By Lisa Neff

reprinted with permission from LOGOonline sister site 365Gay.com

I will vote today in Florida’s presidential preference primary.

My vote won’t count for much in the delegate column because Florida and the Democratic National Party are at odds over the state bumping up its primary date. To punish the state for advancing the primary, the Democratic candidates agreed to forgo campaigning and the Democratic National Committee vowed not to count Florida’s delegates at the convention in Denver.

But in my heart, my vote will matter immensely. I’ll be casting my vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who quite possibly will become the first woman elected to the White House.

If you don’t think that matters, if you think we should be beyond concern over the gender or the race of the candidate we elect to the presidency, please think again.

Lisa Neff

Maybe we can get beyond such concerns when we’ve actually elected someone other than a white man to the White House.

I will tell you that I was a kid in bell bottoms, suede sneakers and a wide-collared shirt when I first thought about Americans electing a woman president. It was the year of the Bicentennial celebration and I remember a contingent of pro-ERA women in my hometown’s Fourth of July parade. Some marched. Some rode on a float. One wore a raggedy “Shirley Chisholm for President” T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. “I Am Woman” blasted from speakers on the float and it seemed every woman and girl standing along the parade route waved her arms or raised her fists to “I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman.” A lot of women didn’t watch the parade go by that July 4, they joined in the march.

There was something about that era, about the mood, the attitudes, the music, the culture, the politics that led me to believe that gender barriers would shatter and soon our nation would elect a woman president.

Well, America grew out of that time and mood and, by the mid-1980s, I had gone to college, learned that the first woman to run for president was Victoria Woodhull in long-ago 1872 and that many women had run after her. I had gone to college and graduated to cynicism. There was something about that era too.

Some inspiration came from Carol Moseley Braun’s U.S. Senate run and victory and again with her brief bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 — she dropped out of the race four days before the Iowa caucuses and before I could vote for her.

So honestly the last time I felt as inspired as I feel today was 32 years ago, when I was a shaggy-haired baby butch in bell bottoms and sneakers raising my fist to “I Am Woman” and confiding to my mom, “I’m going to play in the Major Leagues.”

Today, I will vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton for president. I will vote for her because she has the will, the drive, the intellect and the experience to do the job — and no I do not work for the campaign. Also — and I am not shy about sharing this — I will vote for her because I am woman.

Yes, I’m feeling inspirationally nostalgic for more than three decades ago when I sensed the Oval Office glass ceiling in the United States would be lifted, when I felt the promise of a woman’s presidency. That promise seems as groovy and cool as the bright Bicentennial Day it was born.

Here’s hoping Hillary Clinton’s numbers are too big to ignore.

Lisa Neff is a columnist at 365gay.com and a reporter with The Islander. She has has worked for more than 20 years in journalism.