It's Election Time: Do You Know Where Your Politics Are?

Reflections by Anaheed Alani, Sabrina Craig, Mel Ferrand, Debbie Gould, Jeanne Kracher, Hana Layson, Dawne Moon, Gina Olson, and Dana Seitler

The elections are coming, what's a queer to do? Our local and national organizations would have us channel our activism into donating money to "fair-minded candidates," attending gala and expensive benefits to support one political party's offering or another, supporting gay/lesbian candidates, whatever their political leanings, attending conferences to hone leadership skills so that we can usher the "community" into the electoral arena, and finally-the highest political act of them all-registering and voting.

Are electoral politics our only and best option? Looking at the lesbian/gay community's outpouring of support for Clinton in 1992 and his subsequent betrayals, we certainly hope not. Despite Clinton's miserable failings-including the military fiasco, his signing of the Defense of Marriage Act, his administration's refusal to file an amicus brief in Colorado's Amendment 2 Supreme Court case, and his elimination of the Office of AIDS Research-movers and shakers in the "community" continue to justify their support for Clinton and encourage all of us to get on board for the next four years. Their usual argument is, Dole and the Republicans are so bad, Clinton is the only choice as the lesser of two evils. (Plus, he invited queers to the White House for tea and latex gloves.) While it's imperative to rally against the Republican machine and its vehement disregard for basic human rights, we don't have to accept the Democrats' agenda blindly. If our only option is choosing between two evils, perhaps we should reassess the value of electoral politics.

Lest we forget, there are numerous other strategies which historically have forwarded our fight for equality and liberation, and might do so in the future as well. Stonewall did not occur at the ballot box. The various Marches on Washington were public expressions of anger, desire, and political demands, and they spawned local, grass-roots activist organizations to carry on important day-to-day work. The largest victories around AIDS have been won in the streets with mass demonstrations, die-ins, disruptions of business as usual, and other forms of direct action. Our problem with the so-called gay/lesbian "leadership" is not merely their insistence that the electoral arena should be the primary theater for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) activism. If they believe in electoral politics, at the very least, we would ask them to push at the boundaries of that arena, recognizing that these boundaries are meant to exclude, whether we're queer, poor, or otherwise disenfranchised. We would ask them not to settle for a place at the table for themselves, but to demand a complete resetting of that table to include a broader vision of what constitutes the LGBT "community" and its issues.

Across the board, local and national gay and lesbian organizations seem unwilling to take risks to agitate for real social change. Instead, they promote deliberately vague, watered-down political agendas. Let's look at one example. The largest and wealthiest national organization, Human Rights Campaign, offers a nine-point platform for "Campaign '96." More than half of their points focus on electoral politics-invoking the tired mantra of "register and vote"-and ignore many specific issues of vital importance to the everyday lives of most queers. Meanwhile, nationwide, the fight for universal health coverage (whether you're married or not) has been all but forgotten. Queer youth are three times more likely to commit suicide than straight youth. HIV infection rates are skyrocketing among women, gay and bisexual youth, and gay and bisexual men of color. In New York, new zoning laws push the sex industry out of city limits, closing down anything from sex shops, to strip clubs, to bookstores. In Utah, all extra-curricular clubs at the high-school level were banned by state legislation in order to stop a three-member lesbian/gay student group from meeting. In California, Proposition 187, which denies education and healthcare for immigrants and their children, won and has become the model on both the state and national levels; HIV+ immigrants have repeatedly been threatened with denial of healthcare and deportation. In North Carolina, ACT UP lost its court injunction to protect anonymous HIV testing in public clinics. And in Washington, Clinton signed welfare reform legislation which not only guarantees that more individuals will live in poverty, but also specifically targets young women who have children, preventing them from getting AFDC if they are too young or have too many kids-legislation which is a clear regulation of sex lives.

Why doesn't the HRC Campaign '96 address even one of these issues? Too much time fundraising and becoming the wealthiest national gay/lesbian organization, too little time listening to the grassroots? If local and national "leaders" took direction from the grassroots, they would find that transgender people, lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men, like all other people, have complex lives, interests, and desires, not all of which are addressed by elections. Instead of focusing solely on elections, our local and national organizations should, as a start, launch effective campaigns against laws which criminalize and penalize immigrants and in favor of laws which grant political asylum to queers oppressed in other countries. They should demand and financially support the fight for universal healthcare. They should fight for the implementation of needle-exchange programs and affordable AIDS drugs. They should work to promote a queer, cross-cultural curriculum which includes sexuality, safer-sex education, and queer teen suicide prevention. Finally, they should fund queer grassroots organizations which are committed to working on the above issues, and more.

A narrow focus on "gay" issues, to the neglect of all others, obscures the complexities of L/G/B/T people's identities and lives. Lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people are immigrants, people on welfare, people of color, women, people with AIDS, and people in prison. The system of thought which allows some to decide who has access to healthcare and who will remain in poverty is the same system of thought which relegates queers to a socially and sexually deviant status. It is imperative that we take risks and expand the queer agenda in recognition of these connections.

What can we do besides vote? Start a reading group, volunteer at a community-based organization, wear drag, jump a barricade, pass out condoms, write a letter-to-the-editor, come out, organize a demonstration, join a coalition, hold organizations accountable, speak out at a meeting, imagine liberation.

Anyone interested in working on these issues can get in touch with this ad hoc group of lesbians and bisexual women by calling (312) 427-0510.