Like many people, I watched Barack Obama’s victory on election night with tear-brimming joy. The waterworks started when he mentioned gays by name in the first few lines of his speech and they carried through until I found myself mouthing “Yes we can” along with the audience in Grant Park and the silent chorus from around the world.
I was on a wave of euphoria and hope until half way through the next morning when I realized that in the same moment that many people in California, Arizona and Florida voted for change by voting for Obama they also voted to discriminate against gay people by allowing the ban on gay marriage in those states to pass.
Most famously in California with Proposition 8, the three states added propositions to the ballot that proposed banning same sex marriage. This summer the state of California legalized same sex marriage, so Prop 8 was not only about banning marriage for gay people but about taking away rights that had already been won. This serves as a lesson that rights can be taken away—yes they can!
The vote against gay people was in part made easier because Obama himself has said that he is not in favour of gay marriage. While it is obvious from his previous work with LGBT communities that his stance on same sex marriage is motivated more by politics than discrimination, I think it gave voters an excuse. They could vote for a leader they believed in and hide their homophobia under the cloak of the same leader’s reasoning.
On blogs and in papers the next day may people were blaming the failure to prevent the ban on gay marriage on Black and Hispanic voters. This need to racialize the blame, and roll out the politics of oppression in the face of lost rights in the same moment that America voted for their first visible minority president is disappointing.
It was in light of the harsh reality that accompanied Obama’s victory that I was more able to recognize the more localized homophobia I experienced later in the week. I had sent a request to a supposed community-centric listserv to spread the word about Exposure: Edmonton’s Queer Arts and Culture Festival. I received an email back from the administrator of the listserv stating that he wouldn’t be able to post my announcement for a variety of reasons, including that I had missed the deadline and that there were other clients in front of me. Those responses I could accept, but he also stated that he would be unable to send out my post because “it’s bound to offend some of our subscribers.“ Not wanting to jump to conclusions, I emailed him back asking for clarification to which he responded, “There’s no need to embark is some sort of polemic in this—while we have no issue with the content of your festival or with people’s sexuality; some of our subscribers however, do—thus, as we don’t want to alienate them, we reserve the right to post or not content that may be offensive to some ... Sorry, but, c’est la vie.“
His flippant willingness to alienate the queer community, not to mention underestimate his subscribers, shocked and surprised me. He is either assuming that his subscribers are homophobic or he knows that some of them are. He also assumes that the needs and feelings of those who might be uncomfortable or feel alienated reading about a queer arts and culture festival are more important than those who might benefit by finding about the festival. By either supporting homophobia or assuming homophobia he is choosing to enable the discrimination, and thereby becomes a discriminator himself. He has every right to post what he wants, it is his listserv, but one that he distributes in the name of community action in Edmonton. By leaving out members of the community he is failing his subscribers by not representing the community in its totality to the best of his ability.
I had been a subscriber to his listserv for years and had supported it through placing posts before, which non-profits I worked with paid for with what little money they had for marketing. By informing me that he cannot post information on Exposure in the name of his subscribers he is in a sense painting the possibility that any of his subscribers supported discrimination, support having homosexual content railroaded. Something that subscribers like the non-profit I worked with might be upset to find out since discrimination goes against everything they work towards.
The loss of gay rights in America has tempered my excitement over Obama’s victory. The realization that someone whom I saw as a local ally is actually a roadblock has reminded me to take nothing for granted. Together the two experiences have encouraged me to be critical. The future is bright and has promise but it will not fulfill itself we must work hard and together.
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