I’m worried about the election – there’s so much at stake for LGBT people like me
Matt Cordes says he is concerned about federal laws affecting his marriage.
Colorado native Matt Cordes has been living outside the US since before the Trump era truly began. A 36-year-old mathematics lecturer at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Matt moved to Scotland with his husband last year.
Before that, he spent several years in Switzerland, and before that Israel. That’s where he was living when the news of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory came through.
“I went to bed before the results came out, and woke up and it was super depressing. There was one other American I knew who was a postdoc in Israel and we were both very shocked all day.
“And the Trump term was very stressful, because I felt I didn’t have the ability to do anything politically. I could vote, but it’s very hard to do political action if you’re abroad. You can make phone calls and send letters, but you can’t organise.”
And moving to Switzerland during Trump’s presidency didn’t entirely help Matt and his husband escape what was going on at home in the US.
“There’s a weird MAGA [Make America Great Again] subculture in Switzerland. I’d see people wearing MAGA hats, which was a little bit strange, and somehow QAnon infiltrated in a big way. But in general, people were just shocked that Trump was elected.”
Matt has always voted Democratic in presidential elections. “I was happy with Joe Biden, and I think he turned out to be a good president. He’s gotten a lot done. I do feel like he has, like, done the things he said he was gonna do, and I think that he doesn't get credit for that,” he says.
Like many US citizens, Matt has a keen sense of how the orientation of federal politics can affect him personally – in his case, when it comes to same-sex marriage, which the Biden administration managed to have Congress enshrine into law as a federal right.
“It's essentially everything the federal government can do for recognition of marriage, because of the state's rights issue [in which states rather than federal government make political decisions]. In fact it's still in the Colorado state constitution that gay marriage is illegal, but federally it’s a right.
"If the Supreme Court overturns that and it's illegal in Colorado – I don't think our marriages will be ex post facto invalidated, but I don't know. I mean, it depends who's in charge at the time, right? I mean, it's on the California ballot now to undo it in their constitution.
Asked what the stakes are in this election, Matt takes a deep breath. As with many other voters, Matt isn’t just worried about Trump himself; he’s also mindful of the agenda being assembled by some of the former president’s allies, and how it might affect specific groups of Americans.
He is particularly concerned about 'Project 2025', a document published by conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation that lays out a roadmap for a Trump victory.
Although Trump has explicitly said he has nothing whatsoever to do with Project 2025, many of his allies and former associates are involved in it.
“Related to this is Project 2025. Their plan to ‘destroy the administrative state’ gives the executive branch a lot of power while simultaneously taking away executive power. Making the government smaller and just stripping it back isn't gonna help people.
“And I'm also worried about marriage rights, LGBTQ, especially transgender rights. I think that there's already a worrying trend in the West where these are being seriously threatened or have been taken away.”
What also disturbs Matt is Trump’s intensified campaign against immigrants, which promises a programme of “mass deportation” if he wins.
“I worry about the worrisome rhetoric about immigrants,” Matt says. “The US is built on immigrants. We celebrate that, and I think it’s a really nice part of our culture. And I worry that demonising immigrants is not good, especially when these are people who came to the US to ask for asylum.
“We should be the shining light on the hill and welcome people. I've known people who previously lived in the US who used to be like, ‘Oh, I'd always wanted to move to the US’. And since 2016, I think people have sort of changed their mind about that.
“That's really a shame. Because I love the US, and I think it's a great place to be. There are obviously issues with it, but it’s kind of sad to see people not want to go there because of extremist politics.”
So where will he be on the night?
“I'm tempted to go to bed because I'm an old person, and don’t like staying up. But I think it depends on what the polls say. If it's going to be a tight race, I might stay up just so I don't wake up to disappointments.
“But watching January 6th on television and being in Switzerland was an awful experience. Election results are not like that – I hope there’s no political violence. If Pennsylvania is called for Harris, or North Carolina, or Georgia, then I’ll go to bed.”
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