Other Voices, Other Rooms

Four years ago, my then boyfriend S. and I went out to vote on a cheerful, sunny, cold New Mexico morning. We dropped our ballots for Kerry, and went home to celebrate with a pancake breakfast and fake bacon. As bad luck would have it, Casey (and Kerry) struck out - and the celebration turned into six months of gloom for Then Boyfriend, relieved only by the occasional destruction of the plastic yard chairs when his Fantasy Football team also struck out. He was soon my ex-boyfriend and good riddance, but my point is that he took the whole thing rather personally. Because, you know, we were right (uh, left). He was, in short (and he was that too), your prototypical "I'm shouting you down because I can yell louder than you" liberal, and even a Red Diaper Grandbaby like me had to admit that he could be obnoxious about it all.

This time around I tried - God knows I tried - to consider other viewpoints. I mean, hell - I was a Hilary supporter. Obamatics shouted me down from the beginning when I dared to suggest *gasp* that maybe she was a great woman and maybe a victim of a certain kind of misogynist idea that she should have kicked Clinton out on his keester instead of patching up her marriage and staying with him because of course everyone should get to judge that action, that's not her private life, is it? Really, how dare she decide that she loved her husband, warts and all? That horrible hussy! And if in fact she did stay with him for political reasons, well, no man has ever done that, have they? And if she voted yes on Iraq, my my, didn't Joe Biden do that with no fanfare and gnashing of teeth?

Anyway, the fact that my friends acted as if voting for Hilary was akin to signing a petition that supported W to be named dictator did not make me reconsider Hilary. (Although yes, yes I voted Obama.) It just made me mad. Which is why I spent some of the year reading conservative blogs and hyperchristian websites. I wanted to understand why people disagreed with me, instead of shouting them down like Then Boyfriend S. What I discovered is this:

The separation between Church and State does not exist for some of us. Look here for example. This is a blog from a woman who home-schools, believes that Sarah Palin is not right-wing enough because she has a career (if hiring makeup artists and dressing moose is actually a career, you understand), and feels that the only issue in the presidential race is morality. Namely, hers. She is not alone. Check it out, there's a fascinating group called Ladies Against Feminism - happily ignoring that the fact that they can vote at all as a direct result of uh, feminism. And mind you, these are the Liberals of this group. I disagree with many of their values and beliefs but I defend their right to have them. These are not bad people. I bet they never cut anyone off in traffic. Also, they can make cakes from scratch. I can't.

Whatever happens today, I'm proud to be American. I'm the child of a French woman who recalled taking citizenship in a country where she was never persecuted for being a Jew with tears in her eyes, and my mother was not sentimental. My grandparents on my father's side emigrated from Russia with the clothes on their backs, and saw my father and his siblings all graduate from college. And if the cake bakers and the hawks think Obama is too liberal, too pro-choice, too weak - isn't it great that they can feel that way?

I think it is.