The New Reality. I don't intend to go on and on about the election -- others do that far better than I, and there are other issues of interest. But there are a few things still worth noting.
Democrats who engaged in gay-baiting against their GOP opponents tended to lose -- in the Senate race in South Carolina, the gubernatorial race in Hawaii, and a couple of House races (the exception was sleazy Sen. Max Baucus, who won easily in Montana). Welcomed losers included Democratic Rep. David Phelps in Illinois, who had introduced an anti-gay marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution (it went nowhere) and leafleted cars at church services noting that his opponent, John Shimkus, was endorsed by the Log Cabin Republicans and was pro-gay rights! Shimkus won, hurrah!
On the GOP side, the good news is that we won't have Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Bob Barr -- the two most vehement homophobes in Congress -- to kick around anymore. Helms retired and Barr was defeated in his primary race.
I see some are warning that if social conservatives were to introduce anti-gay bills, without a Democratic majority we could be in trouble. First, I don't think contentious "red meat" social issues are going to be brought up, given the President's enunciated agenda. But if they should, Republicans still lack the 60 vote "supermajority" necessary to overcome a Democratic filibuster under Senate rules. The Democrats will not be shy about using the filibuster to block or eviscerate pro-business legislation such as tort reform, so if they don't filibuster to block anti-gay measures (if any) it speaks to the extent to which they take their gay support for granted.
And there's another matter worth pondering. Earlier this year, it appeared that the Senate Democrats were poised to introduce the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) outlawing anti-gay discrimination in private-sector employment. They didn't do so. Yes, the fact that the House was likely to vote it down was a factor. But that was known all along, and it had seemed that the Democrats" strategy was to bring up ENDA and pass it in the Senate in order to mobilize their gay bloc and liberal supporters. Apparently, however, a lot of Democratic senators decided they didn't want to go on record voting for ENDA, or on record opposing it for that matter, and it was simply dropped.
HRC adapts? Finally, the Washington-based Human
Rights Campaign has issued a
statement coming to terms with the post-election
reality:
"The time has come to consider the myriad federal issues regarding sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to move strategically forward -- not just on protection in employment and hate crimes, but on a whole range of economic benefits issues, such as taxation, pension and retirement benefits, immigration and hospital visitation rights," said [HRC leader Elizabeth] Birch. "While yesterday was a significant defeat for Democrats, our long experience tells us that GLBT issues will continue to move forward for human as well as partisan reasons."
This seems sensible, and perhaps where HRC and others should
have been focusing their attention all along -- on possibly
achievable measures that would clear away discriminatory aspects of
law as regards gays and lesbians. But given the penchant of gay
groups to focus on sweepingly broad legislation with little chance
of passage, and to give primacy to pursuing the wide left-liberal
agenda (and the election of those who support it), we"ll have to
wait and see what road the movement actually winds up taking over
the coming years.