The Honeymoon Is So Over, Howard
Dear Howard,
It’s us, the gay community. We need to
talk. You know what about—our relationship.
It’s no secret we’ve been drifting
apart, all that romance and excitement from the halcyon days of 2004 seems
like a lifetime ago now. These days, all we do is argue, and our dirty
laundry is daily fodder for the gossiphounds on the blogosphere.
The name-calling. The nastiness. The
pettiness. This isn’t us.
We should be thick as thieves. Eight years
of George W. Bush is enough to make all but the button-down Log Cabin boys
swoon at the prospect of one of yours in the White House. I mean just look
at our choices.
The GOP is nominating a septuagenarian
whose idea of a May-December romance is a gay rights record even worse
than George Bush in 2000: no workplace protections, no hate crime law, no
gays serving openly in the military—even the most limited domestic
partnerships are a non-starter with John McCain.
Your side, on the other hand, is down to
two courtesans who know exactly what to say. Hillary had us practically at
hello—at least since she said she wasn’t staying home serving milk and
cookies. She’s already won over most of our prominent politicos,
including 13 of the 21 out GLBT superdelegates. (We won’t count Donna
Brazile, nudge nudge wink wink.)
Despite Barack Obama’s own charm
offensive, he has only 2.
But the handsome senator from Illinois
knows how to push our buttons, too. He woos us with promises to repeal all
of the Defense of Marriage Act, which reminds us of the presidential
player who signed it into law in the first place. Hillary feels our pain
on that, no doubt.
When you see Clinton and Obama courting us,
do you remember the 2004 party primaries? It was all about you, Howard—a
little-known governor from Vermont who courageously supported the
nation’s first civil unions law. No matter the audience, you talked
about gay rights before gay rights were cool. We swooned in response, and
our dollars played a major role in putting you on the map. Later, we
cheered when you parlayed your primary success into a bid to chair the
Democratic National Committee.
So where did it all go wrong, Howard? It
was that meddling “M word,” wasn’t it? Our expectations for this
relationship went sky high after we could get married in Massachusetts. We
thought you’d be happy for us but instead, like most pols, you just
weren’t ready to go there. We were moving too fast for you, and it put
you on the defensive. Sorry about that.
Then you went on Pat Robertson’s “700
Club” and said your party platform backed “one man-one woman
marriage.” Ouch! We felt doubly betrayed; you were philandering with our
sworn enemies and acting like you weren’t already spoken for. Looking
back, we were too sensitive. It was smart politics for you to reach out to
the religious right. So many of them these days are not their
grandfather’s evangelicals.
But the Democratic Party platform is
actually neutral on gay marriage, and it wasn’t the only time you got
that wrong in public. Our suspicions grew. Where was the Howard we fell
for?
Maybe you were just like Bill Clinton and
the rest—wham bam, thanks for the cash, man.
Then came the squabbling. Some of your most
loyal party gays swore you’d lost that lovin’ feeling. You nixed the
“gay outreach desk,” left us out of the party’s annual grassroots
report, and you wouldn’t go along with treating us like other minority
groups in delegate selection.
You said you had your reasons, you said you
did it for us, to make our bond stronger. We said, “Talk to the hand.”
What did you expect? You sacked Donald
Hitchcock, your top gay liaison, and said it was strictly based on
performance. But now he’s sued you alleging anti-gay bias. We don’t
know who to believe, considering he got the axe just a week after his
partner, longtime Dem Paul Yandura, publicly blasted you for not doing
more to fight state marriage amendments. There’s that “M-word”
again.
You know what happened next. Everything got
personal. You called the Washington Blade “the Fox News of the gay
media.” The Stonewall Dems got so riled at your chief of staff they said
it was high time to “get these mother f***in’ snakes off this mother
f***in’ plane.” A senior DNC staffer said she used gay newspapers to
line her birdcage.
It’s crazy, isn’t it, how nasty it’s
gotten, when we were so important to each other early on. Is it too late
for us? Have we gone from Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” to
“D-I-V-O-R-C-E”? Actually no—that’s the “M word” again,
sneaking up from behind. Still, civil union “D-I-S-S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N”
just doesn’t have the same ring.
So what do you say, Howard? Can we give us
one more try? Meet us halfway? You don’t have to bring us flowers—just
get a gay rights bill or two through the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Chris Crain is former editor of the
Washington Blade and five other gay publications and now edits
GayNewsWatch.com. He can be reached via his blog at www.citizencrain.com.
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