Early Voting

I voted today, for Kerry, and some propositions, and a bunch of other people. There were a lot of people. Like, probably 200 at any given time, and it was a pretty stable line-length for the 45 or so minutes i was there. It is always fun for me to wait in line at a voting place because you see such different people.

Today, behind me were 3 older people who knew each other, one of them, I think, was a Episcopal minister, and one of them was Catholic. They were talking about the pope, and how God should let him die. The minister started talking about his favorite pope, which was not the current one, but I don’t know much about the popes so I don’t remember. In front of me were 3 maybe Jewish women (at least 2 of them) talking about factor 11 deficiency (hemophilia C) and how one of them I think had it, and the other older lady had never heard of it. The younger one talked about how it might have explained some deaths in her family long ago that were blamed on hemorrhaging during surgery. The younger one tried to convince the older one to get tested. I could have offered information, but they didn’t seem to be chatty outside their group, and they did already know each other. Also, it is a medical condition so she might have been uncomfortable talking about it.

They then went on to talk about some other things that were boring, so I paid attention to other things. All of a sudden, the older one said something like, “Well, I don’t know who you’re voting for but…” in a polite effort to broach the subject of politics, it worked and the two younger (when I say younger I mean mid 50’s) women told the older one that they were voting for Kerry, because they were “liberals and proud of it”. The older woman agreed, and they expressed concern for the state of our country and things. They then turned to Kerry in the last debate bringing up Mary Cheney’s homosexuality. This seemed nearly abhorrent to the oldest woman, which is interesting, she certainly has a different perspective than I do, and I can understand the idea that something of that nature would never be said in public about someone else’s family. The fact that Mary Cheney is out didn’t seem to matter at all.

Anyway, there was discussion about how that would hurt Kerry in terms of gay people not voting for him! They went on to say that there were a lot of gay people, and they are politically active and you shouldn’t strategically do things that make them vote against you. It was very odd. The younger ones I think didn’t agree though, and tried to explain that even though Kerry did say that gay people still support him, they quoted some spokesperson from a group that by their description must have been the Log Cabin Republicans saying that Bush is not good on gay rights and that that is more important to them then something Kerry might say.

It was all very odd, I seriously almost talked to them over that, but stopped. What a strange world-view and disconnect from the issues facing gays to think that we wouldn’t vote for Kerry just because he, in a topical discussion mentioned that someone was gay. It’s Bush that seems totally unable to even speak the evil word. If Kerry says it in a non-hateful way, good for him!