LGBT? Angry lesbians and gay men argued that as with ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act), conflicts over transgender rights, which many lesbians and gay men argue have nothing to do with and often actually subvert LGB rights, are what sundered HERO and what has kept ENDA from being passed.
A “Drop the T” Change.org petition went up less than a day after the HERO vote, allegedly started by a well-known gay male activist. The petition demanded that lesbian and gay rights organizations drop trans issues from their increasingly transgender-focused efforts. (HRC had propelled the Prop 1 efforts.)
“We are a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community.”
#DropTheT started trending on Twitter almost immediately, precipitating arguments between and among various factions of the LGBT and feminist movements.
In a Nov. 9 interview with The Federalist, the author of the petition argued, “Any attempt to rationally discuss issues that gays/lesbians/bisexuals are concerned about regarding the trans movement is met with unparalleled vitriol, harassment, death threats, and silencing,” he complained, “demanding that the person commenting contrary to the trans narrative be banned from forums, for example.”
The petition argues trans activists are pushing for the “infringement of the rights of individuals, particularly women, to perform normal everyday activities in traditional safe spaces based on sex; this is most pernicious in the case of men claiming to be transgender demanding access to bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s shelters and other such spaces reserved for women.”
While the petition has been roundly dismissed by HRC, GLAAD and other LGBT groups, transgender activist and editor of the trans magazine Frock, Katie Glover, made the same argument in her article for The Independent, “It’s Time to Take the T Out of LGBT.” [http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-its-time-to-take-the-t-out-of-lgbt-10493352.html].
Glover raised the problematic specter of Caitlyn Jenner’s homophobia and anti-gay rights stances among other issues and posited that trans persons do not have the same goals as lesbians and gay men.
In the Democratic Forum on Nov. 6, former Secretary of State and presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton argued that HERO “is similar to ordinances in cities across America, including in other cities in Texas.”
Clinton said, “But what the far right did, very successfully, is really engender a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety, and create this backlash against this ordinance. And they used the bathroom issue. And yet, you could go to another city in Texas, like San Antonio, and you would know that that was totally without merit, that there was no basis for it.”
Clinton added, “I think this is a reminder that if you stand for equal rights, if you stand against discrimination, you don’t just do it once and you’re done. You’ve got to keep fighting for it, you’ve got to keep standing up for it, you’ve got to keep moving forward.”
For his part, GOP frontrunner Ben Carson, already under fire for misrepresenting his past in his memoir, told Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos that the issue could be solved by creating transgender bathrooms–a comment widely viewed as transphobic.
Some argued that numerous recent cases of women and girls being sexually assaulted in public restrooms nationwide meant the “bathroom bill” had to be defeated. Others argued that the Houston fight echoed Phyllis Schlafly’s legendary battle to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 and defeating HERO would harm more women than it would help.
Passed by Congress in 1972, the ERA would have amended the Constitution to guarantee equality under the law for women. But Schlafly almost single-handedly got the amendment defeated.
Phyllis Schlafly
Her most alarming argument? That the ERA would lead to unisex bathrooms. At the time, arguments against the ERA posited that rapists would hover in women’s restrooms while pedophiles would have clear access to little girls.
The debate that sundered women’s rights nearly 45 years ago was revived in Houston, this time sundering the rights of women on myriad levels.
Yet the bottom line of both what happened in Kentucky and in Houston is this: Republicans and Independents were organized and centered anti-LGBT and anti-woman issues in their efforts to get out the vote.
The 2016 presidential election is heating up. The opportunity to elect the most feminist and pro-LGBT candidate who has ever run for president who would also be the first female president of the U.S. is within our grasp.
But that can’t happen when voters on the left of center stay home.
There is an increased obligation for women to vote their own interests.
October marked the date that all women work for free through January 2016–because of how much less we make than men. Lesbians are being fired from jobs at a rate between two and five times as often as any other member of the LGBT. Lesbians are increasingly victims of violence–corrective rape, honor killings.
When we stay home and say that voting doesn’t matter, men like Bevin win elections with all their anti-LGBT and anti-woman policies and comprehensive anti-discrimination laws like HERO, which protected women in myriad ways, fail.
The repercussions of last week’s votes will be felt by hundreds of thousands of women in Kentucky and Houston. But as Chuck Todd noted on Nov. 8’s Meet the Press, there hasn’t been such an imbalance between Republican and Democratic down-ticket seats since Woodrow Wilson.
That can only end if Democrats vote.
If you are a woman or LGBT and aren’t voting Democrat, you aren’t voting your own interests.
And Republicans always vote theirs.