2004 was the LGBT's fault

Imagine being in the hottest club in the biggest city of your dreams.  People dancing, some move in a rhythm you only wish you could, others clumsily, and then of course there's you, with your own private rain dance.  The music intensifies, people seem energized, some mixed track is about to blend into the hottest song of the year, you close your eyes and wait for the beat.  The song begins your body moves and you’re dancing, probably even singing out loud knowing the music will drown out your off key octaves.  Finally you open your eyes; the crowd of hundreds that was moving to a unified beat has suddenly changed; every other person is just standing and gawking.  Suddenly the song doesn’t feel so right, you don’t even feel the beat anymore, all you notice is hundreds of people standing, doing nothing.  Then without warning you notice your no longer dancing.

Early November in 2004, overnight America lost the chance of marriage equality in 23 states.  A battle struck out over “traditional marriage”; a battle trying to define what it was and more importantly what it was not.  That year when LGBT rights had probably not seen injustice of the likes, since the days of Harvey Milk, only 40% of LGBT memebers voted the other 60% did nothing.   Our community failed.

When a bill is put to vote, how does it win?  When a team wins, is it the higher or the lower score that takes the trophy (excluding bowling and golf)?  In 2004 a super majority within our very own community did not vote.  We gave our opposing side a twelve point bump.  Let me repeat that, we gave our opposing side a double digit lead right off the bat.  Well surpassing even the margin of error.

A fast math class lesson, you may say wait 60% of the LGBT community would only equal 6% of the entire population.  You’re right, but if 6% does not vote for our side then we don’t neutralize 6% of the opposing sides vote.  So now we have lost 6% of support they still maintain that 6% support and now suddenly bigotry gains by 12%.

So this is how we failed, we didn’t even find our own unified voice, less than half of us danced.  If each of those 60% of the LGBT had been more involved, had as much passion as those who did go out to vote and educate.  Had 100% of the LGBT community been involved what would have happened?  This year is not unlike 2004, except candidates are not bothering to let interest groups sell anti-gay laws and hate.  They are outwardly promoting these laws themselves and are willing to set the LGBT back years.

We failed in 2004, I accept that.  Just because your friends are gay does not mean they understand what you are saying, or how important this really is.  I have had friends who follow me to events, who support me and so I thought they were doing the same, when in fact not all of them were.  Unless you ask directly, unless you push the conversation to the point where it clicks, you have not done enough.

The people that oppose us were not handed a flier, they weren’t given a 35 second elevator speech.  They have gone to churches for years, heard their parents, grandparents, brothers, aunts, uncles, or whomever else’s warped sense of reality, that we are wrong.  So if you think you will alter their frame of thought easily, you have not been paying attention and like it or not they are much more organized then we are.  They have churches, private schools, and that doesn’t even include the political backing that hits their message home, every minute, of every hour, of every day, and it never rests.

Activism is a contact sport, no it’s not physical, but your emotion will be bruised.  The LGBT is a minority but understand that the only reason people fear and shun us, is because they have been taught to do so, they have been taught to fear what they don’t understand.  The one most organic thing we all understand is love, connect with people on that level and the fear subsides.  2012 cannot be a repeat of 2004; we cannot afford to fall backward after making so much progress.  We are alarming people by our strength, if we rest on that, on what we know is morally right and expect everyone else to make the right decisions, we will lose.  Love is the easiest thing to understand but fear and inaction will bring out the worst in all of us.