Gay Community Hopeful Over Colbert Busch's Chances in SC1

Like a lot of people last Election Day, Mark McKinney had to wait a while to vote. Two hours, in fact. So, he struck up a conversation with the woman in line next to him. In the course of chatting, McKinney told the woman that he had been with his partner for 22 years and was impressed when the woman did not care that the partner was the man standing beside him.

The time passed quickly. “We talked about everything,” McKinney said. “We thought, ‘Wow, what a great person that was.’”

The person, it turns out, was Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who has a chance to become the First District’s representative in Congress on Tuesday.

Even if he had not had that personal experience with Colbert Busch, McKinney told Patch that he would be supporting her and doing so with vigor.

McKinney also was a vocal supporter of Linda Ketner when she ran for the SC1 seat in 2008 as an openly gay woman. She lost by only four points to Republican Henry Brown. “(Ketner) would have been perfect,” McKinney said.

But McKinney said the energy from the gay community in Charleston is even greater for Colbert Busch than it was for Ketner.

McKinney said it’s due in large part to the national momentum that has gathered behind marriage equality. At the SC1 debate on Monday night, Colbert Busch supported gay marriage without evocation while opponent Mark Sanford did not.

Watch the candidates discuss gay marriage here.

Beyond what’s happened at the ballot box and in the courts, McKinney said there has been a cultural change in attitudes since Ketner ran in 2008, particularly among younger people.

“It’s been seismic,” said McKinney, a video producer and instructor at Trident Tech.

“95 percent of my students could care less whether I’m gay or straight. They don’t care.”

Sharing McKinney’s hope is Warren Redman-Gress, the Executive Director of Alliance for Full Acceptance, a non-profit based in the Lowcountry.

Redman-Gress said he believes that gay marriage has turned into a rights issue, rights that are guaranteed by the constitution and therefore the federal government.

Redman-Gress noted Colbert Busch’s forceful stand at the debate over marriage rights and noted that Sanford would make gay marriage a state’s rights issue rather than one of civil rights.

To illustrate the point, Redman-Gress recounted a recent experience with his son watching the movie “The Help.”

“He was embarrassed that we used to treat people like that and it wasn’t that long ago,” Redman-Gress said. “He couldn’t understand how a society can function that way.”

Gay marriage is at a place where race relations was in the 1950s, according to Redman-Gress. “We’re dealing with it in piecemeal fashion. The forces of history are on our side. It’s a step-by-step process. State-by-state and court-by-court change will come.”

In the Charleston area, Redman-Gress has also detected a change. “The night before the DOMA hearings in the Supreme Court we had 500 people come out in support,” he said. “That speaks to what’s happened just in Charleston in recent years. People know neighbors and co-workers who are guy and that helps change the culture.”

McKinney agreed with Redman-Gress about the changing sentiment in the Lowcountry.

“Now, straight people are now standing up in to support gay marriage,” he said.

But Charleston has always been anomalous to the rest of South Carolina, McKinney said.

“We still keep voting for hypocrites like Mark Sanford, Newt Gingrich and Nikki Haley,” McKinney said. “But I do feel like the loop is closing and hopefully voters will see through Sanford.”

McKinney is a native of Rock Hill and said, “We’ve had a lot of hate flung our way,” McKinney said, adding that friends have encouraged him to move somewhere else.  “I’m not leaving. I don’t give up,” he said. “Things are changing and I want to be here when they do.”

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