Power of the vote
The gay and lesbian community begins wielding political clout
Archived article from Oct 22, 1999
By Michael Sepanic
For many years, gays and lesbians in Philadelphia were targeted by police officials, who linked that community to prostitution, organized crime, liquor-law violations and a host of other perceived evils.
Today, that same police department is accountable to a civilian review board that includes representatives from the homosexual community. Gay men and lesbians serve at virtually every level of city government. And their votes are assiduously courted by politicians seeking offices at the municipal, state and federal levels.
The Philadelphia story is one that has been replicated in cities across the nation, as gays and lesbians leverage their political and economic capital to define a communal identity, says Robert W. Bailey, an associate professor of public administration at the Camden campus.
"The gay and lesbian vote must be acknowledged as a legitimate voting base, one that can shape the outcome of any election," stresses Bailey.
In his new book, "Gay Politics, Urban Politics: Identity and Economics in the Urban Setting," Bailey examines how the lesbian and gay community established itself as a political and economic force in such cities as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia and, in the process, started to define and express its identity.
"Rainbow flags and pride fairs are far more than window dressing for a particular community," says the researcher. "They also should be viewed as the boundaries of an important voting district."
Published as part of the "Power, Conflict, and Democracy: American Politics Into the Twenty-First Century" series released by Columbia University Press, Bailey's book notes that lesbian and gay urban dwellers constitute an "identity," not an "interest," group.
"Identity groups primarily are concerned with nonmarket issues," explains Bailey. "They grow in action and emerge in increasing detail as they confront challenges to their social definitions." Interest groups, in contrast, are concerned about the impact of specific global issues upon their city -- Houston and oil market trends, for example.
For the lesbian and gay community, "surface agendas might vary from city to city, but the deep agenda of identity always remains," Bailey maintains.
While not yet included as a specific demographic category by many mainstream political scientists, homosexual voters have a demonstrable impact upon the political lives of their cities. Bailey notes, for example, that the gay and lesbian vote played a significant role in the 1987 election of Harold Washington as Chicago's mayor.
"Washington reached out to the gay and lesbian community," notes Bailey. "He listened to their issues. And they supported him in a very tight election."
Similarly, their votes were critical to the 1989 election of New York's first African-American mayor, David Dinkins.
Bailey's research found similar correlations on the national level, where the homosexual vote buoyed Clinton in 1992 and remained strong in the 1996 election, despite the perception that the president had failed to deliver a promised open environment in the armed forces.
The book reports that gays and lesbians are 2.5 times more likely to register as Democrats than Republicans; however, in a study commissioned by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Bailey discovered that approximately one in four homosexual voters supported Republican candidates in the 1996 election.
For further proof of this group's ascendancy as a political power, one need look no further than current preparations for the presidential race. "Where once politicians would avoid the topic of sexual identity completely, in just the past few months, Vice President Gore has spoken at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay/lesbian group," observes Bailey.
"President Clinton has attended a Democratic fund-raiser in Beverly Hills, featuring wealthy California lesbians and gay men, and is scheduled to address the annual dinner of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the principal gay/lesbian lobby group in New York state.
"I won't be surprised if, by November 2000, Gov. Bush attends some event sponsored by the Log Cabin Republicans," he adds, referring to the principal association of gays and lesbians in the Republican Party.
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