Gay-Friendly Gainesville

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Gainesville has protected the rights of LGBT individuals in an overwhelming 58-42 victory. The fight was particularly nasty, producing the video above in the link above insinuating that protecting the 100 or so transgender residents of the city would lead to men following little girls into bathrooms? Absurdity and transphobia -- real advanced, folks.

The final count: 11,717 to 8,375. That's a pretty sweeping victory.

But Gay.com has an interesting take on the win:

Surrounded by notoriously conservative northern Florida, should Gainesville now be considered a "gay-friendly" city -- or was it simply the high turn out of liberal-minded University of Florida students who were responsible for swinging the vote more toward equality?

My take? Simple: we didn't really talk about this one much, did we? Even I only posted once on the situation and then only because it looked like Cincinnati, in a way. Have we already moved so far past Prop8, have we already had the necessary country-community-catharsis that we aren't going to fight with each other? Or, are we now so insularized by 1,000,000 little fights that we don't have the time to fight for these little places.

I mean, we should win this kind of battle, even in Gainesville. Hell, we should win this kind of fight in Birmingham (AL) and 96 (SC -- and yes, there is a city in SC called 96).

But we kinda let this one slide, didn't we?