Today is Election Day 2008. To many (myself included), this day has been a very long time in coming. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the longest presidential election campaign in U.S. history – it certainly felt that way many times over the past two years. It was also likely the most extensively covered U.S. presidential election in history. It was nearly impossible to escape the nearly blanket coverage of the election in many print, broadcast and online outlets, particularly over the past three months.
I find it ironic, then, that this most extensively covered U.S. presidential election campaign in U.S. history largely ignored key issues such as the power and impact of the gay vote. A 365gay.com news story on Logo this weekend reported that the “gay vote” is as much as four- to six-percent of the voting population. And a Community Marketing Inc. survey we helped promote last year reported that 92.5% of gays and 91% of lesbians say they voted in the 2004 presidential election. As 365gay.com news reporter Itay Hod reported on Logo, our community has the power to influence the electoral outcome. Why then, has our community been largely shut out of coverage and substantive “mainstream” media attention?
Between the potentially life-changing ballot initiatives on marriage and family on the ballot in California, Arizona, Florida and Arkansas and the more than 100 openly gay Victory Fund-endorsed candidates running for office this year, there were plenty of relevant political story lines to be had. And it’s not as though LGBT organizations and advocates were silent about their issues – anyone with an email address and even a passing involvement in our community can testify to that.
If anything, our community was more motivated this year than ever before: social networking around LGBT issues and voting in general was likely at a higher level than ever before (my email inbox will likely be easier to manage post-election – at least I hope so). My partner Mark and I were also struck by the intense focus on encouraging gay registration and voting this year at even the most “social” gay events we attended (from comedy and drag performances in Provincetown this summer to the Miss Adams Morgan pageant in DC this fall).
So, why the lack of coverage of our community in this most important of election years? I think it comes down to a combination of perceived political correctness (“we don’t want to offend the gay community so we won’t talk about them at all”) and a smaller media community’s ability to focus on only one “story” at a time (first the Iraq War, then the VP selection process and then the economic meltdown). Even with the huge online reach of LGBT bloggers and Web sites and the active, engaged LGBT advocacy community, mainstream media have just not fully engaged with us.
In fact, I think the online reach and engagement by, for and with our community reflects the changes in mainstream coverage: as traditional offline media outlets continue to suffer, the fragmenting media landscape is serving more and more people in more direct, less ‘omnipresent’ ways than in the past. That’s good, in the sense that we’re part of the conversation as that conversation is evolving. But it’s also bad in the sense that much of the “establishment” still hasn’t figured us out. And because they don’t recognize us, they don’t see the value of reporting on us as fully as other audiences and communities.
To me, the gay vote matters because it’s a reflection of the worth of our community. Voting is not just a right, but a privilege of living in a free society. And the exercise of that privilege and acknowledgement of that privilege by a community such as ours that has so much at stake should be recognized and reported everywhere by everyone.
I’ll be watching the election coverage today and tonight to see how the “mainstream” media addresses our community (not to mention issues such as Proposition 8 in California). But I’ll also be checking out blogs and Web sites such as americablog.com, pamshouseblend.com, gaypolitics.com and The Bilerico Project to learn about our community from the perspective of people who actually understand us.
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