First published in the Chicago Free Press, September 20, 2006
When it comes to same-sex marriage, it turns out that many Americans just don't care.
About 1,000 adults were asked as part of a new Associated Press/IPSOS poll about how George W. Bush is handling the country, how they might vote in the November Congressional elections, and what they thought about some top issues.
Including gay marriage.
Now a couple years ago-say, after the Massachusetts marriage debates-anti-gay marriage sentiment reached an all-time high, as much as 63 percent. People were furious and they were fighting.
But in this most recent poll, what percentage thought gay marriage was extremely important?
Only 22 percent, or about one in five.
Thirty-six percent said that gay marriage wasn't an important issue at all and 11 percent called it only "slightly important." Fifteen percent thought it was "moderately important"; 5 percent called it "very important." One percent of respondents weren't sure.
In fact, those polled adults thought that gay marriage was the least important issue they were asked about, coming after eight others including the economy, the situation in Iraq, health care and gas prices.
These adults weren't all Northeastern liberals, either, or secular city Dems. Most of them described themselves as conservative or moderate; slightly more respondents came from the South than from other areas of the United States; more of them were from the suburbs or rural areas than from cities; the large majority identified as Christian.
So. We have these 1,000 likely voters who are overwhelmingly white, mostly Christian, mostly conservative to moderate, and they're asked about same-sex marriage and THEY DON'T CARE.
They care more about social security than they do about gay marriage. They care more about terrorism. Actually, they care more about how much it costs to fill up their SUV than they do about whether someone in the next town or next state-or heck, next door-wants to marry someone of the same sex.
They're not for it. They're not against it. They just don't understand why it's an issue.
And this, my friends, is a good thing.
Really.
Conservative leaders (read: Karl Rove) have been spinning media webs for years, trying to insure that gay marriage becomes a wedge issue, like abortion. They want equal marriage to stand for everything that's wrong with America in the eyes of Mr. Mainstreet; they want it to be shorthand for everything America fears. If gays get marriage, they tell us, then no one will have marriage, because marriage will be meaningless.
These leaders hoped that Americans would be so afraid of instability caused by gays and lesbians that they would vote with conservative Republicans on every issue, no matter how misguided, in the belief that a vote for a Republican was a vote against gays, and a vote against gays was a vote against moral depravity. For a little while, it worked.
For a little while, liberals and moderate Republicans feared that gay marriage might be the issue that kept neo-conservative Republicans in the White House and in Congress for years to come.
But Americans have seen marriage in Massachusetts and they've seen civil unions in Vermont, and there are still straight people getting married and there are married straight people doing things that married straight people do.
Americans have come to realize that opening rights up to one group doesn't mean taking rights away from another.
All this might explain why, in Illinois, anti-gay activists recently stopped pushing for a referendum suggesting that the state's gay marriage ban be written into the state constitution. They were losing. So they gave up.
And in Virginia, Va4Marriage is struggling to raise money to support the passage of a same-sex marriage ban. Much of the funds they've raised so far-a measly $155,000-come from a single donor who doesn't live in the state.
A populace that doesn't care that much about an issue isn't going to fight against it.
Of course, a lot of this apathy must be because gay marriage has quietly receded from the headlines. New York turned its back on civil unions, as did California. Those defeats hurt, even though I'm betting they are temporary.
But apathy on this issue is OK for now. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is heading toward repeal. Let's take that major victory when it comes as a sign that the country really is turning around on gay rights. Let's take it as a herald for the eventual victory of marriage equality.
Because we will get same-sex marriage. And the best thing that could happen when that day comes is for America to hear the news, shrug, and just not care.
Corvino, John
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LOL!
Own3d
My friend Randy—–You seem to be the only sensible one here. When going back to the religious wars in the past,you need to remember that it was not God’s intent for man to murder man. Also, the average intelect mind was so low that the mass was lost and confuse, just like the gays are today.
Randy—-Help me on this one. If there are real Christian gays, why would they worship a God that condemned them? (Romans 1:22-28)
kittynboi —-You were the one that stated “Belief in the Supernatural is false”. Could it be that you are the one who is way out you dept?
Northeast Libertarian—–Who is the one who is rude now? With no insult intented, you remind me of an uneducated teen-ager. I have never called anyone personal names and I do not intend to do so. Try to grow up.
Sorry for my typing errors.
As I wrote in a post on the Gay Spirituality blog, Vanasco has made some excellent points. However, her “don’t worry, be happy” message is perhaps not the wisest way. She nowhere demonstrates that apathy is actually helpful in achieving victories in human rights. To the extent that gays may be achieving quiet victories while the public sleeps, these victories can be undone when the issue begins to receive media attention.
The problem of turning public opinion in our favor cannot be solved by resting complacently with news that the public doesn’t care. Instead our objective should be to increase the level of care and concern and attention given to our civil rights issues. Getting apathetic folks to care about issues that they may feel don’t apply to them is hard work. But that’s our task.
Who is the one who is rude now?
None of us are rude. I am simply offering you a way out of the destructive, unfulfilling heterosexual lifestyle.
Deep down, you know how destructive it is.
Look around. How many happy heterosexuals are there? Very few, if any. That soul-destroying lifestyle has claimed billions of people and makes them profoundly angry and unhappy. Just look at your posts!
I’m inviting you to abandon the pretensions of heterosexuality and embrace your inner queer nature. I can tell that the idea intrigues you. A little time in the ex-straight program, and you’ll be a normal, healthy gay man in no time — free of the burdens and pain of the unhealthy, destructive heterosexual lifestyle.
N.E.Libertarian—–Thank you for your comment. You just proved you are mentally ill.
I’ve been trying to restrain myself and keep out of this. But I’ve reached the point where I just simply have to ask: Why are so many of you trying to engage in anything like debate with this obvious crackpot? You’d accomplish more talking to a cobblestone.
I’m not debating him — I’m trying to get him to acknowledge his natural sexual orientation, which is the underlying reason he’s so obsessed with posting here.
It seems he’s got deep-seated issues. . . he views embracing his sexual identity as mental illness, and thinks that a public bashing of gays will banish the own queer fantasy which burns in his loins. Let’s be compassionate with him, we should not show hatred towards one of our gay brothers.
Look, Save America. I really don’t know what your point is. You come here, to a political website, wanting to argue about morality. You say we gay people are sick and twisted, that we are lost, and that we are mentally ill. Any arguments we use to say that we are not, you dismiss out of hand. You ask if any gays are Christian, told that there are, and you say that can’t be. When we disagree with you, you call us uneducated, and worse.
We have tried to be nice, we have tried to engage you, and all you do is throw insults at us. You even compared my accomplishments to Hitler’s.
If your point was to convert any of us gays to your religion, you have done a piss poor job of it. If your point was to point out that being gay is somehow terrible — save it, we’ve heard it before. And although we all disagree about a lot of things on this website, the one thing that we agree with is that we are gay, we are out, and we know that God or nature, has made us that way. Don’t even THINK of debating us on that one. If your point was to figure out how gay people think, you don’t come to the party filled with insults and rude comments and expect a decent reception. Initially, I engaged you because I thought it would be nice to engage in dialog with a religious fanatic. All I’ve learned is that your mind is closed shut, and you have no interest whatsoever in listening to us. That would be fine if this were some anti-gay religious website, but it is not — it is a website for gay people to discuss politics.
If your point was merely to irritate us, you have succeded. Congratulations. No doubt you will walk away from this website telling your friends, “well I tried to show the light to them there homosexuals, but they just wouldn’t listen.” Then you can feel smug and self-satisfied that gay people deserve all the hate that your religion can spew upon us. And hate it is, since you ignore the one commandent that Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
We ARE your neighbors, but we really don’t care what you think of us, nor do we care if you are a hypocrite and ignore the one commandment issued by the one person you perport to follow. We really don’t care. But let me offer one last piece of advice: Spend more time saving yourself than trying to save any one else. It will be profoundly more illuminating.
Randy R.—As I said earlier,you are the most sensible one. Your last comments were great. I came into this website to acquire information for my next article.
I do have great news. I will be leaving and moving on. I believe I have over-stayed my welcome. I am very grateful for your comments including “dalea”, “kittynloi”, and “Northeast Libertarian”. Even though we did not agree on anything, you nor I expressed any evil nor harm. The bottom line is that we all live in peace. I did not come into this website to change anyone’s religious beliefs—only to acquire your views.
My efforts is to make people aware of the direction this country is headed. The gay movement is not the only factor that will bring is country down. There is the corrupted politicians; the actions of the CIA without the people’s knowledge; the greed of the capitalist; and the disrespect toward religions for the wrong reasons.
In my own little way, I will miss all of you. So I will now say FAREWELL.
There is the corrupted politicians; the actions of the CIA without the people’s knowledge; the greed of the capitalist; and the disrespect toward religions for the wrong reasons.
I know you’re not going to answer this, but something tells me that
1) You probably don’t view George W. Bush, who lied to bring us into Iraq, as a “corrupt politician,” nor do you view any of the Christian Coalition leaders who talked ceaselessly of “cutting the size of government” yet voted in a 9% spending hike as corrupt either;
2) You probably despise the CIA’s efforts to regulate or monitor religious groups with which you agree, but have no problem with their monitoring other groups which you don’t like (including gays);
3) Your dislike for “capitalist greed” probably doesn’t preclude you from greedily accepting government handouts;
4) Your complaint of “disrespect towards religion” extends towards your religious fanatics like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Randall Terry, but not to, say, Islamic religious fanatics like Yusuf al Qaradawi, Abu Hamza or Abdel Rakhman.
Hello Save America, I’m the resident 90% rightwinger, I’ll be glad to answer your questions:
“Does the word “morals” exist in the gay world?”
—Yes it does. We all have different morals. I’m into guns and free speech, others are into same-sex marriage, you’re into heterosexuality. And I must warn you, if there’s something I despise more than a liberal who supports gun control, is a Christian with the same views.
“Is it important to have morals in our country or do we not care if this country become uncivilized? ”
—It is important not to impose our morality on others. I want to keep my assault weapons, you can keep your private schools with teachers who speak against gays, keep you Boy Scouts and their ban of gays (won’t save you from pedophiles, they don’t exactly come out). Keep your christian TV stations, raise your kids with any views you want.
All I want is to do what I like (which used to include smoking, but I quit last week), and be left alone. I don’t want the left telling me what to do, or the right. I usually agree with conservatives on 99% of the issues: Put a fence on the border, use the death penalty more often, put more people in jail, have more citizens with concealed carry, have more political incorrectness, defend free speech including the rights of people who hate homosexuality…. But I draw the line at turning us gays into a pariah, or to hide us from society, or to remove any references about us from TV.
I am not going back to the closet!
“Save America” (a cruelly ironic choice of a name for this idiot in itself) is exactly the reason I have been carping on this site recently for gay people to hang together in support of one another. I don’t want to drag us back to the McGreevey discussion, but it’s frightening that in 2006 people with mentalities like “Save America” exist. But of course, sadly, we all know that they do. The original piece by Vanasco extolled somewhat the virtues of apathy. And although I understand why she writes this, its another sad commentary on the state of things in this century that we would have to advocate waiting around until people no longer care about it for the right to marry, or to inherit, or to visit a hospital room, or to adopt. It seems equally as primitive as the observations of the visiting troll. I am a liberal, peace-loving, Christian gay man who believes in America and what I think we could agree America stands for. We were founded on the principles of freedom from opression, and here we are, just 230 short years later, fighting some of the same oppressive, retrogressive, Royalist, arch-conservative, narrow-minded views faced by our Patriot forefathers and mothers. (Never mind that most of these views were imported along with the religious zealots who led those patriots in prayer–but that’s another story for another day.)
I feel like most of the people who are responding to this article are my friends. And although we may differ on even some basic philosophies as liberal vs. conservative vs. Libertarian vs. religion or no, I think that if I appeared on your doorstep some night in a downpour with nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat, you’d help me get on my feet. Alas, there are people in this country who, if I appeared at their door (even free from want) and they knew I were gay, they’d turn me away without a second thought. And although I don’t disagree entirely with Bobby, who recently posted “you have to be more than gay to get a break from me,” I do think that we need to support one another against the wiles of those who would deny us equality. It is neither liberty nor justice for a nation to have to wait “until no one cares” before one segment of its population is guaranteed the freedoms that we thought the Framers put in place in 1787.
I agree with you on some issues, Mark. I also believe that you’re supposed to help who is right, even if he’s not one of your own.
“just 230 short years later, fighting some of the same oppressive, retrogressive, Royalist, arch-conservative, narrow-minded views faced by our Patriot forefathers and mothers. ”
—-And yet those very same people that founded this country. It wasn’t the Quakers who founded this country, it was the puritans.
Look, this is what happens when the left takes over and the right hides for cover.
“Screening tests might be used to bar corrupt and bigoted police officers from promotion. Senior officers yesterday said they will look to extend psychometric tests, which will be introduced to identify racist applicants from the spring, to other ethical concerns, in particular sectarianism, sexism and dishonesty.”
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1420242006
This is in Scotland, a region that actually recruits gays to the police station. A place where fox hunting was recently banned. Where sex in parks is not only common, but tolerated by the cops.
So you see why conservatives fear liberals? Would you like to submit yourself to a test to see how conservative you are? There was a beer company in America that used to ask applicants if they where gay. They no longer do that. So why do liberals end up becoming the people they despise? That beer company learned their lesson, but according to liberals, you’re not a bigot if you discriminate against the right people.
I’m sorry Mark, I’ll support gay rights and human rights up to a certain point. When that point is breached and people start going too far, my support dies.
If the price of living in a tolerant society is becoming intolerant of those who aren’t tolerant, I’m not willing to pay that price, it’s not worth it.
Besides, America wasn’t founded as a bastion of tolerance, but as bastion of freedom. There’s a difference. Freedom means you can do what you like and I can hate you for it. Tolerance/acceptance means I can’t openly disaprove or disagree.
It wasn’t the Quakers who founded this country, it was the puritans.
No it wasn’t. The Puritans (what was left of them by the 1770s) tended to be Tories, and most of the remainder fled to Canada.
The center of the American Revolution was Philadelphia — the Quaker capital and, at the time, the second-largest city in the British empire after London.
sex in parks is not only common, but tolerated by the cops.
That would explain the consistent patterns of arrest in various places in the UK, and the installation of CCTV to combat euphemistically-termed “anti-social behaviour,” wouldn’t it?
Hey Northeast, maybe I was wrong about England. I did hear that in Luxembourgh parks do have condom dispensers for those men who have sex in parks. Isn’t leftism wonderful? Instead of telling men to take their activities home, they actually help them engage in them.
You have to agree that the government going through the expense of putting condom dispensers in parks is against basic libertarian principles.
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