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Frustrations facing an election year

I am a person who always comes across as positive. The glass is always half filled and I always look for the good in people. It is my nature and it is how I choose to live my life. 

But at times frustration takes over and it becomes harder and harder to be the positive person I want to be. 

That time seems to come always when an important election is about to take place.

So here we are 8 months away from the upcoming presidential election and for the past 6 months myself and every LGBT American and our allies have had to stand by and listen to the Republican candidates spew out hatred towards a group of people, a group of people that they should be representing as equal as any other American out there. And so I am frustrated. 

I do take it as a compliment (there I go again, being positive) that I am a huge part of every debate that has taken place over the course of these past 6 months. The Gay Card, as I like to call it, comes into question and over and over again these candidates, and I use that term loosely, just want to turn their backs on an entire group of people. 

These men, oh yes, there was a woman as well, are supposed to be well educated, intelligent human beings and God loving, which in my book means being able to show love and compassion for all. Yet time and time again they speak out against equality for my LGBT community. 

How frustrating to sit and listen to one candidate say I believe in equality for all Americans, but I don’t believe in the gay agenda. Since when was equality considered an agenda? I thought it was everyone’s right as an American citizen. Or, I don’t believe in discrimination, but gays and lesbians should not be allowed to marry. Excuse me, isn’t that discrimination? And my favorite when a young 10-year-old boy asked the candidate why gays couldn’t get married and the response was, literally, “Yes, gays can get married, to a person of the opposite sex.”

Really? Really!?!? These are the people that want to represent America? I am frustrated. 

But then there are bright silver linings that remind me that there is good out there.

 Just a few months ago our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood in front of the U.N.’s human rights group in Geneva and spoke about gay rights throughout the world. It was one of the most passionate speeches I have heard from a politician on the topic. “LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” she said. The speech was one of the most compassionate and intelligent political speeches I have ever heard. 

And then there is a young straight man out there, Zach Wahl’s who was raised by two gay women and gave one of the most heartfelt speeches of the past year, when he stood in front of his Iowa representatives to talk about the right to marry. Zach has spent the past year traveling the country and talking to groups about his family, gay rights and Marriage with humor and dignity, great poise and eloquence. 

It is these examples that help wash away some of those frustrations and lead me to believe that in the long run equality and justice for all will prevail. And those Republican candidates will quietly slip away into oblivion.

 For more from Gary Saperstein go to www.outinthevineyard.com Send emails to: gary@outinthevineyard.com.