With Barack Obama
making Virginia look like it might just go blue in
2008, things are slowly improving for the LGBT community
throughout the state. But with the state still not
recognizing civil unions or domestic partnerships --
nevermind marriage -- Equality Virginia's Molly
McClintock recognizes they still have a long way to go.
When Molly
McClintock left for a trip out of the country just a few
weeks before Election Day, she left hoping that her
home state, Virginia, would climb a “pretty
high mountain” and vote Obama. Now, with one of her
state’s high profile residents, General Colin Powell
(Ret.), endorsing the man who embodies hope,
McClintock’s wish may just come true.
But wishes are
just that and there are still more than two dozen days
left until Virginians go into the voting booth and make
their choice.
“Obama’s campaign is giving Virginia the best
chance to turn blue,” said McClintock, who
lives in Christiansburg in the Blue Ridge Mountains and
who sits on the Equality Virginia Board of Directors.
“There are Obama offices everywhere. Mark
Warner [the former Democratic governor of the state]
is going to run away with the election for U.S. Senate.
Things are lining up in Obama’s favor but
it’s still going to be a challenge.”
Despite the name
of her town and the fact that she’s nestled in a
traditionally conservative mountain range, McClintock lives
in “a spot of blue in a sea of red.”
Christiansburg is 30 miles south of Roanoke but more
importantly is right next door to Blacksburg, the home of
Virginia Tech. Together, the town and the college
“gives us a nice, liberal progressive
community.”
In fact, so nice
and progressive that the area has re-elected Rick
Boucher, her Democratic Congressman, thirteen times. This
year he is running unopposed. But McClintock knows
that just because she and her partner, Irene Paterson,
live in a community where her “sexuality and our
lives have never been a problem,” living in Virginia
is far from a LGBT-friendly experience.
“Just by
being lesbian or gay in Virginia you’re making a
political statement,” she explained. But
McClintock also understands, perhaps more than most of
the LGBT community in Virginia, that just
“being” is just not enough in a state
that revels in its homophobia.
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Libby Post is the
Political Editor for GayWired.com