Obama Wins !....and so does Prop 8

First: Woooooooohooooooo!

It's so good to see somebody that I can recognize as a thoughtful, compassionate and intelligent human being in the White House. It's been a long fucking 8 years--and I don't even live in the States.

Obama is a politician; Obama's political views run further to the right than many of us would want; Obama will, inevitably, disappoint everyone at one moment or another (he is human and whatnots); all of these things are true.

And none of these things change the fact that his presidency is a historic one. Just his presence in the Oval Office is enough to catalyze discussion and new ways of thinking about and looking at race relations in the US, and I cannot see that as anything but a good thing. Add to that the fact that he is both intelligent and capable, as well as being (by US-presidential-politics standards) fairly progressive, and you can be that I'm looking to our neighbours to the south with a little of that much-trumpeted Hope (TM).

It almost takes the sting out of the fact that we got stuck with Harper-bot for another gorram term. Almost.

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Second: WHAT!?!

I've known, intellectually, that the US is not that progressive a place when it comes to LGBT rights, and that the Religious Right has been damn influential and just plain hateful towards folk like me in recent years (not that they weren't previously; I've just come to notice it being right the fuck out there in the open since I started paying attention to US politics). I knew that this would be a close fight. I think I even acknowledged the strong possibility that this hateful piece of shit would pass.

But I still don't get it on any kind of emotional/intuitive level. I flat out cannot understand how over 5 million people could say "yes" to the following wording:

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME–SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

* Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California.
* Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

It has the words "eliminates right" in it. How? How could you vote to take away another human being's rights and still call yourself the "greatest democracy on earth"? I hope the next time an anti-gay bigot (or bigot of any stripe) tries to say those words, they choke on them and die. Or end up in the hospital with no health coverage. And are denied visitation rights from their partner.

I've never cried over an election result--certainly not over one in another country. I cried this morning when I read the news that Prop 8 had passed. I flat out cannot comprehend that there are people in the world who would work hard and spend millions to take a basic right away from another person because they don't like the way they fuck. I think it hit even harder for me because this wasn't just a refusal to grant LGBT people the right to marry (bad as that would have been on its own). This was the choice to take away a right we already had.

How?

The academic in me is already thinking about cultural setting, and historical factors, and social pressures, and the way that the "Yes"/"No" campaigns were run, and the particular emotional buttons that the ads pushed. She's already formulating a plausible hypothesis (or, rather, plausible hypotheses) for why people might have voted "Yes". The compassionate person and the bisexual in me are huddled in a corner, alternating between crying and hurling abuse, and they can't understand this kind of hate.

I feel so very fortunate to live in Canada (where we've allowed same-sex marriage for years and the country has not yet imploded into chaos and anarchy), and in a particularly tolerant corner of it at that. But man, is it clear now how unusual my situation is when looked at from a broader perspective (gets even scarier if you look globally). And how fragile that bit of safety that LGBT folk here have really is.

To the bigots in California (and Florida, and everywhere in the fucking world that cannot grant LGBT people basic fucking dignity and equal rights and protection under the law): fuck you. I don't have that kind of hatred for other people--but you're bringing me closer than I have ever been before.

Election Post-Mortem

Damn. I can't say I'm surprised that Harper got another minority, but I definitely am disappointed. I have a few (somewhat disjointed) thoughts about the election results:

On the one hand this really is a victory for the Conservatives. The timing of the election (although calling it early broke that pesky law that the Cons themselves had pushed through) could not have been better: the looming financial crisis in the US turned the economy into the single biggest issue, which certainly worked in Harper's favour. It's not so much that the Conservatives are unarguably better on the economy than the other parties (in fact, I think they are worse, but it's at least somewhat debatable), but that they are not unarguably the worst the way they are with other issues, such as the environment, women's rights and the arts. And they did win another minority government, which allows them to appear more moderate than they are while at the same time sneaking in little nasties like Bill C-484, which would grant an unborn fetus legal status--something that could have serious ramifications for abortion rights in Canada. If they play their cards right and continue to gain seats as they did in this election, we could be looking at a Conservative majority within the decade.

On the other hand, it may prove to be an illusive, or at least temporary victory. For starters, I doubt I'm the only person to question the wisdom of breaking the law in order to call a costly election ($290 million taxpayer dollars--in these oh so uncertain economic times, natch) that did not result in a majority--or even a particularly significant shift in the status quo. In fact, some conservatives (to say nothing of the opposition) are already calling it a waste:

"I think we'll have wasted our money if we don't get a majority," Conservative supporter Jan Sproule said as she watched the results.

(from BC's Province newspaper, which is a bit of a rag but is also, I suspect, just the first of many to be making comments of this type).

I won't be surprised in the least if the election's failure to accomplish much of anything will become a bit of an issue in the weeks and months to come. The fact that we are still looking at a minority government also gives me some small amount of hope. While it may help make him look more moderate and potentially gain more votes down the line, Harper's need for cooperation from the other parties (all of which sit to the left of him on the political spectrum) to make this government work--especially now that he failed to win a majority for the second time in a row, which is not exactly a show of voters' unfailing trust in the Conservative party--means that he will have to compromise on issues where he faces the most opposition from those parties. Issues like, oh, the environment. Or the arts. Once again, that fine Canadian art of compromise may actually make this end in everyone's favour (or at least make sure that no one group gets stomped too hard).

Political implications of the results aside, I think this election also demonstrates clearly (and, yet again), the shortcomings of our first-past-the-post electoral system, where whoever wins in a riding (by any margin) gets a seat in parliament, and the actual amount of votes they won is essentially irrelevant. All it takes is a quick look at the numbers:

Parties Ranked by # of Seats won (i.e. rank determined by our current system):

1. Conservatives (143 seats)
2. Liberals (76 seats)
3. Bloc Quebecois* (50 seats)
4. NDP (37 seats)
5. Independent (2 seats)
6. Green Party (0 seats) = "Other" (0 seats)

Parties Ranked by % of Popular Vote (i.e. how it would have played out under a system of Proportional Representation):

1. Conservatives (37.63%)
2. Liberals (26.24%)
3. NDP (18.20%)
4. Bloc Quebecois (9.97%)
5. Green Party (6.80%)
6. Independent (0.65%) ~ "Other" (0.51%)

When you're dealing with the winners in an election (i.e. the top two spots, reserved for the ruling party and official opposition), there's little variation between the two sets of results, except that the second list shows a smaller gap between the two parties in terms of support. Where things get really interesting is with the lower half of the list. Take, say, the NDP and the Bloc: although the NDP won almost twice the number of votes that the Bloc did, it ends up with less seats (and thus less power in parliament) under our current system. Likewise, the Green Party, which got a solid 6.8% of the vote gets no seats at all (and so about 2.2 million people get zero representation**). I don't think either of those results is particularly fair, or directly reflective of the wishes of Canadians.

It's time for a change in how we elect our governments.


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* The PQ is a bit of an oddity here, in that it only runs candidates in the province of Quebec. I find it fascinating that a party that residents of 12 of Canada's 13 provinces and territories can't even vote for can gain about a 5th of the total seats in parliament.

** My numbers are based on the latest Statistics Canada population estimates I could find, taken from here.

It's Election Day!

My fellow Canucks, get the fuck out and VOTE!


...and here's hoping that Steve-o doesn't get any closer to a majority than he did last time around. Hell, while I'm hoping, hows about a Liberal-NDP coalition government running things for the next while?