We have been
warned about the pitfalls of daring to dream. We have been
conditioned by the pragmatism of politics -- the guideposts
of electability narrowing our course till our hopes
fit neatly into mainstream boundaries.
We have been
building our castles in the air not because, as Henry David
Thoreau said, "that is where they should be,"
but because that's the only place they
can be, according to Democratic politicians and
strategists.
But just maybe,
if we believe, the landscape can change.
No, this is not
an excerpt from Barack Obama's stump speech. This is
a rendering of what might have been -- a third-party
candidate from New York with $1 billion at the ready
to drop on a general election and who is, indeed, pro same-sex marriage.
What if a certain
mayor had risen up and provided more hope for gay
Americans than the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she
might be? What if the candidate -- who didn't
need our money -- had also been the candidate who
turned out to be the most progressive on our issues? What
if that candidate had inspired the imagination of the LGBT
community and, just by virtue of being pro-marriage,
challenged mainstream notions that same-sex unions
pose a threat to society?
Imagine
if during a three-way general election debate, a
questioner asked Candidate X why he supports same-sex
marriage and he straightforwardly answered,
"Because I believe that all tax-paying
Americans should have the same rights." What would
the Democratic nominee say then when asked why he or
she doesn't back marriage equality? Would they
dare answer, "Because America isn't ready for
it?"
Imagine the
press conference where the Democratic nominee faced the
question "Are you worried that Candidate X will peel
away your base of gay votes, even as he provides a
home for social moderates and fiscal
conservatives?"
What if that
self-financed candidate had run for president and never
backed away from his marriage equality pronouncements, and
the exit polls revealed that the only voters who
abandoned him based solely on his marriage stance were
the 25% bloc of conservative evangelicals who always
vote Republican anyway?
The LGBT
community is still waiting for a leader to do for gays and
lesbians what President John F. Kennedy did for
African-Americans in 1963 when he framed the inequity
they experienced as "a moral issue" that the
country must rectify.
Pew polls over
the last few years consistently show that around 55% of
Americans favor allowing same-sex couples to enter into some
form of legal agreement that grants them rights
similar to marriage.
And as David
Eisenbach, author of Gay Power: An American
Revolution, noted recently, that support exists without
virtually any national politicians taking a strong stand on
the subject. "What if there was actually
leadership and it was explained from respected leaders
within the Democratic Party to the American public that
denying marriage equality was denying legal equality, and
keeping an entire class of citizens in second-class
citizenship?" mused Eisenbach. "What if
Obama were doing that, or Clinton? People would begin to
look at anybody who opposed gay marriage as somebody
who was prejudiced. To their credit, the American
people are -- the vast majority --against prejudice.
Somebody just has to tell them that being anti-gay marriage
is prejudiced."
Admittedly, no
one fantasizes that Michael Bloomberg (aka Candidate X) --
who in a New York Timesop-ed today quashed any remaining hopes that he
might still enter the race -- would have trumpeted his
stance for legalizing same-sex marriage during this
hypothetical bid. But he would have moved the goal
post considerably just by running
and demonstrating a down side to Democrats who won't
go all the way on marriage.
This candidate
wouldn't have had to push the issue; he simply had to
be. That would have been enough.