GLR January-February 2025

GUEST OPINION

Election Aftermath: Silver Linings T HE RESULTS of the November election are both too sweeping and too dismal to cover in a single op-ed piece. Here are a few takes on the election as excerpted from LGBT media sources soon after November 5th. T HE A DVOCATE

person voters. The survey involved 22,509 respondents.) If the Edison exit poll in 2024 is an accurate reflection of LGBTQ + people’s voting patterns, then it shows a strong shift to the left in the LGBTQ + population in the last four years. This could be because of the nonstop attacks on LGBTQ + people coming from the right in the form of attacks on transgender youth’s rights to healthcare and equal education. GLAAD Ballot Measures Strengthened the Freedom to Marry Alongside the presidential race and major races in U.S. Con gress and state legislatures, Americans voted to enact ground breaking ballot measures that will improve LGBTQ lives. Voters in Colorado, California, and Hawaii passed ballot measures en shrining freedom to marry protections into their state Consti tutions. The 61% majority of California voters who said Yes to marriage equality in 2024 is an especially meaningful leap in public opinion in contrast to the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008, which banned marriage equality. Twenty years ago, opposing marriage equality was a win ning political wedge issue for Republicans. In 2004, more than a dozen state-level constitutional amendments flooded the country seeking to preemptively prohibit marriage equal ity, and President George W. Bush ran on a platform of ban

L GBTQ + Political Wins in an Otherwise Devastating Election There were a number of notable victories for LGBTQ + candi dates and causes in Tuesday’s election. Some highlights: • Sarah McBride, currently a Delaware state senator, won elec tion as the state’s sole representative in the U.S. House. She will be the first out transgender member of Congress. She is a Democrat, as are all the LGBTQ + politicians mentioned here. • Tammy Baldwin won reelection as a U.S. senator from Wis consin in a tight race over Republican challenger Eric Hovde, who ran a campaign marked by thinly veiled homophobia. • Emily Randall was elected to the U.S. House from Wash ington state’s Sixth Congressional District. Randall, a lesbian, will be the state’s first LGBTQ + member of Congress, and the first LGBTQ + Latina elected to that body from any state. She is currently a state senator. • Julie Johnson, was elected to the U.S. House from Texas’ 32nd Congressional District. An out lesbian, she will be the first LGBTQ + member of Congress from any Southern state. • All incumbent LGBTQ + U.S. House members won reelec tion: Becca Balint of Vermont, Chris Pappas of New Hamp shire, Ritchie Torres of New York, Eric Sorensen of Illinois, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Angie Craig of Minnesota, Sharice Davids of Kansas, and Robert Barcia and Mark Takano of Cal ifornia. Their reelection plus the election of three new repre sentatives brings the number of LGBTQ + House members to twelve, an all-time high. LGBTQ NATION . COM Exit Poll Shows 86% of LGBT People Voted for Harris LGBTQ + people voted Democrat more in 2024 compared to 2020, according to this poll. Edison Research, the firm that conducts national election exit polling for CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC, found that 86% of respondents who identified as “gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender” voted for Kamala Har ris, while 13% voted for Donald Trump. (Note that the poll was only conducted in ten “key” states and sampled only early in &BOOKLOVERS READERS ATTENTION Tim’s Used Books 242 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA timsusedfilms@gmail.com | 508-487-0005 | Open year-round. Are TIM’S USED BOOKS of Provincetown has been traveling throughout the Northeast since 1991, buying book collections, large and small. Scholarly, gay interest, the arts—all genres. Immediate payment and removal.

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January–February 2025

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