Say It Ain't So, Ohio

I have no statistics, but it seems like Ohio was vastly overrepresented among early 90's Jerry Springer guests. I know this because we had no cable and that show was always on, and every time Jerry said "Tammy is an Ohio woman with six kids by five different men, and one of the men is her father! Today she tells everyone live on national TV!", my roommates all said "Ha ha! Ohio!"

But I love Ohio, even if I can't imagine living there any more. When I imagine myself in the future, I'm always there, picking apples and attending craft bazaars with the women of my family. My Republican family. But I love them! And isn't that true bi-partisanship, for a raving pinko like me to say that there are many, many Republicans who I love, even if I love them a little less for a while every four years?

I have three horses in this year's election race.

One, I want Bush to lose because he's a greedy, stupid liar and he's done almost irreparable harm to this country, at home and abroad. That whole war for profit (and no other reason) thing has really stuck in my craw. I want him to lose so much that I sometimes convince myself that I love the Democrats as much as I hate the Republicans (family and some friends excepted.) This is not true. (See number 3.)

Two, I want Ohio's electoral votes to go for Kerry in the worst way. It's like a test you devise in the early stages of love: If he likes me, he will turn around and wave. I need more from Ohio than fantastic apples and sweet corn if I can ever move home again. I need some sign that we are compatible. I can't stand to think that all of the people who have lost their jobs and who are so much worse off than they were five years ago are going to fall for Republican lies about Kerry taking away their guns and Bibles the day after inauguration, and vote against a change that we so desperately need. Oooohhh, how I want Bush to lose. Have I mentioned that? I can't live in a state that is more Republican than not. I certainly can't have my hypothetical future children (HFCs) living in one, and the HFCs are the heart of the "next year, in Ohio" plan.

Three, I'm a liberal. A leftist. A tree-hugging idealist. I don't cringe when people call me a feminist, because I am, or say that some of my ideas smack of socialism, because I'm down with my socialist impulses. Up national healthcare! Increase entitlements! I don't think it's fair that I pay more taxes because I'm single, but I wouldn't mind paying at this rate for a better society; better schools, better housing, better healthcare, better services for kids. Six weeks of paid vacation, a year's maternity leave--sign me up. Plain, unqualified equal rights for everyone.

Which brings me to my next point. As I've been watching Ohio's poll numbers fluctuate, and kicking myself for voting in DC where it doesn't even count, a little thing called "Issue 1" slipped right by me.

Issue 1 is a measure on the ballot in Ohio to ban gay marriage and prevent the state from conferring any benefits on same sex partners. It's the strictest measure of its kind proposed in any state. These proposed ballot measures are part of a Republican strategy across the country to drive up the conservative vote (apparently Bush and Cheney aren't sexy enough to do it on their own).

Here are some excerpts from an article I read in Salon. Among other things, it states that support for Issue 1 is running at 60%. That is disgusting. I'm learning to temper my judgment of other people's politics as I get older, but I have always maintained that anyone who supports any limitations on the rights of gays to live exactly like everyone else in this country does is purely a bigot. Those who oppose gay marriage will be remembered with the same embarrassed disdain as those who opposed civil rights for black people are remembered now. It's the same issue. The fact that these ballot initiatives even exist is shameful and horrifying. It's a big reason why I can't get too excited about Kerry/Edwards, even though I fervently hope that they win in a landslide. They're refusal to support gay marriage, and to be shocked and offended that anyone wouldn't, is deeply disappointing to me.

If Ohio passes this amendment, I may have to boycott even the apples and sweet corn. That is a very serious threat, trust me. I don't part with good produce lightly.

Via Salon

Excerpts:

On Nov. 2, Ohio will vote on Issue 1, a state constitutional amendment that purports to simply ban same-sex marriage but actually goes much further. Ten other states -- Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah -- are also voting on anti-gay marriage amendments. They're all expected to pass, most by wide margins. Eight of the state amendments prohibit domestic partnerships or any other public benefits or recognition for gay couples. But as a headline on the front page of Columbus Dispatch recently said, "Issue 1 wording makes it the strictest." Polls show support for it hovering above 60 percent.

A crucial electoral battleground state, Ohio hasn't done well during the Bush era. In the last four years, it's lost a quarter million jobs. A report from the U.S. Census Bureau recently rated Cleveland the poorest big city in the country. Young people are leaving the state in droves. In August, Brent Larkin, editorial page director of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote about Ohio's "raging brain drain."
But even as the state's economy decays, its big evangelical churches are thriving, and, with the tacit support of the national Republican Party, they have mobilized behind Issue 1. Preachers are exhorting flocks of thousands to vote their values in an election said to pit light against darkness. Ohio's gay citizens, a minority courted by no one, have been blindsided by the campaign against them. Many feel like they're under siege. Talk of moving to a friendlier state or country is widespread.

If passed, Issue 1 will force Ohio's cities and universities to stop offering domestic partner benefits, including health insurance. Right now, such benefits are offered by the city of Columbus, Ohio's Miami University, Ohio University and Ohio State University, the largest university in America. Cleveland Heights has a domestic partnership registry, and some Ohio public schools give gay employees family leave to care for ailing partners. Issue 1 would probably mean they could no longer do so...The amendment's impact won't stop there. "Because the state can't create any legal status for unmarried couples, it's very possible that domestic-violence protection orders could no longer be used if there's a domestic violence situation with an unmarried couple," says Alan Melamed, an attorney and chairman of the anti-Issue 1 group Ohioans Protecting the Constitution. Private companies can continue to offer domestic partner benefits, he adds, but "if the employee feels that those benefits were being improperly denied, an employee won't be able to go to court and enforce those benefits."

Issue 1 is only two sentences long, but there's a world of uncertainty in it. While the first sentence simply decrees that marriage is between a man and a woman, the second says, "This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage."

The Republican National Committee...is using gay marriage to rally its Ohio base... mailed...a voter registration form attached to a four-color flier about "protecting marriage." The front of the mailer pictures a bride and groom and the words, "One Man One Woman." Inside it says, "One Vote Could Make a Difference in Making Sure It Stays that Way."

The flier warns that "Traditional values are under attack from the radical left," which seeks to "Destroy traditional marriage by legalizing gay marriage," "Support abortion on demand and partial birth abortion," and "Declare the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of its reference to God."

... The Ohio Christian Coalition will soon distribute 2 million voter guides advocating yes on Issue 1 and highlighting Bush's support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. "Issue 1 has already become a tremendous mobilizer in getting the church and faith-based vote to the polls for November," says Chris Long, executive director of the Christian Coalition of Ohio.

USA Today reports that Rod Parsley, pastor of Ohio's 12,000-member World Harvest Church, has "assembled a list of 100,000 Ohio acolytes, all of whom will be called by the World Harvest Church on the eve of the election, reminding them to vote." The newspaper pointed out that Parsley held a September meeting of 200 Ohio ministers to explain that they could advocate for the supposedly nonpartisan Issue 1 without losing their nonprofit tax status.

Over 1,000 Ohio pastors have attended Christian Coalition policy briefings on Issue 1 featuring speakers such as Jerry Falwell, Illinois Senate candidate Alan Keyes and Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, one of the few state leaders to support the initiative. (Blackwell became briefly notorious in September when he tried to invalidate thousands of new, mostly Democratic voter registrations on the grounds that the paper they were printed on was too thin.)

...Despite all the national backing, the driving force behind Issue 1 is an Ohioan named Phil Burress, founder of a group called Citizens for Community Values. A thrice-married Cincinnati man who describes himself as a former pornography addict redeemed by Jesus, Burress has spent much of the last decade fighting gay rights...(H)e makes no apologies for wanting to eliminate domestic partnership benefits as well as marriage rights for gay couples. "Ohio State and Miami University, Columbus and Cleveland Heights are all taxpayer-funded institutions," he says. "They're using taxpayer money and giving out the benefits of marriage when they have no right to do so."

...It's not hard to find professional gay couples who are thinking of packing their bags. That's just fine with anti-gay crusader Burress, who has nothing but contempt for local leaders arguing against Issue 1 on economic grounds. "Every single person [who opposes Issue 1], including the attorney general, all support the homosexual agenda," he says. "Those who are pushing the homosexual agenda are being outvoted by 2 to 1. They don't have the nerve to come out and be against traditional marriage, so they are saying it's going to hurt us economically."

(On) Oct. 8...Columbus community leaders, activists and concerned citizens gather(ed) for a luncheon debate on Issue 1. Organized by the Columbus Metropolitan Club, a local civic group... Patrick Johnston, a physician and vice chairman of the Ohio branch of the far-right Constitution Party: "Even if Ohio would be better off, gays should not be allowed to marry," he says, because homosexuality is a sin that "merits discrimination." In fact, he says, "I support and endorse the criminalization of homosexuality."
Preaching like a street-corner revivalist, Johnston musters quotes from both the Bible and Dostoevski to make the tautological argument that those who reject his vision of Christianity lack the foundation to make any moral arguments. "The proof for the Christian ethic which condemns homosexual marriage is the impossibility of the contrary," he says. "Reject the Christian ethic and you have no basis for making moral judgments."

The audience stares at him in open-mouthed amazement. (Editor's note: Thank God.) ...
During a question-and-answer period, someone says they'd once heard Johnston call for the execution of gays and lesbians. He vigorously denies the charge. Later, he tells me that the decision to put gays to death is a matter best left up to the states. "If we ever had a nation sufficiently Christian" to make homosexuality illegal, he says, imposing capital punishment for homosexuality would be a subject for "an in-house debate. There were capital crimes in the Bible, and that would be something debated."

In large swaths of Ohio...as in large swaths of America, Johnston's rhetoric is already prevailing.
On a recent Saturday evening service at the Potters House, an evangelical church on Columbus' outskirts, pastor Tim Oldfield begins his sermon by launching immediately into a jeremiad against homosexuality. "We're living in a time that a lifestyle that at one time was on the list of mental disorders, called sodomy, is now called an alternative lifestyle," he says. "The Bible calls it abomination. Abomination is something disgusting."

...(Pastor Rod Prsley of the World harvest Church) starts preaching in earnest to a crowd that is by then happily worn out and receptive. Christianity is under siege, he tells his audience. Interlopers from out of state have come to Ohio, "going door to door, knocking on doors so we can continue to murder babies and further strip the church of its First Amendment rights through hate crimes legislation." Gay marriage, he says, heralds "the annihilation of a civilization."
"Everybody shout yes on Issue 1!" he yells. "Yes on Issue 1!"

David tells me that Parsley's sermons haven't always been so overtly political. It's only since gay marriage became a hot issue that he's started delivering the Republican gospel. One of the ushers, an older, balding black man, says congregants have mixed feelings about the election. The economy is terrible, he says. "Some people lost everything they had." About the war, he adds, "Those kids shouldn't be over there." So would he be voting for Kerry? He wouldn't say.

Parsley's been preaching for over an hour and he's sweating. An organ trills behind him as he says, "On November 2, I see people marching like a holy army to the voting booth. I see the holy spirit anointing you as you vote for life, as you vote for marriage, as you vote for the pulpit!" ... He holds up a children's book called "King and King," about two princes who fall in love. "They've come out with a sequel," he says, "'King and King and Family,' where they adopt children and their family is just as ordinary as their neighbors."

"No they're not!" shouts the crowd, unprompted...

This kind of thing scares and saddens me. That a church would use its influence to fight against civil rights. That these ballot measures are expected to pass. That there isn't an outraged, widespread call to stop this outright bigotry. Where will my HFCs live if Ohio does this? I'm thinking Toronto.

Comments

[StepMonster]

Maybe we'll have to join you up there. This is absurd. What are "people" (?) thinking? I just want to cry when I think about it these days. It exhausts me emotionally.

[sis]

Barcy is voting against it, and she is a rep., so who knows? maybe it won't pass.

[StepMonster]

I just remembered this- do you remember the guy who owned the "motorcycle shop" (read: place to hang out and smoke dope and apparently snog your wife's family) who was on JS because he did, literally, sleep with his wife's sister and mother, (yes I said mother) and was just pleased as punch with himself that he was going to go on Springer? You may have been too young; he used to hang out at the mall bar your pa worked at. Years ago. What a prize. I tried my best to date him but ended up settling on pops instead.