A couple of days ago I wrote that gays won’t let their friends vote McCain and with less than four weeks before election day that message has taken on an increased urgency. This post the second is a series that I am writing urging LGBT people to talk to our family, friends and co-workers about why a vote for John McCain is a vote for discrimination against LGBT Americans.

John McCain and Sarah Palin have unleash a wave of negative attacks in speeches and ads against Barack Obama and our fight to change our country for the better. They have, as a New York Times editorial stated, moved “into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia.”

What makes you think that if elected they will not turn that same mean-spiritedness and willingness to engage in divisive politics against us?

As LGBT people we have the responsibility to ourselves and to our friends and family to make clear to them just how much a McCain/Palin administration would hurt us and our families. We have to make them understand that McCain is in no way a “maverick” especially when it comes to LGBT civil rights and that Palin, despite the “folksy charm” that appeals to some, is even worse on LGBT issues. Palin has close ties to an anti-gay church that believes that LGBT people can be cured of our sexual orientation and gender identity through prayer and Palin believes that being gay is a choice.

McCain is already on record has strongly supporting the proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot in Arizona, California and Florida that would ban marriage for same-sex couples. In California, passage of Prop. 8 would nullify the marriages of more than 11,000 couples.

Speaking at the HRC National Dinner in Washington, DC on October 4th, Terry Bean, co-founder of HRC and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, said:

It is time that we demanded that our family, our friends, the people closet to us consider our equality as they cast their votes. It is unacceptable that the people who say the love us vote for those that would demean us and consistently block our path to justice.

Some of that is our own fault. We cannot keep them for voting for our enemies. It is, at least for them, still a free country. But they most be told that doing so is an act of betrayal and will harm our relationships

That is where you come in.

By speaking to our families, friends and co-workers about how harmful a McCain presidency would be for us, we can give the people who love us an opportunity to support us.

This video gives examples of how young people are standing up for what they believe and speaking to friends and family about why it is so to elect Barack Obama as our next president. The video is not LGBT-specific, but if these kids have the courage to have “the talk” with their families, why can’t we?

Join Gays Won’t Let Friends Vote McCain on Facebook.

By Vic Basile

Vic, a longtime GLBT activist, was the first executive director of the Human Rights Campaign and a co-founder of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.

During the 2004 election, I wrote about doing all that I could to prevent my family and friends from voting for candidates who oppose equality for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people. More importantly, I encouraged all of my GLBT brothers and sisters, as well as our straight allies, to do the same.

Of course, we can’t really stop our friends and families from voting for whomever they choose – it is, at least for them, a free and democratic country – but we can prevent them doing it without damaging our bonds of love, trust and friendship. The reality is that they can’t truly love or even respect us, and knowingly vote for candidates who work to deny us the same equality and freedoms they enjoy. The two are simply incompatible.

However, before drawing a line in the sand, it is clearly our responsibility is to educate them, to make them fully understand that what they are doing affects our lives in the most fundamental ways possible. My sense is that they are largely unaware of their candidates’ positions on these most basic human rights issues and are supporting them for completely unrelated reasons. Unwitting though it may be, they are nevertheless complicit in a political struggle that seeks to deny us our full equality.

Those who see themselves as our friends and yet vote for politicians who oppose equality for us need to be reminded of the meaning of friendship. Friends treat each other with respect and dignity, and as equals. Voting for enemies of your friend’s equality is not an act of friendship and certainly not one of love. The same is true for family members. In matters as basic as human rights and simple equality, the old refrain that “friends can agree to disagree and still be friends” has a deafeningly hollow ring.

Friends and family can disagree about the economy, national security, taxes and the environment, and still respect and care about each other. But can the same be said when one participates in the oppression of the other? It doesn’t really matter whether the issue is race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. People who participate in the oppression of others or who sit quietly by while their elected officials do the dirty work ought to be called to task. Their behavior is shameful and excruciatingly painful. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, the greatest injustice is not the strident clamor of bad people, but the appalling silence of good people.

I believe most Americans today would not knowingly vote for someone they thought to be racist, anti-Semitic or misogynistic. Yet they don’t think twice about voting for homophobes. They just don’t make the connection and we let their actions go unchallenged. Shame on us! Many of my friends tell me about their Bush/McCain-supporting Republican parents, but go on to say how accepting they are of them. When I ask how that is possible, how loving parents could support someone who wants to hurt their child, I get a blank look or a glib comment about how “that’s just the way they are.” It isn’t the way they are – they just don’t know any better and it is our job to teach them.

Sometimes I hear (and sadly, this often comes from gay people) “they aren’t single issue voters and consider many issues when deciding how to vote.” What does it say about our sense of self worth when we accept from our parents the explanation that taxes and the preservation of wealth are more important than the dignity, safety and equality of their children? Why are we are so reluctant to challenge them when their behavior so fundamentally and so adversely affects our lives?

I have been as guilty of this as anyone, but no more. Ending our silence is the only way to educate the people we cherish most that our equality is important and that it requires respect. Love and friendship demand nothing less.

If more convincing is needed, imagine our electoral power when we vote as a bloc. Arguably, it was our vote that swept Bill Clinton into office in 1992. The 2008 election promises to be another cliffhanger, providing us with the opportunity to determine the outcome. Imagine how much stronger our vote would be if we were joined by our families and friends. Never have the stakes been higher or the issues clearer. John McCain has voted against our interests at almost every opportunity. Barack Obama has a nearly perfect record of support.

If we fail to put a friend in the White House, our long battle for equality will be stalled for decades. The next President will, in all likelihood, appoint at least three new justices to the Supreme Court and we cannot afford for them to be chosen by the far right. This threat is horrifyingly real. We have come too far at too great a cost to be silent now.

I don’t want you to miss out on the electoral fun of saying buh-bye to the Bush/Cheney/McCain regime so make sure you are registered to vote.

Visit Vote for Change to register to vote, request to vote absentee, or find your polling location.

Click for registration deadlines for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

There is nothing more frustrating to me than a gay person who won’t vote. While hard to believe, there are still some of you out there. Recently, my friend Patricia, whom I have known for almost 20 years and lived with as a roommate for two years, told me that she had never registered to vote, nor does she plan to do so for the upcoming presidential election.

“I would have voted, if it were Hillary,” she explained.

What’s more, Patricia just moved to Pennsylvania, where her vote could really make a difference. I explained why it was so important. I went through the laundry list of reasons, from the Supreme Court to the economy to the war in Iraq. Nothing made a difference. But what I didn’t say was that her vote might just be a matter of life and death.

According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, in a 78-page report released in May of 2008, anti-LGBT hate crimes have increased by 24 percent since 2006. The number of reported incidents rose from 1,954 to a whopping 2,430 and occurred in every region of the country. Shockingly, since that report was released, an increase in hate activity was reported, with at least 13 brutal crimes perpetrated on our community.

Many of you have heard about Lawrence King, the 15 year-old boy who was shot by a classmate in California this past February for wearing nail polish and acting less than manly. Unfortunately, Lawrence is only the tip of the iceberg and, as many of these crimes are perpetrated against our transgendered brothers and sisters, the media is not so comfortable, or adept, with accurately reporting what is going on.

But the numbers don’t lie. In Michigan, the number of LGBT-related hate crimes increased by 207 percent. In Minnesota, the increase was 135 percent; in Kansas City, 142 percent. And in Pennsylvania, the number rose by 28 percent. When it happens to one of us, Patricia, it happens to us all.

So how does her vote matter? John McCain has consistently opposed creating federal hate crime protections for gay and transgendered people. He voted against LGBT-inclusive hate crimes bills in 2000, 2002, 2004, and, just last year, McCain was the only senator to miss the voting session on the Matthew Shepard Act, which gave the Justice Department the ability to aid, or take over, investigations and prosecutions of bias-related crimes. The Matthew Shepard Act was eventually attached to a Defense Authorization bill, but later gutted in a conference committee because of Bush’s veto threat.

To contrast, Barack Obama has pledged throughout his campaign to enact a fully inclusive federal hate crimes law. He not only took time away from campaigning to vote on the Matthew Shepard Act, but he cast the deciding 60th vote to pass the law in the face of a filibuster threat, and he co-sponsored the bill as well.

In 2002, Obama was the chief co-sponsor in the Illinois State Senate of a bill that not only identified classes of felonies for the commission of a hate crime, but also created the offense of “conspiracy against civil rights,” by which a person, with intent to interfere with the free exercise of a right or privilege secured by the Constitution, agrees with another to inflict or threaten physical harm on any person if one of the two acts in furtherance of that agreement.

If that kind of protection were in place on the federal level, hate crime numbers would plummet and all of us, in the LGBT community and others threatened by violent crime based on prejudice, could rest assured knowing that our country believes that we deserve equal protection under the law. Currently, only 11 states, and the District of Columbia, have LGBT-inclusive hate crime laws. Luckily for Patricia, Pennsylvania is one of them. Thirty-one states have hate crime laws that cover sexual orientation, but not gender identity.

Seventy-three percent of Americans, according to a 2007 Hart Research poll, already support the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in federal hate crimes law. I am not sure how Patricia feels about hate crimes protections; I just hope that those other 73 percent are registered to vote!

Anthony M. Brown, an attorney, is a member of the Obama for America National LGBT Steering and Policy Committee (but is not writing on its behalf), and is the executive director of The Wedding Party. He can be reached at Brown@msclaw.net.