The Myth of the Homosexual Vote

by A. E. Smith

More and more the heterosexuals are talking and writing about us and about the fact that we are "organizing." More and more they will think of us as another new minority and, possibly, one to be feared. And more and more I have heard and seen in print the phrase, "The Homosexual Vote."

There is no such thing as "The Homosexual Vote."

This is true for two reasons:

(1) Homosexuals have no choice between political parties. We can't vote "for" homosexuality. No party holds out anything to us.

(2) Homosexuals lack the religious, racial, economic, family, or "ghetto" ties which, from childhood on, bind and mold the members of those true minorities in which the majority actually do vote alike.

The minority voting blocs that do exist, of course, are very real and powerful entities in our U. S. pr litical scene. Until Kennedy, not much was said or written about them. But now things are different. When Kennedy was merely a candidate, his being a Catholic was spoken of as a liability. But he won. Now, being a Catholic is spoken of as a political asset. Everybody agrees that the Republican party nominated its Catholic candidate for Vice President "to catch

one

the Catholic vote" and to counterbalance the expected Catholic Democratic candidate for Vice President. Both the Catholic minority and, much more so, the Jewish minority are traditionally Democrats.* Sometimes a US minority voting bloc has switched, as with the Negroes, who preFDR were Republican, but with asiduous wooing were won over to the Democrats.

But a Negro, Catholic, or a Jew is a member of a minority in a far different sense than is a homosexual a member of a minority. The word "minority" should not be so loosely used.

I think the myth of "The Homosexual Vote" began when people started using, or associating, the word "minority" with homosexuals. Think of that word and naturally one thinks of voting power. The Catholic Vote. The Negro Vote. The Jewish Vote. Sc. by extension, "The Homosexual Vote."

This extension is totally wrong.

There is no more sense in talking about "The Homosexual Vote" than

*See Elmo Roper's "The Catholic Vote: A Second Look" in Sat. Review of 11/5/60, and "The Political Behavior of American Jews" by Fuchs.