It's been a couple of days now, and it's starting to sink in that the LGBT community had one win and one loss on election day. On the east coast we had Maine and their attempt to overturn the state's legislatures passage of same-sex marriage; our loss. Then there was the west coast and Washington voting for the passage of their "everything but marriage" referendum; our win.
I think the past two days I've already gone through the five stages of grief over Maine.
Tuesday night while the results were coming in (I was following my Twitter pals to see how we were doing), I experienced denial. I was reading their tweets and thinking, "it's still too close to we'll have to wait a until 100% of the precincts are reporting."
Later Tuesday night on into Wednesday morning I started feeling anger. Anger at the people who would vote to deny my LGBT brothers and sisters the right to enter into a legally recognized union. Anger at our "fierce advocate" President Obama for not making use of his bully pulpit to speak out against Prop1.
Moving into Wednesday I started trying to bribe the higher powers (in my case the God and Goddess) that I would blog more and donate more time and money to the fight for equality if they would please let us have Maine.
In the end depression and acceptance more or less went hand in hand. Funny how those two emotions seem to be married to each other for me when I experience them.
One thing that I saw Tuesday night has really stuck with me. I can't remember which one of my Twitter pals tweeted about supermajorities, health care, and taking a right away from a minority. Basically it was along the lines of why are we going to need a supermajority to pass health care, but a 50% +1 majority is all it takes to deny a minority their equal rights.
I bring up the subject of supermajorities for one simple reason. There's always something to be learned from a loss. I don't know everything that is to be learned from losing Prop1 in Maine. I do think, however, that we should look at this as a lesson in what we need to do to our fix our political system.
If you put it up to the vote of the people, we'd have slavery again.
--Jesse Ventura on CNN, 11/3/2009
As we move forward in our struggle to be treated as full and equal citizens of this country, I think we should also start a push towards reforming our political system. There will always be a minority that is treated differently under the law. One day they will stand up and demand equal treatment just as the LGBT community is doing today. We should make it harder for a simple majority to deny them their rights. As we push for passing of a full and comprehensive ENDA, the repeal of DADT, and the right to marry our loved ones we should also be pushing our lawmakers to require a supermajority when rights are put to a popular vote.
I'm sure there's probably another lesson to learn in how the votes went in Maine and Washington, but I just can't see it right now. I'm still on the cusp of full acceptance and depression. Maybe in another couple of days I'll know what else we should have learned.
