As we all await the outcome of what feels like a make-or-break election, I want to offer some perspective, if you’ll hand a fellow with eight-plus decades the mic for a moment.
Through these decades, when we’ve faced tough and challenging years as a nation, in such moments it can often feel as if that’s all there’s ever going to be, strife and division, neighbor against neighbor. I certainly felt that as a Japanese American, interned during World War II. I felt that again as a closeted gay man struggling to hide my identity and keep my career, and even as a proudly gay one fighting to keep my marriage.
It’s only when we zoom out that the picture becomes clearer. Progress is not only evident, it is inevitable. When I was a boy, the laws were such in many states that I couldn’t even marry someone of the white race. Racism was baked into our laws, and the social structures reinforced it. Now, eighty years later, I’m married to a white *dude*! Things change, and the long arc bends, usually for the better because we have fought so hard for it.
From time to time, new generations of Americans will be tested anew. Women in this country know they have struggled too hard and for too long to become second class citizens again. LGBTQ+ people understand this, too, and we aren’t to be trifled with. And racial minorities know that putting a racist back in the White House will open the doors to new horrors and turn back the clock on civil rights, perhaps for decades. Ain’t gonna happen, not on our watch.
That’s why our coalition has come together and is speaking so powerfully through our votes. The GOP thought older women voters wouldn’t care about abortion rights, or old gay fellas like me would let them bully our community once more. Wrong and wrong. Our numbers are superior, and our resolve is strong. We will outvote them, and we will defeat them. Just you watch.
So tomorrow, if you stand with us and haven’t voted yet, I encourage, indeed implore you to do so. It’s a red alert moment, all crew to their battle stations. Help us win this fight, which is the same fight as ages past, but reimagined for 2024. Be a part of the winning side of history.
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