A gay pri and an Amerin flag hang om a shoulr bag durg a monstratn outsi of the Phillip Burton Feral Buildg 2011 San Francis, Cal. Photo by Jt Sullivan/ Getty Imag. "This didn't happen Nashville." That's what I told our meraman last month when he filmed the gay pri flag-raisg ceremony at San Francis Cy Hall. We were producg a PBS NewsHour segment on the polil reactn to Print Obama's cisn
Contents:
VOTG IS GAY!
GLAAD, the world’s largt lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocy anizatn, is releasg the fdgs of the first of an ongog seri of polls to gge and track motivatn, enthiasm, and issu ahead of the 2022 midterm electns takg place November. The poll measur how motivated LGBTQ likely voters are * voting is gay *
GLAAD, the world’s largt lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and queer (LGBTQ) media advocy anizatn, is releasg the fdgs of the first of an ongog seri of polls to gge and track motivatn, enthiasm, and issu ahead of the 2022 midterm electns takg place November. Nearly 180 bills have been proposed 2022, most (97) targetg transgenr people and youth, wh a new foc on anti-LGBTQ school policy bills (69) that ban classroom nversatn and books about LGBTQ people unr the guise of “parents’ rights, ” like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. A gay pri and an Amerin flag hang om a shoulr bag durg a monstratn outsi of the Phillip Burton Feral Buildg 2011 San Francis, Cal.
That’s what I told our meraman last month when he filmed the gay pri flag-raisg ceremony at San Francis Cy Hall. But gay polil activism was rarely the news there, and I n’t image any mayor any Tennsee cy raisg a Pri flag over town hall; Nashville, spe s progrsivism, is still the Bible Belt (the ma gay strip Nashville is on Church Street). But every June here, the mayor and most other lol polil heavyweights attend the annual Alice Pri Breakfast, helpg raise money for one of the cy’s two major LGBT (lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr) Democratic polil clubs.
But is the gay polil scene San Francis still an exceptn, and will the gay vote Ameri really matter the printial electn? The Obama mpaign seems to thk so: there’s an “Obama Pri” webse voted to the LGBT muny; first lady Michelle Obama recently held a nference ll wh gay activists enuragg them to hold “Pri” hoe parti; the mpaign has a staff dited to gettg out the LGBT vote; and the mpaign is raisg funds om this muny.
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE GAY AND LBIAN VOTE FOR THE UPG ELECTN?
* voting is gay *
So I asked Patrick Egan, a profsor of polil science at New York Universy, and Kenh Sherrill, a profsor of polil science at Hunter College at the Cy Universy of New York: Do the gay vote really matter? And why do the Obama mpaign fd important to reach out so meangfully to the gay muny this year? In 2008, Egan and Sherrill -thored a paper on LGBT civic engagement, fdg that gays and lbians tend to be more active civilly and polilly than other Amerins.
Sherrill said the gay vote ma the marg of victory North Carola that year and said uld aga this November: “This is a group of reliable voters who turn out to vote more than most people do, who appear to be registered to vote more than most people are and who are one of the handful of most Democratic groups the electorate. Egan, however, utned that the LGBT populatn is still jt a small percentage of the Amerin whole and said he didn’t thk the gay vote is “more important this electn” than ’s been the past.
VOTG IS GAY
If the Democrats n get gay people to vote on the basis of which party is offerg more polici that promote gay rights, the choice is que clear. More: Corrallg the Gay and Lbian Vote.
Thanks to new marketg technologi, Egan said both parti, Republin and Democratic, are more often targetg segments of the populatn wh tailored mpaign msag: “Republins do that wh evangelil Christians, and Democrats do that wh gay voters and other nstuent groups.