Election opinions.  C'mon, you thought I didn't have any?  Please.  

The new President.  Yes, I voted for Barack Obama (check previous posts for my opinions about Senator McCain and Governor Palin).  So yes, I'm happy.  But I'm also a gay man and a long-time activist, which means I have my own (small-'g') gay agenda for the incoming administration.

In the next four years, in return for the support of the queer communities, I expect to see either significant action on, or actual completion of, at least one of these four items:

1.  Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  DOMA denies legally-married same-sex couples access to a variety of rights and privileges accorded to opposite-sex couples at the federal level (including obtaining spousal benefits from Social Security and allowing gay and lesbian citizens the right to have their foreign-born, non-citizen partners stay in the US).  This Act was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by then-President Clinton, making it a bipartisan blot in the federal law books.  President-elect Obama is already on record for granting civil rights at all levels equal to opposite-sex couples for same-sex couples.  Repealing DOMA will prove he really meant what he said.

2.  Eliminate "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT).  Right now we're fighting a war on two fronts, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  We need every single available member of our armed forces we can lay our hands on -- including those with training in intelligence, expertise in Middle Eastern affairs, and fluency in the languages of those two countries.  However, if they are gay or lesbian and they are found out, the need to purge homosexuals from the military trumps the country's need for all able-bodied citizens to wage these wars.  Yes, the troops need to be drawn down (and eventually removed entirely) in Iraq.  Yes, we need increased troops and intelligence to once-and-for-all capture Osama bin Laden and destroy al-Qaida in Afghanistan, so that we can honestly declare "mission accomplished" and bring those troops home as well.  But until then, it is lunacy to remove people whose talents and abilities we need in order to mollify the fears of those in the upper echelons of the military that the deadly possibility exists that somewhere, sometime, a gay/lesbian service member will make a pass at a straight one, destroying the delicate cohesion of their unit and, ultimately, the entire armed forces of this country.

3.  Pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  This one has been promised to us by the Democrats but somehow always ends up being put in limbo.  When the Democrats aren't in control, they claim either the votes aren't there or the President will veto the bill anyway and they can't override it.  When they are in control, there are ever so many other priorities, and we can understand why ENDA just isn't a priority, can't we?  Now's the time to insist that, with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and a Democratic President, ENDA gets passed into law and finally freed from the labrynthine maneuverings of Washington politics.

4.  Remove the last vestiges of the travel and immigration ban on persons with HIV.  Giving credit where it's due, outgoing President Bush did lift most of the ban, but the Department of Homeland Security hasn't been given the green light to finish the job.  This is one area where the incoming President can just say "do it", and it will be done.

And what if this is not done?  Vote the bastards out.  The Republicans have shown in this election they do not want us.  The Democrats will have shown by their inaction that they only want us as cash cows and unpaid volunteer grunt workers.  The two-party system is not enshrined in law.  Maybe it's time to give serious, massive queer support to the Libertarians, the Greens, or the Socialists.  It's not throwing your vote away if, by giving your vote to either of the two so-called major parties, you don't have your issues taken seriously.

California's Proposition 8 was passed by a favorable vote of 52% of the state's voting citizens.  But it's not in effect yet.  Why?  Well, as of this past Friday, there were some 2.7 million votes that had yet to be counted -- early voters whose votes were received on Election Day, voters who used absentee ballots, and voters who had to use provisional ballots.  It ain't over yet, and may not be over until early December.  For more information, go to http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/c-status08/total_unprocessed_ballots08.pdf