Four years have passed since Kate Kendell heard the champagne corks popping off the walls during the Barack Obama victory celebration at the Westin St. Francis. She remembers with pristine clarity the muffled whoops and cheers as one state after another tipped into the D column, the roars as John McCain conceded, and the way the whole country seemed to choke up at the same moment as the first African American president-elect took the stage in Chicago. But what Kendell recalls most about that evening is the bitterness of what came next: the searing confirmation that polls predicting the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in California, had been dismally accurate.
In one of the bluest states in the country, neighbors had sided against neighbors, coworkers against coworkers, relatives against relatives. To Kendell —executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, resident of the Excelsior, spouse of Sandy Holmes, mom of two —the vote against marriage equality was a “punch in the gut,” a rejection of everything she’d been working toward for 25 years. Not even the election of the man she ardently believed would be “the most fierce and inspiring president in my lifetime” could soften the blow.
Heading into this November’s election, with same-sex-marriage referendums on four state ballots and the Supreme Court likely to hear at least one case on the issue this term, you’d think that Kendell would again be readying herself for heartbreak. And she might be, if it weren’t for an extraordinary turn of events. Since 2009, her movement has been on a remarkable run, with so many notches on its victory belt that activists like Kendell hardly even dwell on the defeats (and, on a state-by-state level, there have been some significant ones).
A highlight reel of LGBT wins includes passage of the federal Matthew Shepard hate-crimes law and the legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., and, sweetest of all, New York. There have been new rules extending all sorts of benefits —housing, hospital visitation, medical leave, and more —to the families of LGBT federal employees; the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”; the Justice Department’s decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court; and, finally, the icing on the wedding cake: Obama’s public endorsement of same-sex marriage. (Never mind that it took a Joe Biden gaffe to get him there.)
Ask gay rights leaders, and chances are you’ll hear a degree of shock in their appraisals of this disconcertingly fruitful period. “I’ve been doing this work for 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like what we’ve seen in the last four years,” says Cleve Jones, the civil rights and AIDS activist. “There’ve been several moments in the last few weeks when I had to pinch myself to be sure that this is really happening and I am alive to see it.”
Back in 2008, that’s exactly how progressives concerned with other issues in the Democratic platform —immigration, green jobs, climate change, healthcare, financial reform —dreamed that they’d be feeling now, too. Instead, many of them see a political landscape littered with rose-colored glasses, Shepard Fairey posters flapping forlornly in the wind. What has Obama given them but half-victories, missed opportunities, thwarted agendas, and capitulation? Not even Obama-Biden’s ability to hold their own against Romney-Ryan and Koch-Rove has lifted the mood of the liberal left. Sure, Obama still might win; yes, the GOP incursion on the Senate seems likely to fall short. No doubt Democrats will even claw back some of the House seats that they lost in 2010. But hope? Change? Don’t be so naïve.
But is it really naïve to think that the next four years might be different from the last? The astonishing accomplishments of the LGBT movement in the post–Prop. 8 era suggest that maybe, just maybe, cautious optimism among the liberal left is justified. After all, it isn’t just gay rights advocates who’ve figured out how to motivate the president, overcome lawmakers’ timidity, and blunt the worst attacks of the right. Activists toiling on a range of issues, including immigrant and voter rights, have made surprising progress, informed and inspired by the strategies of the LGBT vanguard. Instead of wallowing in who’s-to-blames and what-might-have-beens, rather than rehashing the lost promise of single payer or the failure to close Guantanamo, a growing number of progressives are studying the LGBT playbook as if their future—and the country’s—depended on it.
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