Ask the GAYS for what the GAYS want

I get where you are coming from. It is the same with reproductive rights. The majority of people in government are males. The straight supporters are usually a little more in touch with what the lgbt "community" wants in my experience, but we need more variety in our government so we can get a wider diversity of opinions. Right now it is mainly made up of white, christian, straight, males.

 

we want more lemon pledge...

 

Other than the male part, that is representative of the majority of the US population. The perfect congress's statistics would almost match up with the statistics of the US population (still more diverse than the current one, but still white and christian dominated)

 

I disagree. The perfect Congress's statistics would be the group of people representing the correct opinions regardless of their sex, religion, or color of skin. I would rather have all men in Congress if the only women senators and representatives we could get thought like Ann Coulter. Being a woman or a person of some minority status gives you a slightly better chance at having a right view on social issues, since you'd be more likely to understand the issues at stake than someone with privilege, but it's no guarantee.

We want to end discrimination in society at large, not fill quotas in our levels of representative government. Of course, if we could do both, I'd be fine with that. But if I could only get the first, I don't care who actually takes office.

 

I don't think the OP was saying that women or minorities are the answer or even that they will have a better view on social issues, as you said its possible but it isn't guaranteed, I think she wanted to have her voice heard (or people like her's voices heard) rather than having someone who doesn't relate to them as closely discuss them.

 

Exactly ^. For example I know that not all women are pro-choice for example look at Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. It would be nice however, for the whole government to not be made up of people of the same race and similar background. I want people who can relate to lots of different groups of people in my diverse country.

 

Sure. I agree, I just had a quibble with what I took to be the assumption that this would automatically happen with diversity.

I'm fully on board with the logic though. To take an example, I found it to be super amusing that Sonya Sotomayor got so much flak for her "wise Latina" remark. A bunch of (mostly clueless white) people thought that it was problematic that she'd suggest that her racial background gave her a unique perspective on the law and special access to understanding what's fair. As a matter of fact, yes, being outside the socially dominant group does give you special access to understanding what's fair. Some people just choose to throw the understanding away, like Palin and Bachmann.

More on the topic though, we have a really wrong-headed idea that "everyone's biased" and therefore the best people to say what queers want would of course not be queers themselves. I mean, we could "overreach."