Arctic Light

This viral Bluesky post sums up a lot of people's thought process yesterday, I expect. I've landed on .... strangely positive?!

( a little more )

... found via rydra_wong (I think; they've been in my tabs for a day or two).

Google spreadsheet of phonebank/textbank volunteer opportunities.

Panic decision matrix for the most useful places to donate in the closing days of the campaign.

Oh, this looks fun: fixedthatforyou_fest - Prompt submission post. An old-style multifandom prompt fest, for any canons you want a fixit for. Open for prompts 'til Oct. 5.

(Oh hey, I just had an idea. I am going to post a prompt thing of my own in a minute here.)

Of the various places that one can spite-donate, this is one I donated to yesterday: Get Mitch. They split your donation between competitive Senate races in an attempt to flip the Senate and knock Evil Turtle Mitch McConnell out of power. (Apparently the Democrats set an all-time donation record in the last 24 hours. Which is good news! But it doesn't mean anything whatsoever is won or done - you KNOW this is going to galvanize the Republicans too.)

Well, today sure has been a day that happened.

Politics talk under the cut - long.

( Cut for politics )

(First of all, I want the American portion of my flist to know that I love you no matter who you voted for, because I know that you had strong and legitimate reasons for your vote, and what you do in the voting booth is your business and yours alone. Of the circle of people that I most dearly love in RL, including the one I'm married to, nearly all of them voted for Romney or Johnson. So. Politics. It's a thing. But not the most important thing. *hugs*)

Having said that ... now you get the truly political part of this post. *g* I know it's long, but I'm not going to cut it because I can't figure out where to cut. It's all important and very personal to me.

Fourteen years ago, my state, Alaska, passed by a 70-30 margin a constitutional measure (still on the books) that bans same-sex marriage. I was a shiny, freshly minted voter, just a few years into my life as a voting adult, still excited about exercising my shiny new voting right. And I exercised my shiny new voting right by voting against that ballot measure. On the morning after the elections, I woke to discover that it had passed by a landslide, went to work, found my coworkers were cheering its passage, and locked myself in the bathroom and cried.

In retrospect I don't even know why I felt so strongly about it at that time. I'd had an incredibly sheltered upbringing and lived in a smallish, very conservative town. I'd never met anyone in my life that I knew was gay, except for my RA in my dorm ("resident assistant"; that's sort of a dorm mother/community liaison), and she was a nice lady but not someone I knew well enough to change my mind about anything. All I knew, deep down to the core of me, was that this was wrong. It wasn't right that I had rights that someone else didn't. It wasn't right for my state to enshrine it in our constitution, which is supposed to be for preserving rights, not tucking them out of other people's reach. I didn't even know anyone who would be affected by it, but your heart knows right and wrong, and I could feel the wrong, wrong, wrong with every beat of my heart.

So. In the fourteen years since then, I've traveled on two continents, made a lot of new friends through fandom and work, and gotten to know a much greater variety of people than the ones I grew up around (who I still love dearly and respect very much, but now realize are not the whole of the world). I've also come to realize that I'm probably at least somewhat bisexual myself (though it's hard to know for sure, since I've only ever been with one person in my life, and hope to be with him 'til one of us dies). My opinion is a lot better informed now, but in this area, it hasn't changed a bit -- especially since now I have faces to put to my opinions: people I care about, smart and sweet fannish friends who have had to jump through pointless hoops put in place by their states and their countries for a right that I was able to gain simply by going down to the courthouse and paying a small fee, who have had to fight every step of the way to get the recognition and respect from their society and families that I got automatically just by taking a boy's hand in college.

What is easy for me and brings me joy is desperately hard and, often, impossible for you, because of barriers that other people have placed in your way. And that is wrong. That is the very definition of wrong.

Marriage is not by any means the only gay-rights issue that matters. For a lot of people on the LGBT spectrum, it's a far cry from it, and no more than a distraction from the things that do matter (support for different lifestyles and forms of physical gender expression, bullying, suicide, and so much more). But in a way, it's the top of the iceberg; it's such a political lightning rod that it's a sort of litmus test of where society stands on the whole package.

Tonight, three states had ballot questions to legalize same-sex marriage. All of them passed. (Well, Washington's is still hanging out there, but it's ahead. Maine and Maryland have definitely passed.) Just one of these would have been unthinkable four years ago -- in fact, four years ago was when California (arguably the most gay-friendly state in the US) failed to preserve same-sex marriage at the ballot box.

Tonight, they all won. Tonight, over 50% of the electorate of three different states voted not only to avoid a negative (that is, not to put additional hurdles in the path of already-banned same-sex marriage) but to institutionalize a positive: to give same-sex couples the same rights that my husband and I already enjoy -- to walk down the aisle with the person of their choice, to raise children as equal parents with the person they love, to visit them in the hospital and benefit from their work insurance and all the other things that heterosexual couples do.

And don't forget the right to say "husband" and "wife". When I was first married, we used to call each other that as affectionate forms of address for months, just because we could, just because it was such a delight to hear that word on your lover's tongue. I think that's when I first started swinging around from believing in civil unions as a legitimate compromise, to believing that the only true equality was marriage for all -- because, having done it myself, I realized that it was different. It was such a small, simple thing, but it was ever so different from how it was before, to look at my lover and say "husband" and hear him say "wife." I was so glad to be able to do it. I would never want to deny anyone else that kind of joy, and all the culturally-enshrined rights that go with it.

On most issues, I am just about middle of the road. Gun control? I lean fairly right. Abortion? I am personally quite strongly pro-choice, but most of the pro-life women I know are smart and well-informed and just as convicted about their position as I am about mine, and I have no desire to argue them out of their beliefs. Economic issues? I am a huge waffle who waffles as the wind blows. Foreign policy? Huge waffle there too.

But this ... THIS is the issue that brings out my inner political lioness. Because this is an issue that actively hurts people I care about, and supporting these rights (or simply not standing in their way) hurts no one at all. Not only is my marriage (which I value with all my heart) NOT damaged by other people having the same right -- I believe it is made much stronger. No one is ever diminished by love.

And I guess it's also that, on pretty much every other issue that matters to me (abortion, economic philosophy, health care and so on and so forth), I can see why the other side believes as they do, I can see why they have doubts about some of the things I'm convicted about, and I respect their beliefs even if I disagree.

This, though ... this ... it hurts people so much, and there's so little justification for the other side. I know that a lot of people are raised to believe this thing, and told to believe this thing, by their churches and people in authority, and that's really hard to move past. But ... you have to! Because the alternative is thoughtlessly hurting people who've done nothing except be born (or made) differently. My husband's father is an outspoken racist, and I asked my husband, once, how he was able to stop believing in those ugly conspiracy theories as he grew up. He said, "Because all I had to do was look around me to see that the world is not like that."

That's growing up. Looking around and saying, "Not everything I was told is true. The world is not like that." It's not that you have to stop respecting and believing in the people who told you those things. It's not that they're deliberately lying. They're still wise in other areas. But they grew up believing in certain things, and never learned to look beyond them, never listened to other people sharing their experiences and learned that the world was wider than they knew.

But you can.

It's not the presidential election that's making me all teary-eyed tonight. It's the fact that society has changed so much already, in my adult lifetime, towards the kind of society that I want to live in. I am a wholehearted romantic when it comes to democracy (I believe in it, and I want everyone else to believe in it too!) and as such, I always found it particularly vile that the ballot box was used as a last-ditch tool to stop love. To stop people like Matt Bomer and his husband from being able to enjoy the same rights and freedoms as me and my husband. And tonight, for the very first time in this country, that precious tool can no longer be used for that terrible purpose, because a plurality of people stood up and said Yes, we stand with you too.

I was going to bore you with the details, but really, the only important thing is that I'm excited this year, excited and thrilled, probably as much as, or even more than, the first time I got to vote, fourteen years ago. There have been very few elections (for any office) in which I've felt like I was voting for a candidate, not voting against the other guy. As much of a politically waffly, middle-of-the-roader as I am most of the time, that's a very big deal for me.

There are stories everywhere of long lines and record-breaking crowds, so go early if you can, and be prepared for a wait, especially if you live in a poor neighborhood or a swing state. I didn't have to wait in line, but I'm in a sparsely populated, rural district, and I think I beat the main rush by getting there as soon as the polls opened.

As unfortunate (and potentially disenfranchising) as the long waits are, it makes me happy and excited all over again that after 200+ years of democracy (admittedly quite a lot less than that for about 2/3 of our population), we as a country are still capable of getting this excited about it. A lot of voter apathy is just having no one to vote for; the new boss is the same as the old boss, and it's hard to get thrilled about politics when you don't want to vote any of them into office. That we, as a nation, can still get this worked up about something we take for granted most of the time ... is pretty cool if you think about it. And even though I'm admittedly not at all unbiased about this election, I think it's worth taking a minute to stop and think about this no matter who you're voting for. If you're thrilled and excited and you really want to get out there and vote -- that's what this whole democracy thing is all about. That's what makes it work, and keep working.

Here are a few links to useful information for when you (Americans) go to vote tomorrow, regardless of who you're voting for.

State-by-state breakdown of your legal rights, as an employee, to exercise your right to vote. Many states require employers to give employees time off to vote.

Find out what ID you need to bring to the polls in this handy state-by-state guide. A fishing license is considered legal ID to vote in my state, omg Alaska, wtf :D. Very Important Edit: New voters always need to bring ID, regardless of where they live; I'm very sorry if I passed along misinformation! And even if ID is not required in your state, it is probably a good idea to bring it if you have it, just in case.

Here is a very useful, non-partisan guide to "vote flipping" (when electronic machines register your vote inaccurately) and what you should do about it to make sure that your vote goes to your chosen candidate.

State-by-state poll opening and closing times from Ballotpedia.

If you just moved or registered and you're not sure where to vote, find (or confirm) your polling place on GoVote.org.

Voter Suppression Wiki has a useful list of printable voting resources on a variety of topics.

Here is a list of links to each state's division of elections website for obsessive checking of your local polling results on Tuesday night.

Finally, just for fun and history, an article from the New Yorker on how much worse our voting system used to be. Long lines are bad, but at least it's no longer necessary to fight your way to the polls through an armed mob ...

Edited to add: 1-866-OUR-VOTE, the hotline of the non-partisan Election Protection coalition, is a number to memorize before you go to the polls and to call if you experience any hassles or problems voting, or see anyone else being hassled or blocked from voting.

(Note: much of the above information ganked from rydra_wong and sheafrotherdon, and probably other people I'm forgetting.)