In his book on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people holding elective office around the world Andrew Reynolds says that the assumption that out LGBT officeholders will be on the left of the political spectrum is not an assumption borne out by his analysis.
The association between being openly gay and being on the Left … is an example of American exceptionalism. It is true that the first adopters of gay rights in most of the world were on the Left, but even then somewhat grudgingly. But today the momentum is with the Right. For the most part conservative parties in democracies, including quite extreme right-wing parties, have remained steadfast in their conservative economic principles while evolving into socially liberal and libertarian movements. In the summer of 2016 the number of out LGBT MPs [members of parliament] in office globally from right-of-center parties actually outstripped the number from left-wing parties for the first time. At the start of 2017 there were seventy incumbent right-of-center LGBT parliamentarians from twenty-three countries, only sixty-three left-wing MPs in twenty-two nations. [G]ay rights … have become a nonpartisan issue in the developed world.
Gay rights aren’t the lightning rod they used to be, even in the United States. Donald Trump, who hates lots of people, nevertheless has not campaigned on the revocation of LGBT family rights. Trump has plenty of followers counting on him to transform the federal courts, lodging there for life judges that would happily strip gay people of their families, and Trump has certainly committed to that program. But it’s not been a talking point, not the way, when you look back, the Denial of Marriage Act was considered impossible to oppose in 1995. President Bill Clinton, the most pro-gay president up to that point even signed DOMA into law, with the stroke of a pen demonstrating how expendable the gays are when your political career looks like it might take a hit. At the time I thought Clinton could have allowed DOMA to become law without his signature, if he truly thought it political suicide to veto it. That, at least, would have shown a teensy bit of empathy, considering how cruel the law was. So, yeah, it’s easy to get a sense of the support from the left-of-center as “somewhat grudging.”
Contrast the leftishts’ weak tea reform to the rightists’ triple cap latte of hate. The right wing wants to crush the gays. We are their enemies, according to their declaration, and given opportunity they would righteously reinstitute a sentence of prison time for a moment of same sex tingle. According to author Reynolds, right wing animosity has waned so dramatically in the rest of the “developed” world that LGBT voters feel comfortable voting for right wing parties, and the parties themselves feel comfortable including LGB (if not yet T) people among their leadership, not stopping at putting us up for electoral office.
I find this hard to believe. But I can’t argue with his stats.
Right-of-center politicians who identify as LGB are members of parliaments in Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
In a few of those places (Sweden, for one?) I’m guessing some other policies of the right-of-center parties would seem relatively left wing to Americans. You know government supplied health care isn’t considered anathema to rightist politicians everywhere the way it is in the US (besides that weird Republican love for Medicare?). Yet aren’t right wing parties everywhere more likely to hate on the gay?
The Conservative Party in England shepherded in marriage equality in 2013 (the law went into effect in 2014) — but this was only after decades of fighting to keep LGBT people from being accepted into society. When I went to London in 1988 the Margaret Thatcher government was pushing through a law that prevented schools from “promoting” homosexuality by preventing any educator from saying anything nice about it. So it’s nice that the Tories turned around. But I, for one, would find it hard to ever vote for them after their history. Nevertheless, Reynolds says, “Since 2015 the British Conservative Party has won as great a proportion of the LGBTQ vote as any other party.”
Should the Republican Party in the US ever do a switcheroo from gay-hate to gay-respect, it still wouldn’t earn my vote. Reward the people who’ve helped you all along, I say. That plus there isn’t much else in the Republican agenda that appeals to me. Racism? No. Free the wealthy from paying taxes? Not a good idea. Shut out all immigrants? How hypocritical.
Sadly, it is not possible to say that lefties (and moderate leftishts) really have helped us all along. They’ve been much better than righties! Usually!
On a slightly different but related topic:
Can you name the country that has the largest proportion of LGB members in its parliament? It’s not quite an independent country, so maybe there should be an asterisk next to the name. But … it’s … Scotland!
Ten of 129 Members of the Holyrood Parliament identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and nine of the fifty-nine Scottish MPs in Westminster [the UK parliament, in other words] were lesbian or gay. [The] Scottish Nationalist [Party] … with over 14 percent [is] the most LGBT-inclusive parliamentary party in the world. … Three of the six major party leaders in Scotland [in 2017] were lesbian, gay or bisexual: the Tory Ruth Davidson, Labour’s Kezia Dugdale, and Patrick Harvie of the Greens. Half of Scotland’s six-member delegation to the European Parliament were gay. In total that meant that twenty-two out of 194 elected representatives in a country of five million people were gay.
If it’s so gay friendly, it must be a nice place to visit. I understand they have some pretty castles.
source:
The Children of Harvey Milk: how LGBTQ politicians changed the world
by Andrew Reynolds
2019. Oxford University Press, New York
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