The crushingly disappointing presidential campaign of 2004 was the beginning of my obsession with politics.
I moved from DC to Shanghai that summer. A proud little nationalist in a foreign land, I desperately wanted John Kerry to unseat George Bush so that that world could see America get back on the right track. I also felt threatened by China’s rising status as global power, and clung to my understanding of America as an open, tolerant place to maintain my patriotic edge. Which is why I was so offended by Bush’s vocal advocacy for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
I faked sick on Election Day so that I could stay home and watch the returns in my pajamas, but by the evening’s end I might have rather gone to school. Bush was victorious, and the consensus among analysts was that opposition to gay marriage had been the driver of high Republican turnout in Ohio, the decisive state. In sum, the election had been decided in favor of the offensive candidate specifically because of voters who were themselves offensive.
With ten new statewide constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, the outlook for equal rights was bleak. The war in Iraq would continue unabated. Stem-cell research would continue to go unfunded. A foreign policy based on cowboy rhetoric, lead by men who saw intellectualism and critical thinking as weaknesses, would continue to preclude any possibility of diplomatic resolution to any problem. And these were just the things we knew would go wrong.
In those grim hours I could not have believed that in just over ten years, we would see the week that we’ve just seen. For the first time, Confederate symbols became truly taboo in our culture, as they should always have been. The Supreme Court upheld the Obamacare subsidies, thus removing any reasonable doubt that universal access to health care in this country is here to stay. And the court declaring what was obvious to me in that hot China summer — that if straight people have the right to marry who they love, gay people must also have that right.
As I lay in bed Friday morning, having just awakened to see the Washington Post's push notification telling of the court’s good news, I could not help but recall deeply my sense of loss, disgust, and despair that November evening ten years ago, and think: my goodness, how far we have come.