Why Voting Matters for All of Us: LGBTQIA+, People of Color, Black Americans, People with Disabilities, Students, Those Who Are Elderly--All Of Us

In my last semester of teaching a course on Ethics at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in Durham, NC, an HBCU, I gave my students--who were 99% Black or people of color--a chance to get a grade higher in the course if they did one extracurricular activity: voted. The year? 2014. It was a mid-term election. And the Republican legislature and Governor of NC was doing everything in its power to make voting in the state more difficult, especially for students, people with disabilities, those who are elderly, Black Americans, and people of color. Why? Because they tended to vote for Democrats. All the students had to do was go to the poll and take a selfie of themselves at the poll, and I recorded it in my grade book. A lot of students did better than they normally would in this course because of the extra credit assignment. 

Voting matters. This is how democracy works. Functions. Lives. Breathes. Dies. By the people voting. All the people. And all the votes. Every, single, one of them. 

And that's what is up with the current struggle for democracy in the US: the right to vote, and have our votes counted, regardless of our political party affiliation.

On this, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr., Birthday celebrations and with the discussion of voting rights acts in the US Senate, it is important to understand that the 400+ laws that Republican state legislatures have come up with to restrict voting will not only impact Black people and people of colors, students, people with disabilities, and those who are elderly, but those of us who are LGBTQIA+ as well. The LGBTQIA+ community, and our recent progress that we have made in some states, is clearly one of the targets of these legislators who want to take away our rights, especially those people who are transgender. Here's the harsh reality: those whose power is waning in this country, who are feeling it slip quickly--primarily people who are white, heterosexual, middle-class, male, able-bodied, "evangelical Christian," and older, who have been in power in this country for generations--are wanting to protect that power, even if they are in the minority. Attacks have been made against LGBTQIA+ people under the banner of "religious freedoms," meant to take away rights that we've just received or are still fighting for. Currently, 29 states do not have full legal protections for LGBTQIA+ people. Simply moving across state lines--from OR to ID--could expose LGBTQIA+ families, like mine, to discrimination and harm.

In the end, we want to protect everyone's rights to vote in this country, being treated as equals. After all, we are all created in the image of the same Creator, and we should all be free from the sting of discrimination in this country. 

For more information on these issues go to the following:

https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2022/1/17/protecting-right-vote-only-way-safeguard-lgbtq-rights

https://religionnews.com/2022/01/14/black-faith-leaders-have-a-proud-legacy-on-civil-rights-it-should-include-lgbtq-rights/

Why is this important to raise up on a blog that deals with the intersection of religion and LGBTQIA+ issues? In the two churches I serve as pastor--Portsmouth Trinity Lutheran Church and Community of Pilgrims Presbyterian Fellowship--I've added voting rights to both prayer lists, under "Prayer Concerns." My tradition, as a Christian formed by Reformed theology, encourages us to be part of the state when the state is threatening to treat people as "lesser thanks  in any way or in any regards. To discriminate against people in the voting process would be considered evil, because it is an act of discrimination.

I end with the two commandments that Jesus says covers all the basis: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:37.

May it be so. 






 

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