Election fever

I’m a sucker for fanfare, so I love any big event: footy grand finals, opening nights, the Melbourne Cup, the Mardi Gras parade, the overdue dissolution of Britney Spears’s marriage. And if said event includes competition, and the side I’m going for has a good chance of winning, I can barely contain my excitement.

So it’s no surprise that I spent two days last week trainspotting the US Midterms, yelling out victorious numbers from my ivory tower office to my generally bored colleagues. Their responses ranged from mildly interested to outrageously ignorant. One -“ who shall remain nameless, but is in his 60s, for those who know him -“ didn’t even know the election was on.

But I was transfixed. First, in the House, as district by district, the Democrats completely kicked arse. Then legendary anti-gay rights activist Senator Rick Santorum lost in an early thrashing, and eventually, the Dems took the Senate.

Left-leaning bloggers rejoiced, while conservative internet bulletin boards turned into comedy sites, each post more hysterical than the last.

The elections were fabulous before they even began, with two sensational outings in close succession. Let me stress, again, the Star doesn’t get into outing people, unless they’re vile hypocrites like Mark Foley and Ted Haggard. Foley’s creepy email exchanges with underage White House pages revealed that the Republicans were just as gay as the Democrats (if a lot more closeted).

Meantime, Ted Haggard’s meth-snorting, prostitute-paid massages revealed the true colours of America’s powerful Evangelical movement. This is a religion that preaches homosexuality is a choice, and that married life (that is, straight, monogamous married life) is the only path to heaven.

The revelation one of the religion’s highest leaders was spending his downtime doing as-yet-unnamed immoral acts with a burly call-boy surely had an effect on the value voter turnout at the election.

Anyway, it’s all over bar the swearing, and the Democrats have a couple of years to prove themselves less gay-bashing than Bush’s mates. All the rest of the world can do is hope.

In the meantime, there are more pressing issues facing the US’s gay community. Like, when is Britney’s comeback album coming out?