A More Perfect Union

by Joanne Cabry

Congress is still a white man’s club, but the freshman class of the 113th Congress will be the most diverse in history. It will be more representative of the United States from race to religion, and from gender to sexual orientation. It will look more like America with 4 new African American representatives, 10 new Latinos, 5 new Asian Americans and 24 women in the House or Senate. It will believe more like America with the first two Hindu congresspeople, the first Buddhist senator, and the first non-theist to openly acknowledge her belief prior to getting elected. It will love more like America, with 4 new LGBT congresspeople or senators, including the first openly bisexual congresswoman and the first openly gay congressman of color. And it will be younger, with four new congressmen born in the 1980s.   Source

The diversity itself isn’t significant to me.   It’s the fact that in 2012 more voters than ever  voted for someone who ‘wasn’t like them.’  They trusted someone to represent them who didn’t follow the tenets of the Judeo-Christian bible. They voted for someone whose ancestors didn’t come from Europe.  They didn’t think the candidate’s gender orientation was relevant.  And they voted for women.  There will be 24 new female members of Congress in January. When I cast my first vote in 1964  there was a total of 14 women in Congress. (12 in the House and 2 in the Senate) This year there will be 98. (78 in the House and 20 in the Senate)

So let’s celebrate the diversity — not for its own sake but as a sign that perhaps “we the people” are moving toward that “more perfect union” that our Constitution charges us to create.  But we can only get there if every one of  us believes that someone like us can be elected to represent all of us.