The War Within

By Bonnie Tinker

The Portland Tribune (5/19/06 p. A7) says the gay community is a loser because Diane Linn was not re-elected as Multnomah County Chair. I don’t think so. It is true that one gay political group and the gay newspaper, Just Out, endorsed her and dismissed her opponent’s declared position that he also supports equal rights, including equal recognition of marriage. They made the case that the gay community owed Diane Linn our votes because she maneuvered the County into issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples in March of 2004.

Linn lost the election by about a 3-1 margin. I suppose the Portland Tribune could have accurately said that the organizations that endorsed her shared in her defeat. But that does not mean that the gay community was a loser in this election.

Communities are not defined by one prominent organization. They are not defined by one newspaper that claims to speak for an entire demographic. Communities are defined by individuals, families, businesses, schools, congregations, and service organizations that live in a mutually supportive environment.

Thirty years ago there may have been a gay community in Portland. But even then, the notion of one community was more fiction than fact. There were a number of overlapping communities that might have accepted the label gay: The gay liberation front, the gay democrats, the gay bar community, some parts of the various court systems in the metropolitan areas might have described themselves as gay. Gay usually meant gay man, although some bar dykes and women-loving women also used the term gay on occasion, but most discarded it on second thought. We were lesbians, dykes and “women-loving-women” when we named ourselves. We were gay in the closets and in shame; we were gay when we didn’t know how else to name ourselves to each other and we were gay when we came out to straight people. We were not much of a gay community.

There may still be some people who consider themselves as a part of the gay community in Portland — and if so, maybe they did lose the election for county chair. But regardless of the vote, most lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer people were on the winning side in this election.

Both candidates for Multnomah County Chair verbally endorsed equal rights, including marriage, for LGBT people. I don’t recall seeing anyone who prominently opposed marriage equality listed as endorsing either of the leading candidates. Ted Wheeler’s list of endorsers reads like a Who’s Who of people who have shaped and supported the movement for sexual orientation and gender identity freedom. A lot of people who voted to support marriage equality, including three county commissioners, voted to elect Ted Wheeler. But a majority of registered voters didn’t vote for either candidate; they either didn’t bother to vote or chose not vote for either of the leading candidates for chair. They were looking for more than an endorsement of gay rights from good woman with troubling lapses in judgment or a wealthy business man and recent Republican.

Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans (LGBT) people got to see the two leading contenders for county chair support equal rights because we are much more than a gay community. The three thousand plus same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses in Multnomah County in 2004 were not the recipients of charity from liberal government officials implementing a secretive strategy. They were part of a movement of LGBT families that has been building for years, and continues to grow even after the political and legal set backs that followed the dramatic gesture of issuing marriage licenses that were promptly invalidated by the courts and repudiated by the electorate. These families are not only part of an LGBT movement; they are part of a family freedom movement that crosses ideological, religious, cultural, and economic lines.

As a movement, we do not “owe” our votes to one politician anymore than we “owe” allegiance to one organization. People in a human rights movement do not determine their votes by one litmus test issue. The diversity necessary to sustain a movement guarantees an intersection of issues. Candidates are evaluated through an analysis of a number of important issues.

Our success as a movement does depend on the fortunes of one politician —or a collection of politicians. Politicians do not generally lead social justice movements. It is not their job. Elections do not create or sustain movements; they reflect changes that have grown cultural roots among the people. The success of the movement for equal family rights does not rise or fall on one issue, even the central issue of legal recognition of our marriages. We are not a movement for gay marriage, or for gay rights, but a part of a movement for family choice which is part of the bigger movement for human rights. We will succeed only by working together in our efforts to secure justice for all.

Bonnie Tinker is Executive Director of Love Makes A Family.