This Week in LGBT Activism
On Wednesday President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard & David Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. It was buried in a defense spending bill that had wide Republican support, and in this way found its way to the president’s desk after ten years of advocacy. Yesterday Obama lifted the HIV travel and immigration ban that barred positive individuals from visiting or immigrating to the U.S. And he reauthorized the Ryan White Care Act–having worked for an HIV/AIDS organization in the past, I know how critical these funds are to people living with HIV/AIDS.
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We Voted! To Approve R-71, in Case You Were Wondering
At the post office mailing our ballots!
Today we mailed out ballots from Pennsylvania. This is us at the post office, excited to vote to approve R-71.
In Maine, we met a Californian at the No on 1 campaign office. He said he was more worried about Washington and R-71 than he was about Maine and Question [...]
A Paradigm Shift for Marriage
You know, I wasn’t always a big gay. For more than half of my life so far, I did not self-identify as queer.
In fact, the number of years I’ve had to think about marriage are about three to one the number of years I’ve had to think about queerness. I’ve encountered marriage as a child, as a teen, as a straight-by-default, as a closeted queer, as an out queer, as a married queer, as a Lutheran, as a Mormon, and as a person with enough Comparative Religion credits to need several paragraphs to express their spiritual perspective.
So I was very surprised to learn something about marriage while volunteering for the “No on 1″ campaign in Maine.
Read moreNo on 1, Part 2–Heads We Win, Tails You Lose
There are 13 days left until Election Day. If you had been in the No on 1 campaign office today, you would have known that. You might have noticed the big sign on the back wall that is changed every day to remind you of the imminence of your job. You might have called a volunteer to ask them to spend some time canvassing or at the office in the coming days.
You might have been worried. Yesterday (14 days out) there was a poll published [pdf of press release] that said that 48% of Mainers were for Question 1 (boo), 48% against, and 4% undecided. I’m sure somebody has a calculation on what it takes to get a percentage point of the population to vote your way. How much money. How many volunteer hours. What kind of weather on Election Day.
Read moreHangin’ with No on 1
I worked at a campaign for an initiative before, so nothing I saw when I arrived surprised me–except for the scale. There were computers and tables and chairs cobbled together into a makeshift set–function over fashion. There was food, sandwiches to Twizzlers. But there were probably twenty people, which is about 15 more than ever were seen at the initiative I worked for. I later found out there was a whole second room of volunteers.
On the wall were handmade and professional signs expressing Maine’s love for equality. The mood was cheerful, determined, and busy.
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