[GPCA Updates] The Audacity to Vote — Green

[Green Party of California Updates]

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/10/25/The_Audacity_to_Vote_Green/

The Advocate
The Audacity to Vote — Green
By Daniel W.K. Lee

The co-chair of the Manhattan Green Party reminds gay voters there will
be more options than the status quo next Tuesday.

I have before written on the emotionally masochistic relationship
progressive Democrats have with their party — what I’ve described as a
kind of Stockholm syndrome they have with their captors. In the past
year Rahm Emanuel has told them to “fuck off,” Vice President Biden has
told them to “stop whining,” and most recently, gay progressive
Democrats (GPDs) got kicked in the groin by the Obama administration
when it decided it would appeal Judge Virginia Phillips’s injunction to
halt all “don’t ask, don’t tell” dismissals after an earlier declaration
that the infamous law is unconstitutional. Here in New York, when
marriage equality came to a vote in the Democratic-controlled state
senate, the body failed to pass the bill by 14 votes.

Now that the midterm election is upon us, the Democratic establishment
has employed the fear tactic to get its progressives in line by saying,
“If you don’t vote us back in, think of what the alternative will be.”
And much like progressive Dems in general, GPDs — most notably the Human
Rights Campaign — have resorted to shameless (or is it shameful?)
apologies for the party and administration’s shortcomings by asking for
more patience because “change takes time” and habitually failing to call
out the administration and congressional Democrats’ poor progress on
LGBT issues, or they have gotten vocally angry, but with no intention to
not vote Democratic.

And why is that? Just when the Obama administration could have shown
some chutzpah and let Judge Phillips’s injunction stand, it decided to
play more legislative hot potato to what, get a bill passed in a Senate
that has already stopped a DADT repeal with a filibuster? And as
President Obama talks from both sides of his face, promising DADT will
end “on his watch” while his administration pursues its continued
enforcement, somehow the charade gives the Democrats’ gay progressive
members just enough rhetorical carrot to keep them from losing hope that
they’ll at least win the right to marry and the right to serve openly in
the military.

But can GPDs expect more than what the Democratic Party says it stands
for? According to its platform, it is committed to:

Repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” in a sensible way that strengthens our
armed forces and our national security
Ensuring civil unions and equal federal rights for LGBT couples as well
as fully repealing the Defense of Marriage Act

That’s it. Nowhere does it connect LGBT concerns with immigration reform
or health care. As a party, Democrats are not “committed” to marriage
equality outside of guaranteeing equal federal rights to LGBT couples.
As a party, its collective understanding of “gay civil equality” is only
a matter of civil unions and military, and yet GPDs’ faith in their
captors remain in part because they believe there is no alternative.
And that’s simply not true.

How do you like the following?

1. The Green Party affirms the rights of all individuals to freely
choose intimate partners, regardless of their sex, gender, gender
identity, or sexual orientation.

2. The Green Party recognizes the equal rights of persons who identify
as gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, transsexual, queer, or transgender
to housing, jobs, civil marriage, medical benefits, child custody, and
in all areas of life including equal tax treatment.

3. The Green Party will be inclusive of language in local, state, and
federal antidiscrimination law that ensures the rights of intersex
individuals and prohibits discrimination based on gender identity,
characteristics, and expression as well as on sex, gender, or sexual
orientation. We are opposed to intersex genital mutilation.

4. The Green Party affirms the right of all persons to
self-determination with regard to gender identity and sex. We therefore
support the right of intersex and transgender individuals to be free
from coercion and involuntary assignment of gender or sex. We affirm the
right of access to medical and surgical treatment for assignment or
reassignment of gender or sex, based on informed consent.

5. We will pursue legislation against all forms of hate crimes,
including those directed against people who identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, queer, transgender, and intersex. Offenders must pay
compensation to the LGBTIQ people who have suffered violence and injustice.

6. The Green Party will end all federal military and civilian aid to
national governments whose laws result in the imprisonment or otherwise
bring harm to citizens and residents based on sexual orientation or
gender identity, characteristics, and expression.

7. The Green Party will enact a policy that the U.S. government
recognize all international marriages and legal equivalents, such as
civil unions, in processing visitor and immigration visas.

8. The Green Party would repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and bolish
security clearances denied on the basis of sexual orientation and/or
gender identity, and supports the rights of defense personnel and
volunteers to serve their country openly without penalty irrespective of
sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

9. The Green Party would end security surveillance and covert
infiltration of organizations that promote equal rights on the basis of
sexual orientation and gender identity.

The above text is word for word from the platform of the Green Party of
the United States. It is language that articulates the Greens’ position
on LGBTIQ equality as a party — not just its progressive members. In
reading it, it’s hard not to be drinking the Green Kool-Aid, no?

In practice though, GPDs and progressives in general cannot seem to
divorce themselves from Democrats mostly because of this notion of
“viability.” We forget that “viable candidates” are not born as such,
nor do the magically appear, but rather they are created by the support
of constituents who believe in a candidate's message and positions.
There is nothing essential about a viable candidate like some immutable
personality trait: Al Gore, who many thought was uncharismatic and
personality-less, was still a viable candidate. Viable, or “electable,”
is ultimately a matter of numbers: how many are willing to put
themselves on the line to support a specific candidate. And in the case
of minor political parties that just might very well be more in line
with one’s political convictions, it is qualitatively and quantitatively
how many have the courage to vote for them.

I voted for Obama in 2008 thinking that I voted for change from the
status quo. But early on from the formation of his cabinet and choice of
advisers to how health care reform played out, the status quo of the
Beltway never seemed threatened.  A politic of hope has turned into a
politic of fear for the midterm election. And not all change takes
laborious time. A practical end to DADT could have been allowed, but no.
President Obama’s Department of Justice could actually and quite easily
abide by rule of law (that is, it could stop breaking the law) by
allowing Gitmo and other detainees due process, but no. These are just
examples of change that doesn’t get halted by GOP obstructionism and
takes affect upon presidential orders.

It surprises me to a degree that in getting fed up, GPDs haven’t more
radically rethought their relationship with the Democrats, though some
have cut off contributions and others are angrily calling upon them to
step up to the plate without much of a political threat to leave them
and empower non-Democrat progressives to enact a liberal agenda. And
this is where progressive voters fail when the status quo of politics
gives the illusion of no options, or rather, the default “necessity” to
choose the “lesser of two evils.” If true empowerment is not about just
accepting given choices, but about creating choices, then by
acknowledging and being willing to vote outside the binary world of red
and blue parties, (gay) progressive Democrats could find themselves
getting politicians who actually actively seek to promote a progressive
agenda and do not just take them for granted.

For GPDs disgusted and disheartened, I am empathetic. The vile theater
of health care reform caused me to look for a political party that is
fundamentally dedicated to the same things I am politically committed
to, and thus I became a Green. Though my views on same-sex marriage and
“don’t ask, don’t tell” are, shall we say, more nuanced, as a queer man,
it’s much easier to get on board with the Greens’ positions on LGBTIQ
issues than the Democrats’ visionless statements. Moreover, I do not
wish to wait for the Democratic Party to catch up with my concerns. I’d
rather go the more difficult route and work to empower Greens to
represent my liberal politics in local, state, and federal governments.

Indeed, voting on principles is terribly difficult when our country’s
electoral culture is a kind of consumerism: where most want to know what
we “get” in exchange for our vote and (financial) support. Lobbyists and
voters too are guilty of such a cynical practice of electoral politics.
It also allows activists to get myopic in voting (i.e. “If this
candidate supports marriage equality, then I’ll be willing to overlook
how s/he intends to screw the poor”) — discarding a broader progressive
vision for self-interests. When voters behave like corporations in the
singular pursuit of “what benefits me,” then we are not progressives; we
are not agents of change; we are cowards.

So let us reevaluate what it means to “make my vote count.” Let’s
reconsider the compromises. In doing so, will you be empowered and have
the audacity to vote for another color of the rainbow?