And The Winner Is . . .

By Keith Boykin, in politics
Monday, June 23 2003, 9:16AM

A year and a half before the presidential election, some people think they have it all figured out already. Despite the efforts to create a sense of invincibility around President Bush, the winner has not been predetermined. There's plenty of time to change the outcome. Who wins or loses depends on what we do right now to make a difference.

Last month, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released a study that rated the nine major Democratic presidential candidates on gay issues. The study looked at the candidates' positions on 11 issue areas, including sexual orientation nondiscrimination laws, civil unions, same-sex marriage, gays in the military, and gay-positive education policies.

According to the study, "The most supportive candidate is former Senator and ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, who has taken supportive positions in all eleven issue areas." Despite Moseley Braun's full-fledged support for the GLBT community, gay and lesbian voters are not exactly rushing to support her. I wonder why.

A few months ago, some vocal figures in the GLBT community argued that war is not a gay issue. At the time, they said that gays and lesbians should focus only on "our own issues" and not be distracted by non-gay issues. If that principle still holds true, then why aren't gays and lesbians now supporting Carol Moseley Braun? After all, she is clearly the best candidate on "our issues."

Carol Moseley Braun supports the Employment Non Discrimination Act. She supports same-sex marriage and civil unions. She supports gays in the military. She supports increased AIDS funding. And she supports the repeal of state sodomy laws. On every question that NGLTF put to her, she got it right. What else does a girl have to do to win a gay vote?

Non-Gay Issues

Suddenly it seems gay and lesbian voters remember that we do care about non-gay issues. We care about the sinking economy. We care about the cost of perpetual warfare. We care about spending $60 billion on regime change in Iraq when 40 million Americans don't have health insurance at home. But Moseley Braun is on the right side of those issues too.

Turns out we care about something else in politics. We care about winning. Carol Moseley Braun, for all her virtues, has already been written off by the media and the pundits. Nobody thinks she can win. And it doesn't help that she's black and female either.

I'm not even sure I would vote for her. But unlike some gay activists, I never said that GLBT people should only focus on gay issues. That was always a lie. We never have and never will.

Politics and policy are not created in a GLBT vacuum. Instead, we consider a range of gay and non-gay issues in deciding whom to support. No candidate, not even Carol Moseley Braun, will please all of us on every issue. As individual voters, we have to decide which issues are most important to us.

Personally, I like former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who NGLTF says has taken positive positions on every issue they rated except for same-sex marriage. I'm willing to give him a pass on same-sex marriage because he's the only person in the country who has signed a law granting civil unions to everyone in his state.

I also like Florida Senator Bob Graham, who NGLTF describes as the "least supportive" of the candidates on gay issues. I like him because he's an established Southerner who has had the courage to stand up to President Bush on the Iraq war. In contrast, NGLTF says "Senator Joseph Lieberman's support for gay rights laws dates back a quarter century," but I refuse to support Lieberman because of his opposition to affirmative action and his strong support for President Bush in the war on Iraq.

Get Involved Now

We all make choices. But some choices are more real than others. In the 2000 election, the Green Party forced liberal Democrats to choose between possibly winning the election with Gore or standing by principle with Ralph Nader. Maybe we learned the wrong lesson from that election.

Winning elections and standing by our principles don't have to be inconsistent goals. We can and must do both. The problem is that most of us wait too long to get involved in the political process and then complain about the lack of choices. By the time we cast our ballots at the polls, the field of candidates has already been narrowed by the people with money and the people in the media. That's why we need to get involved now. First we have to find candidates that we can support and then we have to give them the tools they need to win.

The media pundits want us to believe that a liberal candidate can't beat George W. Bush. Don't listen to them. The same so-called experts said the first George Bush was invincible after the 1991 Gulf War, and that the second George Bush was too dumb to be elected in 2000.

The public doesn't even agree with Bush on most major issues. But what the people want is leadership, not "me-too" political calculations.

No matter what the pundits want you to believe, the race is not over before it begins. If you believe in a good candidate, volunteer your time, join the campaign staff and contribute your money to the cause. You can make a difference.

As the anthropologist Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."