more politics thoughts

[nenya_kanadka]

In my lifetime, I've now seen:

* gay marriage legalized nationally across the entire United States of America (and also Canada, before that)
* a Black US president
* a female US vice president (a Black and Indian-American woman, at that)

When I was a kid, they told us the last two of those would happen someday, and I believed it in the vague way that I thought we might someday have humans on Mars, but it seemed pretty distant and vague. When I first started paying attention to LGBTQ+ rights, the first one seemed impossible.

And yet.

I'm thinking too about how every US presidential election since 2008, aside from Obama's reelection in 2012 where I don't even remember who Romney's running mate was (but I know it was a guy), has had at least one woman on the ticket for one of the major parties. Palin, Clinton, now Harris. And this year's Democratic primary had several women in it. It seems like we're at a tipping point where, just like when all of a sudden there was a point where state after state was passing marriage equality, we might start having women nominated all the time now. Then they'll start winning. Then it will be normal to have either a man or a woman leading the US, the way it's not shocking anymore to have a female senator or congressperson.

(Canada, it's time to catch up on female party leaders please!)

And Oklahoma (!!) has elected the first nonbinary state legislator in the US in Mauree Turner, and former Biden staffer Sarah McBride has just been elected to the state senate in Delaware, bringing the number of trans people at state legislature level to five. State senate is what Obama was doing before he got elected to the senate at national level. We're going to hear more from these folks, I think.

And in four years NASA plans to send the first woman to the moon.

2020's been A Year. But even now good things are happening.

Comments

[chanter1944]

Re Romney's running mate in 2012: Paul Ryan, fellow Wisconsinite with whom I share *very* little beyond state affiliation.

[sovay]

Then it will be normal to have either a man or a woman leading the US, the way it's not shocking anymore to have a female senator or congressperson.

I should like that.

(On other axes, it still strikes me as significant that Biden is the first Catholic President-elect since JFK, considering the number of Catholics in this country. We have never had a non-Christian President of the U.S. At the moment I consider that a much less likely prospect in my lifetime than a female President, although I'd be very happy to be proven wrong.)

And Oklahoma (!!) has elected the first nonbinary state legislator in the US in Mauree Turner

I was so pleased about that.

[kore]

Yes. Yes. The Good is still there.

[sholio]

Oh, that's a nice thing to think about! And I think you're probably right.

I do think about the marriage thing sometimes. I can't believe we went from 1999 when I was crying in a bathroom at work because we (Alaska) had just passed a constitutional amendment banning it that got something like 70% of the popular vote, to not only legalizing it nationwide but legalizing it with majority popular support and very little pushback less than 20 years later.

I feel like - I hope, anyway - that 2016-2020 was an aberration and a wakeup call for a lot of us in the older Millennial/younger Gen X age bracket, because for most of my life there has felt like a sort of inevitability to the pace of change where it seemed to be inexorably trending forward no matter what we did. It felt like, even when the elections didn't go our way and that part sucked, things trended our way anyway. And then the last few years slammed into us and proved that sometimes you gotta get out and push to make things go your way. And I hope enough of us keep pushing to keep that snowball rolling, so all of this will just look like a speed bump in hindsight and not an actual change of direction.

[lunabee34]

These are such good reminders.

There is work to be done, but it's doable. Things are changing.

[pauraque]

Good points. It's easy to focus on recent setbacks and not see the progress in the big picture. It was very surprising to me how quickly US public opinion turned in favor of gay rights and gay marriage. Many of the same politicians who used to leverage homophobia to win elections in the 90s and early 2000s are still around, but they don't use that strategy anymore--not because they fixed their hearts, but because it simply doesn't work. You can't rally voters using a form of bigotry that polls show the majority of Americans no longer believe in.

I think the recent attempts to appeal to transphobia in the US are a reflection of this. Not enough people hate gays anymore, so they had to dig deeper to find an even more marginalized group to scapegoat. And even that backfired; some prominent Republicans who supported the "bathroom bills" lost their seats because even conservative voters perceived them to be wasting time on a relatively insignificant issue instead of focusing on real problems.

[walgesang]

Hello! I am seeing this post VERY belatedly, but hopefully it's an okay place to ask if it would be okay to friend you? I feel like we may have similar things in common. :D

And I agree that there has certainly been good things that happened in 2020, too. Vermont elected our first openly trans legislator! It's so great to see more happening for LGBT folks in politics too.