Proudly Out: Identity Politics for Democrats

When I was young and perhaps a little naïve, I thought then when someone said they were a Democrat it meant they were pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-worker, pro-access to health care . . . you know for all the things that meant being socially progressive.

Over the years I’ve learned that there’s an exception to every political rule. Clearly, not all Democrats are pro-choice.

For instance, there’s Bob Casey, the much lauded Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania. He has a 65 percent rating on pro-choice issues from NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action League. In 2007, he supported an amendment to the reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that would have codified the Bush administration’s “unborn child” regulation. If put into law, the regulation would have allowed states to make an embryo or a fetus, but not the pregnant mother, eligible for health care. The bill was just another attempt to erode the legal framework for abortion rights by recognizing an embryo, from the moment of conception, as a separate beneficiary of government programs. The amendment failed by one vote.

All we needed was one more renegade Dem and a mass of cells would have more access to health care than the pregnant woman carrying those cells in her womb.

There’s no doubt about it. The Democratic Party has moved more to the center. It had to in order to win. But despite the likes of Bob Casey, on the national level, today when we think of Democrats, we can feel safe that there are pro-choice Democrats in the White House and in control of both houses of Congress.

But our gains are sometimes also our losses. Here in New York State, we’ve been waiting decades for the Democrats to take control of the State Senate. For what has seemed like an eternity (actually only 43 years), the Republicans have had a stranglehold on the Senate in the Empire State.

When other states were passing gay rights legislation, New York lagged behind because the GOP owed its majority to the cross endorsements it received from the state’s Conservative Party. At the height of their power, the Conservative lets the GOP know that pro-gay rights legislation passing would mean losing those endorsements. So, for years, New York’s gay community wandered in the desert of discrimination.

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In 2008, the political seas parted and the Democrats gained control of the State Senate—but only by the slimmest of margins. And now what do we see happening on the side of the aisle that needed all the political money and volunteers it could get from the LGBT community in order to win?

We’ve elected at least one, if not more, anti-gay Democrats. And, because of the slim margin, in order for the Democrats to really control the chamber power sharing deals had to be struck with Democratic renegades who have come to be called the Gang of Three—Senator-elect Pedro Espada, Jr. from the Bronx and sitting Senators Carl Kruger from Brooklyn and Ruben Diaz, Sr. also from the Bronx.

Whatever power sharing deals Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, the man who wants to be Majority Leader, makes with the Gang of 3 so that he can get the power he wants is up to him. But, what can’t be put up for bid is the vote for marriage equality in the state of NY.

If you take the Albany rumor mill at its word, our right to marry has all been sold down the Hudson in order for Smith to maintain his powerbase. It seems one of the concessions he had to make to Ruben Diaz, who is also a Pentecostal minister and no friend to the LGBT community, is that the Governor’s Marriage Equality bill which has already overwhelmingly passed the Assembly will not come up for a Senate vote until 2010.

Now, it might seem that it wouldn’t be a big deal to wait two years. But it is. 2010 is an election year. What elected officials in tight races with their hearts in the right places might vote for or against in an election year is a bit different that what they would vote for in an off year. Diaz knows that forcing some of the marginal Democrats to vote on the bill in 2010 may just sway their vote to the no column.

If it’s all about power for the Gang of 3—they should just change their party affiliation to Republican. Oh but if they did that, they’d never get elected in their districts. I guess for them, there’s just something about being called a Democrat even if they don’t necessarily believe in what it means to be one.