Now, let’s get one thing straight – I am NOT OLD. I’m only 47. That’s NOT old.
But kids, there’s clearly some things you don’t understand.
Waaaaaaaaaaaay back in the early 90’s, there was Bill and Hillary Clinton. And these folks was liberal. Radically, radically, liberal. And they did something that nearly gave poor Pat Robertson a complete heart attack. They advocated that ……get this……
……………….that gay people were NOT HORRIBLY EVIL MONSTERS.
Look, folks, you just don’t get it. There was no Ellen, or Rosie, or Neil Patrick Harris, or George Takei. I mean they were alive, but no one knew they were gay. Most of the openly gay people were dead.
I’m older than my friend @thewitchway. Every word she says is truth. I’m thrilled that the young generation has forgotten these things, that they live in a world where celebs have always had the choice of coming out. Where it wasn’t a death knell to their careers as well as a jail sentence. But when you wonder why Hillary has the voting record she does, when you wonder why she’s “wishy washy” and “flip flopping”, you have to remember, she grew up in the times we did. When LGBT people were at best pitied and at worst hunted.
When I grew up, it wasn’t uncommon for a child who dared to mention that they might be LGBT have done what happened to me. I was institutionalized at 12 and given ECT, commonly known as shock therapy. All to cure me of my being a ‘deviant’. See, I’d read about Stonewall and other things in the papers and that made me too bold. So I let them think the treatment worked. Until trying to pretend that I wasn’t what I was made me try to kill myself at 14 and then came out again at 15, this time to being kicked out of the house. Being homeless and ‘relying on the kindness of strangers’ (and yes, that does mean what you think it means), was an improvement over shock therapy at least.
I’m old. But I’m not as old as Bill and Hillary. Or many other now-LGBT supportive liberals. They changed their minds. They learned and they grew and yes, they flip-flopped. Thank god! She went from, gee maybe LGBT people are just people and shouldn’t be persecuted and hurt, all the way to full and equal rights and I 100% support LGBT people. Fan-fucking-tastic! People can grow. People can change. New data, new experiences create new opinions. That’s the way the world’s supposed to work for most people.
Not like it did for old fossils like Thurmond and his cronies with the “southern strategy”. Not like it does for the current “small government” “drown it in a bathtub” neo-conservatives like Reagan and the now-mainstream Republican & Libertarian parties. Not like it does for the cackling cartoonishly-evil capitalists like GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Trump. These people glomp onto an idea and hold it in their teeth like a bulldog. They learn nothing that doesn’t already fit into their predetermined world-view. They are not people who change or admit their mistakes. Someone who can’t admit a mistake isn’t someone who I want their finger on the damn red button.
Hillary is the scariest thing in the world to your right-wing bubba-luvin’ redneck redstate voter out there: she’s a feminist, f*g-lovin, n-word-lovin’ liberal flip-flopper. She changes her mind when a better idea comes along. She can be persuaded with data and facts and a changing world. That’s scary to people who think that maybe pop-tops on their beer cans instead of pull tabs is taking the environmental revolution a bit too far.
When people tell you that “Oh no! Hillary supported DADT and DOMA”, you should say, yes she did. Those were revolutionary ideas of the day. And she was right there supporting them. And now, with the new times, new data, and new political environment, she supports full rights for all LGBT people. In less than 20 years the political environment has changed THAT MUCH! Isn’t it amazing! I’m with her! I want a President who changes with the times. Who views the constitution as a living document. Who isn’t afraid of looking ‘wishy-washy’ and so sticks to outdated opinions so as not to appear changeable.
I want Hillary because a Smart Woman with the political clout and practicality to get things done is the best choice we’ve been offered in a long time. It’s time for her to be not just the lesser of two evils, but the enthusiastic choice of the liberal electorate.
At least 90% of the ‘bad things’ you hear about Hillary can be traced right back to the Republican smear machine that has been attacking her since her husband ran for office. Do you remember the whole “baking cookies” thing and the “stand by her man” thing and the “pantsuit” thing? I do. She was lambasted for EVERYTHING she did or said or wore. She didn’t stand a chance. Except she was strong and sure and stuck it out through horrible smear campaign after worse smear campaign, even when they’d attack her daughter. This is a woman that Putin won’t be pulling the strings on. Can you say that about Trump? Are we ready to turn our government over to the Russian mobsters who have bled their own country dry?
For gods sake, please do the research. Don’t just believe the right-wing smear campaigns. Is Hillary perfect? No. Was Bernie? Honestly? No. At the end of his campaign, things were starting to peek out from him that were less than savory. No politician is going to be ideologically pure and stand up to micro-scrutiny. They’re human beings. Again, thank god. I don’t want our country run by anyone who can’t change. Who isn’t human. Who hasn’t made mistakes (and learned from them.)
Remember that “therapy” I had when I was 12? Trump and his supporters think it’s an okay thing to do. Still. In this day and age year of our lord 2k16. ECT is making a comeback as an “effective” therapy for mental illnesses. It’s no stretch for these soulless people to do it to “cure” their LGBT children. The Republican platform supports “conversion” therapy. Remember that your deciding to stay home on election day is what will have some LGBT child medically tortured because their parents disapproved of their “lifestyle”.
Please read what my friend has written. Read what I’ve written in this post and in so many others. If you are really looking to improve the rights of humanity, voting for Trump, voting third party, or abstaining isn’t the way to go about it.
Register while you still have time. Look into absentee voting. Make a commitment to vote if you are at all able. There are organizations and community centers and churches who will help you. Please. This is your future. My children’s future. I’m gonna be dead and gone before the ramifications of a Trump Supreme Court are felt. But you won’t be.
Vote. Campaign if you can. Donate if you can. But at the very least, VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO. The lives of those less fortunate than you depend on it. The lives of those who are considered ‘less human’ than you depend on it.
I am reporting this because THIS IS SO FUCKING IMPORTANT!!!! (Yes, I just said “fuck”, which I don’t do terribly often, but this is THAT important.)
I am 33. I was a child during the Clinton presidency, a highly intelligent and precocious child (I watched the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union with a rapt attention that most young children don’t possess.), sure, but still a child. What everyone above me has said is true, about the attitudes, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, all of it.
I also grew up in a small Southern town, and still live within an hour of where I grew up. You can’t spit without hitting a church or a Dollar General. My parents, unusually, were not particularly religious (though I nearly got sucked into fundamentalist Christianity as a teenager, but my upbringing to question everything won out in the end), but there is still a subtle homophobia in some circles.
If you are under 30, you have little idea how MUCH people (Including, but not limited to, the Clintons) have evolved in their views, and are willing (myself included!) to admit that their views have changed beyond anything they thought possible. If you are under 20, you have no idea how much things have changed, and God, if you are under 15 (and I, due to the nature of my job, work with some pretty frickin’ amazing teenagers), I don’t know how to begin to explain how much has changed.
No matter how little you think it affects you, no matter how little of a difference you think it makes to you personally VOTE, and for the love of your deity of choice, vote Democrat. It’s too important not to.
Seriously, guys.
Y’all know me. Auntie Z. Angry queer mental patient.
I was the first out bisexual girl in my entire school of ~2000 kids way back in 1998. I’ve had to learn a lot of queer theory myself in the past decade, because I was ten years old when William Jefferson “Bubba” Clinton came into office.
I’m 90% sure the only reason nobody cared about my queerness was because I had an established boyfriend and we were both firmly entrenched in the actually existing nerd subculture at our school, and I had the bullying scars to prove it.
I’m statistically tall and was not nearly as pudgy, and three years earlier everyone remembered me getting in zero trouble for throwing an entire desk halfway across the room, because I’m a She-Hulk who has always been angry. Between that and the radical pushes made by the Clintons, I came out because I felt like I had nothing to lose-
Except the opportunity to serve my country in the military, like three generations of my family. Or teach school. Or join the FBI. Any kind of civil service, basically. I knew I couldn’t live a lie, though, and things were starting to come around.
By the time Clinton’s presidency was ending in 2000, I was all lined up to go to school and study public relations. I’m a writer, you’ve all seen me. I was going to start off in corporate and help things advance until I could write policy, because I had hope that things would push forward and I could eventually serve my country, like my elders on both sides.
Then the fucking vote got split, Bush II became president, and my hope was utterly destroyed for nearly a decade.
Don’t you stay home. Don’t you sit out. Come with me and let’s dance with the ones that brung us, or resign yourselves to being pushed backwards and losing sixteen interrupted years of progress.
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