Oct 27, 2006  |  By: JULIE ENSZNE  | COMMENTS     

WHEN DID WE START PUTTING PEOPLE up for votes? The practice predates the popularity of reality TV. Before we could vote for or against Taylor Hicks or “America’s Next Top Model,” we could go to polling places in November every two years and vote for or against gay people.
 
Votes have been overwhelmingly against. In 2004, all 11 ballot initiatives on gay marriage passed. Time and again, the American electorate votes against gay marriage. Are they voting against gay people? Are the American people looking for a way to vote us off the island?
 
On one hand, elections are about popularity. They are about voting for or against people. The people we are voting for or against, however, are politicians — people who have chosen to put themselves up for a vote.
 
Politicians have said we can vote for them. We can vote on their positions on issues or on whether or not we liked how they looked and talked with us at the local barbecue. We can vote on whether or not we like them as people, whether we like what they wear, what they say, how they look. Or we can vote against them.
 
Politicians and would-be politicians, however, are different from you and me as regular folks. We aren’t running for election. Our lives aren’t about public approval or disapproval. Our lives are ours to live as we determine.   
 
OUR COUNTRY ISN’T “SURVIVOR” OR A modeling competition. We are a democracy. Voting is a tool for determining our representative government. When that tool is used to vote for or against groups of people, we poison our government and our way of life.
 
When as a community we fail to label how our government and our system of democracy is being corrupted by ballot initiatives, which embolden others to vote on our lives, we fail to speak on behalf of our democracy.
 
So instead of figuring out how to beat anti-gay ballot initiatives, I think we should be figuring out how to eliminate all ballot initiatives.
 
I lived in Virginia for three years. I’m glad I don’t live there any more. This November, voters will be casting ballots on a marriage amendment, which, if passed, codifies in the state constitution — one of the oldest in the nation — that marriage will exist and be recognized only between a man and a woman. This week, the Washington Post reports that 53 percent of likely voters support the amendment.
 

 
FOR ME, THERE IS NO WAY TO separate Virginia’s anti-gay marriage amendment or any anti-gay ballot initiative from my life, from my relationship and even from my body. I know if I were living in Virginia today, I would wonder which of my neighbors are going to vote for me and which against.
 
I could tell myself there is a difference between me and my life and the ballot initiative, but I wouldn’t believe it. Depersonalizing the issue is exactly what the right wing wants us to do. It plays into their paradigm of loving the sinner but not the sin.
 
What we need is a paradigm shift away from the individual to the community; an end to the notion of the sinner and the sin and a dialogue about community, government and the rights and responsibilities of individuals.
 
We need to speak about our rights and responsibilities as gay people and about what we envision for our community and our government. We need straight allies to speak as well.
 
We can’t have this important dialogue about our lives and the role of our communities and our governments when some people are trying to vote us off of the island. We need to remind people politely, earnestly and, if necessary, vociferously, that this isn’t a television show. Our lives are not subject to a vote.