Here We Go Once More
Election Day 2022 marks thirty years of voting in Presidential and midterm elections for me. 30 years! I was thinking of this marker as I filled out my ballot for this year and considered the various other races, ballot measures, and issues voters coast-to-coast are voting on this go-around.
Allow me to get the political junkie part of me out of the way: I think Democrats are going to have a bad night but one where they ultimately come away saying, "It could have been worse." They'll win some squeakers in the Senate but lose the House by a pretty solid margin. That is just political cycles and history at play, not to mention the short-sightedness of voters on pocketbook issues. Newsflash: A GOP controlled house is not immediately going to cheapen the cost of groceries or gas but it's adorable if you think it will.
That said, I am actually more interested in the parallels both personally and nationally I'm seeing in 2022 vs what I saw in 1992, when I cast my first ballot. I was one year into living in Oregon, fresh up the I-5 from the San Francisco Bay Area I'd grown up in. Aside from casting my first ever vote for President (my candidate won, and it felt like Gen X was taking over and I was so naive, but I love that former version of myself just the same!) the hottest debate in my dorm lounges and around campus was Measure 9. It asked Oregon voters to say Yes or No to this: "Requires all governments to discourage homosexuality, other listed 'behaviors and to not facilitate or recognize them."
It is hard to believe that Oregon, a blue state for my entire time living here, was even asking this question. But there it was. And there I was, a left-of-center kid from California suburbs, where even in 1992 you likely already had a classmate that was out or, as likely, had at least come out to you. I was 19 years old and I was astounded that we were being asked to vote on this vial piece of public referendum. And yet I encountered classmates at my liberal arts college that were planning to vote "Yes". They said it was important to 'protect' school kids from gays or lesbians or to make sure that the gay community (we weren't even actively using the term LGBTQ back then) didn't get 'special rights' and other various other talking points handed to them by everyone from the measure's sponsors, to their own parents, to the 700 Club, who sent Ralph Reed to my campus to promote the measure in a debate. I lost friendships debating that ballot measure. I argued with family members over it. Ultimately it got defeated on Election Day. But not by as wide a margin as you'd think. And a similar, marginally toned-down measure was on the ballot 2 years later. It lost by a larger margin. Another came 2 years after that. It also went down. And yet along the way Oregonians at one point voted to outlaw gay marriage in the state constitution. The state supreme court eventually shot it down, public opinion had already shifted, and then the high court made gay marriage legal in 2015. I remember when that decision came down I naively thought, "This 20+ year chapter of the culture wars can finally die."
Turns out that 43 year-old me could be just as naive as 19 year-old me. Because as country we're seeing it again. Maybe not as overtly anti-gay as last time because, mercifully, public opinion has indeed shifted around gay marriage and we've made positive strides (with many to go) in electing LGBTQ people to Governorships, Congress, state offices, etc. It is not as easy for those on the right to attack gays and lesbians as it was 30 years ago and find people to side with them. That's not to say they can't find a crowd because they can but even they seem to know they had to change their target. And they have. They shrank their sites down to an even smaller portion of the population: Transgenders and non-binary individuals and their families and, in an even sicker twist of strategy, children with gender dysphoria. The same bastion of folks who used to stand on stages and say people were/are 'choosing' to be gay are now raising their voices about 'groomers' and 'genital mutilation' and a litany of other hate speech because...well, because that is how the right has operated in the entire time I've been old enough to vote. It has always been and I suspect it always will be a strategy that starts with targeting a segment of the population that is in the minority and, on their numbers alone, will always need allies to have a majority. The LGBTQ community has always known this in the political realm. They needed and received -- and never had to ask some of us more than once -- support from straight people, cisgender folks, etc.
The new version of micro-targeting is, by rough estimate, a very small portion of the population. Transgender, non-binary folks are a tiny portion of the population. Which makes them easy to target and single out. It's easy to say hateful rhetoric, such as accusing them of being pedophiles or groomers because their numbers are small. Without allies they are easy to drown out. Oh, and in the here and now just as it has been throughout modern history, if you want to keep your kids away from pedophiles or groomers then keep them out of a church or church-sponsored camp or activity because, statistically, that is where they are likely to be targeted. Just an FYI that you likely already knew but I'm saying it anyway because it should be repeated to anyone with a shadow of a doubt about where the pedophile and groomers roam and how they target the young.
So, alas, I've lived long enough to see this playbook before. My mistake was thinking the playbook was dated. That it expired somewhere in the 2010's and wouldn't be back in some amended version with alterations to the names and places and the groups being singled out for the audacity of wanting to live their lives or figure out who they are, who they love, and so forth. The people targeting such folks didn't fool me back then and, yeah, I give 19 year-old me some credit for that. But 49 year-old me, maybe with a tad less energy but with greater resolve and clarity, is here now. For the fight. To stand with. To stand against. To vote.
Just like always.
J
Allow me to get the political junkie part of me out of the way: I think Democrats are going to have a bad night but one where they ultimately come away saying, "It could have been worse." They'll win some squeakers in the Senate but lose the House by a pretty solid margin. That is just political cycles and history at play, not to mention the short-sightedness of voters on pocketbook issues. Newsflash: A GOP controlled house is not immediately going to cheapen the cost of groceries or gas but it's adorable if you think it will.
That said, I am actually more interested in the parallels both personally and nationally I'm seeing in 2022 vs what I saw in 1992, when I cast my first ballot. I was one year into living in Oregon, fresh up the I-5 from the San Francisco Bay Area I'd grown up in. Aside from casting my first ever vote for President (my candidate won, and it felt like Gen X was taking over and I was so naive, but I love that former version of myself just the same!) the hottest debate in my dorm lounges and around campus was Measure 9. It asked Oregon voters to say Yes or No to this: "Requires all governments to discourage homosexuality, other listed 'behaviors and to not facilitate or recognize them."
It is hard to believe that Oregon, a blue state for my entire time living here, was even asking this question. But there it was. And there I was, a left-of-center kid from California suburbs, where even in 1992 you likely already had a classmate that was out or, as likely, had at least come out to you. I was 19 years old and I was astounded that we were being asked to vote on this vial piece of public referendum. And yet I encountered classmates at my liberal arts college that were planning to vote "Yes". They said it was important to 'protect' school kids from gays or lesbians or to make sure that the gay community (we weren't even actively using the term LGBTQ back then) didn't get 'special rights' and other various other talking points handed to them by everyone from the measure's sponsors, to their own parents, to the 700 Club, who sent Ralph Reed to my campus to promote the measure in a debate. I lost friendships debating that ballot measure. I argued with family members over it. Ultimately it got defeated on Election Day. But not by as wide a margin as you'd think. And a similar, marginally toned-down measure was on the ballot 2 years later. It lost by a larger margin. Another came 2 years after that. It also went down. And yet along the way Oregonians at one point voted to outlaw gay marriage in the state constitution. The state supreme court eventually shot it down, public opinion had already shifted, and then the high court made gay marriage legal in 2015. I remember when that decision came down I naively thought, "This 20+ year chapter of the culture wars can finally die."
Turns out that 43 year-old me could be just as naive as 19 year-old me. Because as country we're seeing it again. Maybe not as overtly anti-gay as last time because, mercifully, public opinion has indeed shifted around gay marriage and we've made positive strides (with many to go) in electing LGBTQ people to Governorships, Congress, state offices, etc. It is not as easy for those on the right to attack gays and lesbians as it was 30 years ago and find people to side with them. That's not to say they can't find a crowd because they can but even they seem to know they had to change their target. And they have. They shrank their sites down to an even smaller portion of the population: Transgenders and non-binary individuals and their families and, in an even sicker twist of strategy, children with gender dysphoria. The same bastion of folks who used to stand on stages and say people were/are 'choosing' to be gay are now raising their voices about 'groomers' and 'genital mutilation' and a litany of other hate speech because...well, because that is how the right has operated in the entire time I've been old enough to vote. It has always been and I suspect it always will be a strategy that starts with targeting a segment of the population that is in the minority and, on their numbers alone, will always need allies to have a majority. The LGBTQ community has always known this in the political realm. They needed and received -- and never had to ask some of us more than once -- support from straight people, cisgender folks, etc.
The new version of micro-targeting is, by rough estimate, a very small portion of the population. Transgender, non-binary folks are a tiny portion of the population. Which makes them easy to target and single out. It's easy to say hateful rhetoric, such as accusing them of being pedophiles or groomers because their numbers are small. Without allies they are easy to drown out. Oh, and in the here and now just as it has been throughout modern history, if you want to keep your kids away from pedophiles or groomers then keep them out of a church or church-sponsored camp or activity because, statistically, that is where they are likely to be targeted. Just an FYI that you likely already knew but I'm saying it anyway because it should be repeated to anyone with a shadow of a doubt about where the pedophile and groomers roam and how they target the young.
So, alas, I've lived long enough to see this playbook before. My mistake was thinking the playbook was dated. That it expired somewhere in the 2010's and wouldn't be back in some amended version with alterations to the names and places and the groups being singled out for the audacity of wanting to live their lives or figure out who they are, who they love, and so forth. The people targeting such folks didn't fool me back then and, yeah, I give 19 year-old me some credit for that. But 49 year-old me, maybe with a tad less energy but with greater resolve and clarity, is here now. For the fight. To stand with. To stand against. To vote.
Just like always.
J