When Jimmy Carter Said “Love,” this Queer Young Man Heard “Acceptance and Inclusion.”

The 2024 Democratic National Convention reminded me of 1976

1976.

U.S.A.’s bicentennial year. An obscure southern governor named Jimmy Carter was speaking on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, accepting the party’s nomination for president of the United States. The fellow at the mic came across as an exceptionally decent man, gentle and kind in a way that defied the stereotypical macho swagger exhibited by most politicians.

The speech…

I don’t recall much of what the nominee said to the cheering crowd. However, I do remember that, near the end of his address, he smiled warmly and exuded a one syllable word that vibrated profoundly in my heart.

That word was “LOVE.”

Here was a politician coming to national notoriety during a particularly turbulent and divisive period in American history — post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, post Roe v Wade, post Stonewall, amidst the burgeoning sexual revolution and the feminist, gay-liberation, and black-power movements. Enormous, accelerated cultural change was at loggerheads with the reactionary backlash of the so-called Moral Majority.