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I promise you not a moment will be lost as long as I have heart & voice to speak & we will walk again together with a thousand others & a thousand more & on & on until there is no one among us who does not know the truth: there is no future without love.
~storypeople

Today we simultaneously celebrate victory and mourn defeat. Around the country queer and queer-allied communities cheered as votes were tallied and the US elected a man who once gave this quote:

“Too often, the issue of GLBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. I look forward to working with HRC to end discrimination against GLBT Americans and to ensure that all of our citizens are treated with dignity and respect.”

But while we were lifted by our inclusion in Obama’s acceptance speech and by the potential for change created by a LGBTQ friendly White House, here in Arizona (and in California, Arkansas and Florida) we watched as propositions that sought to limit or remove our rights, status, and equality were ahead from the beginning and remained that way through the night.

How do you process so much joy and so much disappointment at the same time?

I can tell you how I’m going to do it. I’m working today, working hard, on transforming all those emotions – conflicting, heightened, and very real – into hope. A powerful, mind-blowing, consciousness-changing kind of HOPE. We’ve got to move now, before apathy and defeat set into the community. Now, while people are still buoyed by the tides of change that are set to sweep this country. Now, while the emotions are still fresh in our hearts.

Harvey Milk said:

“…know that there’s hope for a better world, there’s hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s…without hope the us’s give up. I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living….you, and you, and you; you’ve gotta give them hope.”

For the past few days I have talked and listened and read and watched as the LGBTQ community across the country express – sometimes utterly unexpected – feelings of sorrow and grief and rage and betrayal at the losses we experienced on Tuesday. There is no doubt; we are feeling this at our very core. There were four states where our equality was on the line, and we lost in every single one. There is no way to avoid the repercussions of those losses. I know that personally I feel very different now than I did prior to election day, the knowledge that the majority of the citizens of this state consider me less than, not worthy of equal rights is a bitter pill to swallow. But it’s dangerous to wallow in those feelings, because they can so quickly turn to hopelessness – and that is the one thing we cannot afford.

Civil rights battles are not won quickly, or easily – they are won over time and with great effort and sacrifice. They are won with a million tiny, infinitesimal shifts far more often than they are won with great seismic changes. The ultimate success of a movement such as this does not hinge on one election, or one act of discrimination, or a single protest. Just as the battle for racial equality did not begin or end with Rosa Parks, the Gay Rights movement that began with Stonewall does not end with Tuesday’s election results. We don’t slink off in defeat now, with our tails between our legs, letting the Christian-right dance with glee on the 18,000+ marriage certificates of same-sex couples in California.

Not a chance.

As Matt Coles, ACLU Director of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project says:

“If you run up an unbroken string of victories in any battle for civil rights, that simply means you waited too long to get to work. Change that matters is never smooth or easy.”

The writing IS on the wall. This IS going to happen. Our community IS going to succeed. But it’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to happen if we don’t lay ourselves on the line and work with everything we have to achieve it. True, we don’t have a Harvey Milk figurehead to rally around, there’s no one person to pin our dreams to – the way the nation did with Obama during this campaign. But this only means we have to take it that much further. We have to rally around each other, we have to create that movement, that wave, that sea change that we so desperately need.

As President Elect Obama himself said – in his masterful speech last March:

“What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part–through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk–to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.”

Make no mistake, the gap that Obama spoke of, between the promise of our ideals and the reality of our time widened this week. There is not point in glossing over the truth – we took a huge step backward in the path to equality, and our hearts and spirits took a beating along the way. But because we were pushed backwards, it is more important than ever to be sure that we are not knocked off the track, that we keep pushing forward, that queer and queer-allied people across the nation stand up, dust off, link arms and keep on walking, and writing, and talking and demanding change.

As Milk famously said ‘Hope is never silent”.

So let’s get loud folks. Let’s get real hopeful and real loud. Our futures depend on it.

Visit Me: awakenings: navigating the spaces between in and out

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