Amidst the enthusiastic celebration of change, I was oddly-depressed last night. Early on, it became apparent that Obama would not win my home state of Georgia. Worse:
When the votes have been counted tonight, the G.O.P. will reap the final fruits of its Southern Strategy. The Republican Party will have transformed itself from the Party of Lincoln into the Party of the Old Confederacy. We will find that John McCain has achieved his best results in the Old Confederacy—to which only a sprinkling of thinly populated states of the Plains and Mountain West will be added (states that share strong demographic similarities with the “Confederate” states). The core of the congressional G.O.P. will be drawn from the Old South.
I had honestly hoped that that notion would be defeated. Then there are the ballot measures:
As of now (6:45 a.m.), CNN is projecting that Arizona Prop. 102 and Florida Amendment 2 will both pass–by wide margins, 56% and 62% yes votes, respectively–and add bans on same-sex marriage to those state’s constitutions. CNN is also projecting that Arkansas’s Initiative 1 to ban same-sex couples from adopting or serving as foster parents will also pass–again, by a wide margin (57% yes votes). Right now, California Prop. 8 has not been called, but the yes votes are leading the no votes 52%-48% with 87% of the precincts reporting.
Further complicating the picture:
Every ethnic group supported marriage equality, except African-Americans, who voted overwhelmingly against extending to gay people the civil rights once denied them: a staggering 69 – 31 percent African-American margin against marriage equality.
Martin Luther King Jr. is on the TV saying, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'”
That day looks to be further away for lesbian and gay people. Ta-Nehisi Coates is disgusted. He knows there’s still work to do:
If someone wants to give me a reason why gay people shouldn’t be able to marry that doesn’t, at its root, involve boil down to “yuck,” I guess I’d love to hear it. But really that isn’t the point. I’ve always maintained that you don’t have to like black people to do the right thing. Same thing here. I’m not very interested in folks’s homophobia. I’m interested in why they think they should be in the business of dictating terms of love to two consenting adults. It’s disgusting.
For the moment, my hopes have been dashed.