Angry in America
This election is rubbing some folks raw...but maybe that's not all bad for democracy
Yet with so much at stake this time around, some feel they have little choice but to stick their necks out. That's how Margie Gilmore, 39, felt when she brought her 3-month-old daughter to visit her parents last month on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She had already come out to them as a lesbian, but the family rarely discussed their political views. "We just don't go there," she says.
But when she pulled into her parents' driveway and saw a Bush-Cheney sticker on their best friend's car, "I knew I had to say something," she recalls. "I'm afraid to ask who you're voting for because it would be so painful if you're voting for Bush," she later told her father over breakfast. "Don't you see that there's discrimination [against gays wanting to marry] and that by voting for Bush you're supporting the perpetrator?"
"I haven't heard Kerry say anything very constructive about what he would do to support you," her father responded defensively.
"Well, he wouldn't try to change the Constitution," she said, starting to cry.
The heated conversation left a pit in everyone's stomach. So much so that Gilmore's father, Jack, thought hard about it that night and then told her that he and his wife had decided to switch their votes. "I was leaning toward the Republican because I'm one of the guys who think the Democrats are really tax and spend," he admits. "But Bush's push for a constitutional amendment [on marriage] is wrong. And because it's such a passionate thing for Margie, that was enough to swing our vote. Family members aren't always going to agree on politics. But for the parents not to go with the feeling of their child on such a personal issue, well, I feel sorry for them."
The younger Gilmore couldn't be more pleased. "I just got two votes for Kerry," she says proudly. "And those were hard votes to get."
Analysts on both sides think that such passion could lead to a more energized electorate and higher voter turnout--both potentially positive developments. "To the extent that all this gets people more engaged in the political process, that's really not such a bad thing," says modern American historian Ellen Fitzpatrick. That's how the matriarch of the LaLiberte family sees it. Although mother Carol, 70, is concerned about the rift between her children, "I can't get too upset because I raised them to think for themselves," she says. "If some of my kids vote for Bush, I say go for it. If the others vote for Kerry, go for it. I just hope and pray that when this is over that they say, 'let's work together,' because we desperately need to take care of our country."
With Robert Zausner
advertisement
