This election is giving me, and I think the majority of this country, anxiety. I saw a tweet that said, “Waiting for election results is like waiting for a grade on a group project. I know I did my part right, but I’m scared y’all messed it up.” If you’ve ever done a group project, then you know this feeling. I would guess that if you are reading this blog, it is likely you were like me and led the group and ended up doing the most work, which gives you the feeling that you will probably get a good grade. I almost always got good grades, unless you consider Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry or French History. I didn’t do as well in those classes. I’d also put American Literature II in that category, but I made a C in that class because I refused to suck up to the professor. He was a prick and only gave A’s and B’s to people who repeatedly told him how wonderful he was. Anyway, my point is that I am feeling a little better about the election, and as long as the counts are fair, I think Biden might win.
As I am writing this post, Arizona is worrying me, but Georgia is looking better and better, but Georgia alone will result in a tie. We do not want a tie in the Electoral College. I know most people believe that the Democrats control the House of Representatives, and therefore, the election would go to Biden. However, if the election goes to the House, each state gets one vote, and the delegation decides how their state votes. There are a majority of Republican delegations in the House. While I think it is evident that Biden will win the popular vote by a large margin, I do not trust Republicans to do the right thing and give the election to the winner of the popular vote. It will go along party lines. Since the Senate, who chooses the Vice President, will still be controlled by the Republicans, Mike Pence will be the vice president no matter what happens. I believe that no matter who the House choses, a Republican Senate will vote for Pence. If the Electoral College is a tie, it will be awful.
We are already seeing Donald Trump calling legitimate and legal votes fraudulent; he will not go easily if Biden does get 270 or more electoral votes. He has said as much for months now, and he said as much yesterday in his treasonous speech. His cult followers are already hounding election centers to intimidate election officials into favoring Trump. If it is announced that Biden has the votes in the Electoral College, Trump is likely to call on his cultists to riot and will basically suggest a coup. I know that sounds extreme, but can you expect better of Trump? He has shown us already he cares nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or American institutions.
As Claire McCaskill said last night on MSNBC, we can only hope that George Bush, the only living former Republican president, and respected Republican leaders such as Bob Dole will have to make a public display of congratulating Joe Biden on his victory. Trump hates Bush, so Bush alone will not accomplish what needs to be done. The country will need many of the spineless Republicans who have propped up Trump to save American democracy, by that I mean Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, and John Thune in the Senate and Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Liz Cheney, and even assholes like Matt Gaetz in the House will have to step up and denounce Trump’s usurpation of the United States government. Will they? Would they finally grow a spine and put country above party? I hope so, but I won’t hold my breath.
My point is that there will have to be Republicans who stand up to Trump. Hopefully, they do care about democracy because it’s obvious that Trump does not. Trump’s actions during this election are causing significant damage to the United States. They undermine his supporters’ faith in the country’s government. They also undermine the credibility of the United States around the world. And they force election officials, journalists, and social media platforms to choose between telling the truth and sounding nonpartisan; it is impossible to do both about Trump’s election claims.
Yesterday was a long day. I worked late yesterday to give a tour to a group of cadets. However, I was ready to go home at lunchtime. I was having pain in my hip, and my tooth was bothering me quite a bit. I was also exhausted from staying up late the night before. I had planned to go into work at 9 am instead of at my usual time of 7:30, which I did but not because I slept late. I had wanted to sleep a little late. On the days I go into the museum, I usually get up at 6 am, so technically, I did sleep a bit later, but only until 6:30. When I woke and looked at the news and saw (expectedly) that no winner had been declared in the presidential race, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. It also didn’t help that it looked like Democrats would not take the Senate. If the South actually cared about integrity and being a decent person, then Republican Senate candidates in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky would have lost.
When I was in college, I came up with a theory that if you were taking an English class and you wrote about sex or religion in an essay, you were almost guaranteed a B on the essay. If you could discuss sex and religion in the same paper, you were pretty well guaranteed an A. After this election, it seems apparent that in the South, if you are homophobic or racist, you will win your election. If you are homophobic and racist, you will win by a landslide in the South. The wildcard appears to be that if you are a southern politician and a crooked asshole, you’ll also win.
The sheer fact that nearly 50 percent of American voters would rather have a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, lying, cheating, science-denying, criminal as president is alarming. It shows just how awful many people in America are. I believe that Trump did better than expected because Biden’s running mate is a woman of color. Racism in the United States is so inherent that it showed in the results of the 2020 election. The election of Barack Obama led to the racism in the South bubbling to the surface again. Southerners would mostly keep their bigotry to themselves and only talk about it around people they felt “safe” to make racist comments around. People, though, became more brazen about their racism during the Obama presidency. When Trump was elected, it gave voice to racists across the country. It encouraged and emboldened them to be “politically incorrect” and revel in their public displays of hatred.
Trump is a clear and present danger to our democracy — that through demagoguery, he has laid waste to all the aspirations (even if unfulfilled) that we as a country hold dear: e pluribus unum, the American creed, the equality of all people who call this country home. Trump, a selfish autocrat, has thumbed his nose at all of that. Worse, he has emboldened millions of Americans to follow suit. To believe that Americans ignited and exploited by Trump don’t regard their fellow Americans as enemies, that they don’t hate other Americans, and that, after the final results, we won’t end up mad at each other? That is imagining an America that doesn’t exist. Trump has encouraged Americans to offend each other. He has brought out the worst in us to satisfy his own twisted interests. The outcome of the 2020 election will not settle any of this. Trump’s character defects, his disgusting behavior beneath the dignity of the presidency, his contempt for honesty and ethical governance have been on display since he entered the White House in 2017. And millions of Americans love what they see. What should be viewed with alarm is pointed to with pride by his followers. Donald Trump was, is now, and forever will be — along with his disciples — a threat to the nation he does not deserve to lead.
The pandemic had already shown just how selfish and hateful many Americans are. They ignored the science that wearing masks helps protect those around you, and they complained about every effort to battle the pandemic. Americans who voted for Donald Trump cannot call themselves Christian, as they voted to repudiate everything Christ advocated. The racism, misogyny, homophobia, and lack of empathy in the United States is an embarrassment. It also won’t magically go away if Joe Biden wins the election. Those who voted for Trump will not renounce their support for Trump, nor will they suddenly become decent human beings. For the American character to change, it will take at least a generation if it ever happens.
I still believe that Joe Biden will do a lot to heal this country, but I know many people back in Alabama that will never support a Democrat. Even the miracle that was Doug Jones’ election to the Senate in 2017 was just an anomaly. There were just enough people who voted against a child molester for him to win, but everyone knew it would be short-lived. He would never win reelection as long as the Republican nominee was not a child molester. It was perfectly all right for Jones’ opponent to be a lazy, homophobic crook. I do not see the South changing anytime soon. Yes, there might be inroads in Atlanta, but Atlanta is not the entirety of the South.
I stayed nervous most of last night (which is when I am writing this). There are things I love about the South, but damn, I hate the politics down there. Alabama and Mississippi politics have always made me sick. As I am writing this, the AP had called Alabama for Trump, but that is no surprise. Just as it was no surprise that Biden won Vermont, and the experts called it just minutes after the polls closed. Even our Republican governor declared he voted for Biden. Governor Scott didn’t vote for president in 2016, but he said this election was too important not to vote, and he could not support Trump.
When I voted yesterday, it was pretty easy. If we had not voted early in Vermont, we had to take in the ballot mailed to us. Vermont mailed a ballot to every registered voter in the state in an effort to get people to vote early. I wanted to go in and vote on election day. There was no line when I entered the polling place, and I just took my ballot into the booth, filled it out, and put it in the machine. As I was leaving, there was a fairly long line out the door, so I guess I got there at the right time.
Enough about politics right now. There just aren’t enough numbers to either mourn the United States’ fate or to declare victory. However, I will talk about something else. One day last week, I broke a tooth. Actually, I broke two, but one isn’t bothering me. However, the more extensive break began to be very painful over the weekend. It almost became unbearable Monday night, so I called my dentist first thing yesterday morning. Luckily, they could get me in yesterday at 11 am. They took an x-ray, and my dentist said that the pain and the broken tooth were just coincidences. The pain was not coming from the damaged tooth but an infection around the tooth’s roots.
I had an appointment already for Monday the 9th for a filling. I had a cavity when I went for my cleaning a week or so ago. However, my dentist decided to start a root canal on Monday on the tooth that is infected. Filling the cavity will have to wait. He also put me on an antibiotic. I don’t know if I have ever mentioned this, but I am allergic to most antibiotics. He wanted to give me Amoxicillin, but I am allergic to Penicillin. So, he gave me Clindamycin. I can take Clindamycin, but I don’t react well to it. It gives me stomach issues. Anyway, I have seven days of this antibiotic. The last time I took Clindamycin for an abscessed tooth, it relieved the pain fairly quickly. I hope it works as well this time.
To update you on the bursitis in my hip, it is still bothering me, but I don’t see my physical therapist until next Tuesday. If it is not improved by the time I see my regular doctor on November 16, he will probably give me a steroid shot. On the headache front, I am continuing to do better. Yes, I occasionally have headaches, but the most recent ones are most likely due to the tooth infection, not my migraines. I am pleased to be seeing improvement with the Botox injections. My next set of injections will be in December.
So, there you have a rambling, babbling post of various updates.
Morning Update: I went to bed last night just before midnight, and I wasn’t feeling as hopeful as I’d have liked to have been. When I woke up this morning, I felt no better. What I woke to made me physically ill. I don’t usually say this, but I hate many of the people in my country. I don’t understand how this presidential race could even be close. This election should have been a massive, indisputable repudiation of Donald Trump for his mishandling of the pandemic, his uncontrolled White House incompetence, and his disdain for the rule of law. Instead, I woke to the disheartening message that Trump’s support in key states like Florida was, in truth, more significant than the polls had predicted and that Americans would rather have a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, lying, cheating, criminal as president than a good Christian man who wants what is best for all Americans, not just his wealthiest of supporters, because let’s face it, Trump cares absolutely nothing for the American people. He only cares about himself and possibly his wealthiest friends and supporters.
While there is still hope that Joe Biden will win this election, especially if he continues to lead in the states where he’s ahead, and the mail-in ballots continue to go in his favor (that is if those states are allowed to continue counting). However, even if Biden wins, it looks like the Democrats won’t take back the Senate, which means at least two more years of inaction in Washington as McConnell will block all Democratic efforts. The fact that Kentucky reelected a hateful little man whose only concern is his own political gain is disgusting. South Carolinians also sent back to the Senate that lying, self-hating, closet case Lindsey Graham. While those races aren’t terribly surprising, just demoralizing, I did break down in tears when they announced that Tommy Tuberville had won in Alabama. While Doug Jones’ losing his reelection bid was expected, I hate to see a man like Tuberville go to the Senate. He’s a man who, while the coach at Auburn University showed he had no class by gloating about his wins against Alabama in crass and embarrassing ways, he also defrauded millions from investors when he set up an investment firm (unlike his partner, Tuberville escaped prison). There is more I can say about Tuberville, but it just upsets me too much.
The most depressing news I woke up to was pretty much expected: Trump claimed victory even though millions of votes still need to be counted. In the early morning hours, Trump claimed falsely that he had been reelected, and the election was being stolen from him in a massive act of fraud. He vowed to mount a challenge in the Supreme Court and declared that he had already won states that were still counting votes, including Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Trump’s demand for vote counting to stop in an election that is still undecided may have been his most extreme and dangerous assault on the institutions of democracy yet in a presidency replete with them. Trump’s remarks essentially amounted to a demand for American citizens’ legally cast votes not to be recorded in a historic act of disenfranchisement. As Chris Wallace said on Fox News after Trump’s remarks, “This is an extremely flammable situation, and the president just threw a match into it. He hasn’t won these states.” However, Trump is afraid that the mail-in votes will not go his way, which all indications point to that being true.
It’s incredible how competitive Trump has been in this election with 230K+ COVID deaths, his racist and inflammatory remarks, kids being locked in cages, and everything else. Even if Biden wins, he will have to govern in a Trump country. This is who America is, and that makes me saddest of all. I honestly can’t understand how a nation that has always claimed to be Christian can vote consistently to maintain a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, xenophobic country. The worst traits of the United States are more apparent than they have been since the Civil Rights era. Whether Joe Biden ultimately wins the elections or not, the United States will continue to be a nation of hatred and division.
Let America Be America Again By Langston Hughes – 1902-1967
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean— Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home— For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay— Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME— Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose— The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America!
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
Frederic Edwin Church, Our Banner in the Sky, 1860
“Let America Be America Again” is a poem written in 1935 by American poet Langston Hughes. It was originally published in the July 1936 issue of Esquire Magazine. The poem was republished in the 1937 issue of Kansas Magazine. It was revised and included in a small collection of Langston Hughes poems entitled A New Song, published by the International Workers Order in 1938.
The poem speaks of the American dream that never existed for lower-class Americans and the freedom and equality that every immigrant hoped for but never received. In his poem, Hughes represents not only African Americans but also other economically disadvantaged and minority groups. Besides criticizing America’s inequalities, the poem conveys a sense of hope that the American Dream is soon to come. While Hughes does not address the LGBTQ+ as one of the minority groups, sexuality was likely on his mind when he wrote the poem. Some academics and biographers believe that Hughes was homosexual and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, as did Walt Whitman, who, Hughes said, influenced his poetry. Hughes’s story “Blessed Assurance” deals with a father’s anger over his son’s effeminacy and “queerness.” The biographer Robert Aldrich argues that to retain the respect and support of black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted. There has been some controversy, but most of it centers on whether Hughes was homosexual or asexual. Few believe that he was heterosexual or had any interest in women.
Hughes wrote “Let America Be America Again” while riding a train from New York to his mother’s home in Ohio. He was depressed because of recent reviews of his first Broadway play and his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis. Despite being a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, he struggled for acceptance as a poet, battling persistent racism, and barely making a living. Selling a poem or a story every few months, he referred to himself as a “literary sharecropper.” Fate, he said, “never intended for me to have a full pocket of anything but manuscripts.”
Hughes finished the poem in a night but did not regard it as one of his best. The poem would be revised numerous times. It did not appear in his early anthologies and was only revived in the 1990s, first in a public reading by Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, later as a title for museum shows. Following Donald Trump’s election, the poem started trending on social media. In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and others in police custody, the poem has found new urgency. Perhaps it was the word again that first drew people’s attention. Decades before Trump used the slogan “Make America Great Again” in his 2016 campaign, Hughes published this poem titled “Let America Be America Again.” Hughes’s first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” published in 1921, addressed the Black experience in America: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” In 1926, he published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues. Influenced by poets such as Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hughes embraced free verse. His collection included the poem “I, Too,” which opens “I, too, sing America,” and closes “I, too, am America.” The poems are a coda for Whitman’s poem “I hear America singing.”
“Let America Be America Again” begins “Let America be America again / Let it be the dream it used to be,” then continues, “Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed.” It’s a dream of freedom, equality, opportunity, and liberty—the ideals that form the bedrock of the nation. Yet a parenthetic voice adds, “(America never was America to me).” If you’ve read much of Hughes’s work, it is clear that the parenthetic voice is the victim of the long history of racial segregation and oppression. The poem anticipates this assumption, and a new voice asks, “Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? ” What follows is a list of everyday Americans: “the poor white,” “the Negro,” “the red man,” “the immigrant,” “the farmer,” “the worker.” All are carrying hope for a better future, and all have fallen victim to “the same old stupid plan / Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.” America is not America to any of them.
The poem laments the conditions of the Depression, with millions unemployed and on relief, and asks what happened to America, the purported “homeland of the free,” where so many have nothing left now “except the dream that’s almost dead today.” Almost dead, yet unvanquished.
For Hughes, the United States was an unrealized, perhaps unrealizable ideal. It was a land that “never has been yet— / And yet must be,” a dreamland unlike any other country. But the nation’s failure time and again to live up to its aspirations is a profound part of the story. Whatever its struggles, the United States has always identified itself by its dreams. Dreams inspired by abstractions like democracy, justice, and rights. Dreams animated by those seeking freedom and equality. Dreams stirred by those making a new home in America and pursuing a better life. Hughes believed in those dreams, and his poem ends not with despair but with an urgent plea:
We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
Hughes would continue to think about America, asking, “What happens to a dream deferred?” in a 1951 poem titled “Harlem.” Martin Luther King Jr. had also been contemplating dreams, long before his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. King and Hughes were friends: in 1956, King recited a Hughes poem, “Mother to Son,” from the pulpit. King publicly kept his distance because of the poet’s suspected Communist, just as King eventually distanced himself from his advisor and friend Bayard Rustin because of Rustin’s homosexuality. Even though publicly distanced from Hughes, King must have appreciated the closing of “Let America Be America Again,” where the people are summoned to redeem the land. In a sermon first delivered in 1954, he declared that “instead of making history, we are made by history.” The line is easily misunderstood. King was not offering an argument for why history matters; instead, he was decrying passivity and insisting on empowerment. It was a call to action. King was telling his congregation that the time for waiting on dreams was over—the time for making dreams come true had begun.
Today, we have the chance to put the United States back on track to letting “America be America again,” at least the dream of what America could become but has yet never been. We can elect Joe Biden and other Democrats to help heal the soul of this nation and try to fulfill the true American dream of democracy, justice, and rights. For too long, conservatives in the United States have held back the ideals of democracy that are found in the words of our Founding Fathers as laid out in the Preamble of the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Under Donald Trump, the idea of a perfect Union has been weakened as he has worked to divide this country along the lines of race, sexuality, health, age, and economic status. He has destroyed the domestic tranquility of the United States as his rhetoric and lack of action have led to protests over racial inequalities, women’s rights, and the health and safety of all Americans. He has worked with our enemies to weaken our status on the world stage and has distanced this country from our allies. He has failed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in a way that promotes the general welfare of this country. He has mocked science and medical professionals, those who wear masks, and those who promote social distancing to curb the spread of the virus, and he has hocked quack endorsed and crackpot cures for his own financial gain. He is destroying our posterity by allowing a failing economy, civil unrest, and a raging pandemic to fester. His ineptitude and inexperience with leadership will doom this country if he is reelected.
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” The opening line of Thomas Paine’s Revolutionary War pamphlet series, “The American Crisis,” resonates with Americans as much today as it did during the bleak winter of 1776. We, like our patriot ancestors, are locked in a struggle each side believes it must win to preserve the freedom and human dignity that are the natural rights of every American. Our souls are bowed under the pressure of the conflict, but each side remains resolute, even as we feel our nation’s bonds weaken under the strain. Everyone eagerly desires victory on Tuesday, and fear what might befall them if they are defeated. In his appendix to “Common Sense,” Thomas Paine wrote something that became one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite quotes: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Taken literally, the sentiment would end in bloodshed and revolution. But that’s not how Reagan read it; he viewed Paine’s idea as an expression of optimism about the American spirit. So long as Americans remained true to their political heritage (at least in rhetoric), the natural equality of each and every human being, Reagan believed every generation of Americans would always rise to meet their “rendezvous with destiny.” Sadly, Reagan did not rise to meet America’s destiny (he set us on this path to Trumpism), but I believe Joe Biden can and will.
We must elect Joe Biden and Democrats down the ticket to salvage the dreams of the United States. The Supreme Court has often been the force of social change and equality but is now in danger with a majority of conservative justices who care more about what their interpretation of the original intent of the Constitution is over the idea of a living Constitution that can better the American dream. Biden can help reverse that with reforms to the judiciary and possibly the addition of more justices to the Supreme Court. We need Democrats to take control and right the wrongs of the Republicans and the Trump administration. We need to bring dignity and legitimacy back to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. If you have not already voted, please vote today and vote for Democrats. Let this be a BLUE WAVE the likes of which this country has never before seen.
I wanted to make one more case against Donald Trump before tomorrow’s election. So, I did a Google search for “Trump’s Most Egregious Offenses.” The results were staggering. There was a complete list of the Trump Administration’s record on LGBTQ+ rights. The list came to 18 pages of text. McSweeney’s, a nonprofit publishing company based in San Francisco, is most notably known for its humor and championing of new writers and publishes novels, books of poetry, and other periodicals, but early in Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the misdeeds coming from the Trump Administration. As of October 30, 2020, their list which they call “Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes” consists of a 300-page pdf with 954 “atrocities.” The various collection of misdeeds seems to be never-ending, and they all vary in different approaches. This election year, amid a traumatic global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, it seems ever more critical to remember these horrors and to do all in our power to reverse them.
Instead of trying to list even a small section of the egregious atrocities of Donald Trump, I want to share vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris’s closing argument for why LGBTQ+ people should vote for Joe Biden. It’s a piece she wrote for LGBTQ Nation:
Senator Kamala Harris at the 2019 San Francisco Pride Parade Photo: Scot Tucker/SFBay.ca
More than 50 years ago, a group of LGBTQ+ people at the Stonewall Inn did what so many Americans have done throughout our history—they stood up for equality. It was a turning point in a movement that would continue to march, organize, and vote for the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.
And it’s because of those efforts, through the decades, that, in 2013, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier were united in California’s first same-sex marriage after Proposition 8 was struck down by the courts—a wedding I had the honor of officiating.
But today, after decades of progress, LGBTQ+ equality is once again under attack.
President Donald Trump, Vice President Pence, and Senate Republicans jammed through a Supreme Court nominee who poses a threat to LGBTQ+ equality—just weeks after two other justices suggested reconsidering the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that made marriage equality the law of the land.
The Trump administration banned transgender Americans willing to risk their lives for our country from serving in the military. They’ve rolled back protections put in place by the Obama-Biden administration against employment discrimination for LGBTQ+ workers. And they opened the door to allowing health care workers to refuse treatment to patients based on their gender identity.
At a time when our country is experiencing the worst public health crisis in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a reckoning on racial injustice, and a changing climate that’s battering our coastlines and setting the West on fire, it’s devastating that LGBTQ+ Americans must also worry about their human rights.
Here’s the good news: we can vote to put an end to the Trump-Pence era of discrimination and fear—and send the most pro-equality administration in history to the White House.
Joe Biden and I believe that every human being should be treated with dignity and respect and be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or who they love. We will reverse the attacks the Trump-Pence administration has made on the LGBTQ+ community. And we won’t stop there—we will advance equality through long-overdue changes.
Right now, half of all LGBTQ+ Americans live in states where their civil rights can be violated. They face discrimination in nearly every aspect of their lives, from housing to starting a family to obtaining a driver’s license with their correct gender on it.
Joe and I will make enacting the Equality Act a top legislative priority in our first 100 days in office. Passing this law will guarantee that LGBTQ+ Americans are protected under existing federal civil rights laws.
We’ll work to protect LGBTQ+ individuals from violence, prioritize the prosecution of hate crimes, and work to end the epidemic of assault against the transgender community, particularly transgender women of color. We’ll do everything in our power to make sure LGBTQ+ youth are safe from bullying, harassment, and sexual assault.
We’ll reverse President Trump’s discriminatory ban on transgender Americans serving in the military, and ensure that every American who is qualified to serve can do so regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. We’ll make sure transgender service members receive the health care they deserve. And we will work to ensure LGBTQ+ individuals have full access to all appropriate health care treatments and resources, including care related to transitioning, such as gender confirmation surgery.
You can trust that Joe will work to support the LGBTQ+ community every single day as president—because that’s what he’s done for years. He supported marriage equality well before most major politicians. He worked with President Obama to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” And he knows how much work there is left to do.
As the great civil rights lawyer Pauli Murray once said, “The lesson of American history [is] that human rights are indivisible.” They cannot be advanced for some and ignored for others.
Now is the time to build a country that embraces that truth—a country where every American is treated with dignity and respect, and where equality and justice truly are for all.
Joe
The Closet Professor 