If you have any lingering doubt that anti-gay sentiment is becoming isolated in the Republican Party—and that the GOP is drifting toward cultural isolation as a result—check out this new election post-mortem from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Democracy Corps (PDF). Go to page 39, a chart titled “Opposition to homosexuality drops sharply,” and you see that the share of Americans saying homosexuality “should be accepted by society” has risen from only half in 2004 to a solid 56 percent majority this year. (Gallup confirms the trend.) Only a third of respondents—just one in three!—say homosexuality “should be discouraged.”
And just where is this opposition to homosexuality concentrated? Turn the page (to page 40) for the answer. Among Democrats, independents, and swing voters, majorities all agree on the acceptability of homosexuality, by whopping margins of 39 percent, 31 percent, and 27 percent, respectively. Republicans, however, stand strikingly apart from the consensus, with 55 percent of them frowning on homosexuality. In other words, if being anti-gay is your thing, there is only one place you can go to find a like-minded majority. (And, even there, 44 percent say homosexuality should be accepted.)
In the future that is coming right now, it is disapproval of homosexuality, not homosexuality itself, that mainstream culture regards as morally deviant. To the extent that Republicans cling to anti-gay postures (hat tip to Prez O for the piquant verb), they will turn off the independent and swing voters without whose support they cannot win national elections. On the other hand, with nowhere else to go, anti-gay social conservatives will fight all the harder to preserve their veto over GOP acceptance of gay equality. That’s why they’re going to block repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the Senate: to show they can.
I’m tempted to say, “Be my guest, guys.” The best they can do is delay DADT repeal, probably not for long, and that will come at a cost to their party’s cultural credibility. Anti-gay conservatives are becoming to the GOP as McGovernite liberals once were to the Democrats: an albatross.
19 Comments for “Republicans Are Different from You and Me”
posted by Carl on
The question is — is it better to have a Republican who is vocally anti-gay or a Republican who is quietly anti-gay? Many of the Republicans elected last week may be a vote on any legislation which restricts gay rights or homosexuality, even if they don’t make it the main issue in their platform.
posted by Jorge on
That’s one hell of a decrease in two years on a question that is framed very badly for us. What happened?
To think all this hapless rallying and marching may have made a good difference, after all. I should send a thank you card to Lady Gaga. And I should join the fight again, too.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
Jonathan, I’m not sure if anyone except the Left still think Gallup or Greenberg-Quinlan have any useful insights to offer on their flawed, discredited polling methods… both are biased, tainted, Left-leaning marginal Democrat organs of the increasing minor Left.
And, frankly, you’re no better –with lines like 2004’s figure of “only half” are homo supporting to a “solidly 56%” some 6 yrs later… that, Jon, is a percent per year gain. At your strikingly awesome rate of growing support for gays, it’ll be only 2054 when everyone can accept gays on a let live, leave alone basis?
I think you’re missing the boat and the boat dock, on this one… skip even having an oar at this point.
State after state, including once Blue-than-blue Michigan, have enacted severely limiting anti-gay marriage amendments. In Michigan, the vote was 61% to 39%… the same spread that later approved ending affirmative action.
That anti-gay marriage vote was in a year that uber Liberal J F Kerry was the Dem’s candidate and the dem’s controlled the entire ballot, the majority of statewide electoral offices, etc. I’m guessing there were more than just a few gay-bigots pulling the lever against our community’s interests. I’m also guessing they didn’t think gays were Blue-enuff yet, eh?
Come on. Get at least a modicum of fairness in your analysis. Soc con issues were not a part of the TP Movement or a part of most successful GOP campaigns this year because GOP leaders learned the hard lessons of listening to guys like Tom Delay and his soc con idiots.
If you really want to find gay bigots, join a union hall audience. Step into a pew at a black spiritual church on Sunday morning. Head over to the DNC and ask if the gay outreach efforts scuttled by ScreaminHowieDean have been restarted… yet.
But in any event, use credible research to back up your hysterical, Democrat Plantation cheerleading, ok? Cause this is supposedly an “independent” gay forum –not another outlet for Dems masquerading as gay activists.
posted by Rick Rosendall on
Dear MM: “hysterical, Democrat Plantation cheerleading”? Applied to Jon Rauch? Really?
How about a modicum of restraint? If you were signing your real name the way Jon signs his, would you talk all this trash?
As to so many states having passed anti-gay marriage amendments, you ought to look up Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog:
http://tinyurl.com/natesilver081210
http://tinyurl.com/natesilver011210
http://tinyurl.com/natesilver092009
http://tinyurl.com/natesilver043009
http://tinyurl.com/natesilver040909
http://tinyurl.com/natesilver040309
That last one, from April 3, 2009, is particularly interesting. The trend is clearly on our side. Even when we lose, as in California with Prop 8, it is more narrowly than before. Time and demographics are with us. And did you notice that there were no anti-gay ballot initiatives this year? We were replaced as scapegoats by immigrants and Muslims. The right wing has gone to the gay-panic well too often, and have passed the point of diminishing returns.
posted by Jeremy on
I would like to remind anyone who believes that the GOP is itching to pass anti-gay legislation that the only time stridently anti-gay bills ever passed in the Federal government (DADT & DOMA), they passed with bipartisan support. Conservatives can not pass anti-gay bills unless the Democrats support them. And that is unlikely to happen in this next Congress.
Also, I seriously doubt Boehner et. al. will waste time bringing such legislation to the floor when it serves their interests more to rally for tax- cut extensions and health care reform repeal. Basically, expect from Congress what LGBTs have gotten since Clinton– absolutely nothing.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
Jeremy, while that’s all true, it doesn’t stop screaming shrill Democrat Party gayLefties like Jon Rauch from claiming the gay bigot Boogeyman is just around the corner.
I guess he’s another example of why gays need to divorce themselves from the conventional gayLeft, Democrat-centric leaders and find some new meat to lead us in a non-partisan, gay-centric fashion.
It shows how low they’ve had to drop this month in order to appease their Democrat Masta’ and keep their place on the front porch of the Plantation house.
posted by Jeremy on
Yeah, well besides all the “plantation” imagery, I totally agree with everything you say. Our issues are not leftist. Not even close to it. I mean, our biggest issues right now are military service and marriage. Not exactly “fight the power” proletarian-type struggles. The traditional lumping of gay issues and leftist issues is very artificial and forced. We simply are not natural allies.
I have always thought that gays and lesbians are a natural conservative constituency, and the only reason we are not mostly in the GOP tent is that a powerful minority of their coalition draw a great deal of power and money from denigrating our humanity. Without THAT group in the picture, we’d find a home real fast with the GOP, and gay voting patterns would change over night.
posted by Chuck Forester on
I was raised a Republican and believed my father, a former FBI agent when he told me Communists were a threat to our way of life. I remember arguing with my friend David Schilling when I was eight insisting Joe McCarthy was a better candidate that a guy named Fairchild a Democrat. At my first church youth conference I came home amazed that the kids I liked were Democrats. It was the Unitarian Church. In college I held out for moderate Republicans and organized friends making phone calls in support of Bill Scranton’s nomination during the Republican convention in 1964.
Things change. Strom Thurman became a Republican. I became a Democrat but I watched them to find out why they won election. It wasn’t tried and true Teddy Roosevelt Republicans and Progressive Republicans like Robert M. La Follette from Wisconsin and moderates like Charles Percy and Nelson Rockefeller. It’s because they play dirty using scare tactics. Negatives are easier to sell than new ideas, and they’re masters at using them to manipulating voters. Anyone who can convince people to vote against their self interest and give tax breaks to the rich has to know what they’re doing. I’ve learned to pay attention to what they say. They’re masters as accusing the Democrats for the very things they like government spending. Their mantra is no big spending, and spent down Clinton’s surplus and continued wracking up debt. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. That’s government spending. Single bidder defense contracts and subsidies to the oil industry are welfare greater then all the social programs combined save Social Security. Come on, let’s face it. When Republicans are in office the do two things. They dismantle regulatory agencies and they bilk the Treasury. They’ve done it consistently since the days of Warren Harding.
At the hearing with BP today I saw Democrats with spines. What a relief! They need to keep them and remind Middle America how things got worse when Republicans were in charge. Obama has stumbled on a few things because he’s been too cautious. He also has to clean up George Bush’s mess. Congress has a bad name because Republicans fought every major initiative and their fall campaign will focus on Democrats being too partisan. That’s typical of losers. A psychologist who’s studied bullies should be advising the President. That’s what Republicans do. They bully the Democrats who so far have been too timid to fight back.
PS: Things changed for my father, too. He voted for Eugene McCarthy in the Wisconsin primary and distanced himself from J. Edgar Hoover before everyone knew about his dresses.
My advice: If you want to know what Republicans are up to look at what they’re accusing the Democrats of doing.
posted by Lori Heine on
Yet another reason I’m now a Republican. The Democrats who assail my switch can’t even argue with any common sense. They warn me that there are still a lot of social conservatives in the GOP. To which I reply, “And you thought they’d magically and instantaneously evaporate…why?”
Do once- (even very recently-) poweful groups of people ordinarily just go “bzzzt” and disappear? The Republican Party coddled and spoiled social reactionaries for decades. That some of them are going to be crybabies about it should be no surprise to anyone who’s lived life, thus far, on Planet Earth. To claim that it proves the whiny, malignant-narcissist social Right is still in charge because they still exist is absurd.
Their behavior over the years has had the effect one might expect it would have on others — even on other Republicans. Almost everybody else hates them and is heartily sick and tired of them. Those don’t sound, to me, like great conditions for a soc-con return to power. Since almost everybody outside the GOP is even more sick of them than those within it, to capitulate to their bawling and temper-tantrums would be disastrous.
When anyone starts the song-and-dance about how the scary reactionaries are still in charge (because they haven’t disappeared or entirely shut up), I realize I am hearing a good little Democratic Party tool.
posted by Carl on
For me it’s not so much about social conservatives being in charge – because I don’t think they are – as the default position for most Republicans in office still being a likely no against repealing DADT, against gay marriage, civil unions, partnerships, among other legislation. I am unsure of what might be built up again if you have a lot of sure conservative votes, and votes that might not get a lot of attention because people are more focused on the 2012 elections, or the economy.
I’m not talking so much about Congress as I am state legislatures. I remember in late 2004/early 2005 how the social conservatives said their next move was to begin working to ban adoption and foster care for gay parents. That didn’t happen (aside from the voters passing a ban in Arkansas), and hopefully won’t happen now, but then I think Rick Scott said he wants Florida’s ban reinstated.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
Carl, your point about soc cons planning to ban adoption and foster care for gay parents is kind of intriguing.
As a gay partnered father of three, I remember gayLeft activists working to defund any Catholic social service agency that rec’d state funds to help link up parents with needy kids if they proscribed gays from their religiously-based programs. Unfortunately, that gayLeft attack plan pushed a lot of well-meaning, well-intentioned, successful non-secular agencies out of the business and left kids hanging in the lurch.
I can’t fault groups who push back against the insanity of gayLeft activists and the secularization of church-based social service agencies. If the gayLeft did that to a muslim agency, there’d be blood running in the streets.
posted by Jorge on
Jonathan, I’m not sure if anyone except the Left still think Gallup or Greenberg-Quinlan have any useful insights to offer on their flawed, discredited polling methods… both are biased, tainted, Left-leaning marginal Democrat organs of the increasing minor Left.
Even if that were true, it is irrelevant when the variable being measured is movement. A decrease in negative sentiment toward homosexuality.
And WTF is up with calling Jonathan Rauch a leftist Demo-goguer? You cannot possibly be serious. You can’t even allow one knock, deserved or not, against the GOP-social conservative association without becoming whacked out? You need to choose your battles a lot more carefully.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
“even if that were true…” nice try, but it isn’t a question of being true or not despite your sly attempt to raise that suspicion. Greenberg et al are a political polling and campaign advisory firm that caters to specifically left-of-center Democrat candidates and natl campaigns. Gallup took heat from industry professionals at the 2010 Amer Poli Sci Assn natl meeting for being flawed in its target subsets as well as the left-leaning bias shown in survey instruments used 2006-2009.
Rauch is the one using Greenberg & Gallup to support some hacked up contention that the anti-gay GOP has a boogeyman a’waiting in some closet to pounce –that’s just a lazy writer stealing thunder from guys like Howie Dean and Joe Solmonese.
To argue, as Rauch does, that a 6 point uptick over a 6 yr period is some kind of implicit proof that the gayLeft mostly-Dem leadership is being somehow successful is to miss the bigger point that Michigan’s 2004 campaign to assure equal rights for marriage was denied, in part, by some bluer-than-blue Dem bigots in the polling booth. And Michigan was only one of 14 states to do so since the HRC began it’s failed campaign on gay marriage equality, state-by-state.
That’s why I suggested that the place for Dem apologists acting as gay activists to confront bigotry might be in the union hall, in the black church pew and at the DNC.
GOP campaigns that were successful this cycle stayed away from soc con issues, Jorge. I always pick my battles based on the truth –something I’d recommend you start doing, ok?
posted by Jorge on
“even if that were true…” nice try, but it isn’t a question of being true or not despite your sly attempt to raise that suspicion
Sly? That was intended to be a sledgehammer.
Gallup is one of the most reputable polling organizations, and certainly one of the most long-standing. The other one (which is the one I looked at) I don’t know. With the extreme proliferation of polling, weak firms cannot survive long. The fact that Gallup is even still in existence is evidence that it is still trustworthy. At best, one should adopt a policy of taking any single poll with a grain of salt. This is two.
To argue, as Rauch does, that a 6 point uptick over a 6 yr period is some kind of implicit proof that the gayLeft mostly-Dem leadership is being somehow successful is to miss the bigger point that Michigan’s 2004 campaign to assure equal rights for marriage was denied, in part, by some bluer-than-blue Dem bigots in the polling booth
7 points, if you’re going to go from the beginning to the end, 18 months, if you’re going to insist on 6 points. I think Rauch was trying to cite the dramatic decrease in people who disapprove of homosexuality (12 points in six year or 13 points in 18 months).
I agree it misses that point, but I’m not sure it’s the bigger point.
GOP campaigns that were successful this cycle stayed away from soc con issues, Jorge. I always pick my battles based on the truth –something I’d recommend you start doing, ok?
Interesting, that. I pick my battles based on the facts.
I could pick my battles based on the “truth”, but I don’t think many people are interested in the message that God loves them, or in my magical book of proverbs, psalms, and war crimes from which I derive truth. Worse, there’s a lot of evidence against the message.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
Ahhh Jorge, you’re so predictably gayLeft that when confronted with truth, it’s round out the wagon’s and attack the “Christianists” with that famous liberal screed of religious bigotry.
Try staying on topic in at least one thread… the issue is Rauch’s seemingly endless capacity to carry the Democrats’ water pail about GOP anti-gay boogeymen… while ignoring the utterly failed leadership of gay civil rights movement by gay Democrats acting as gay activists.
Truth, Jorge. Embrace it at least in one thread, one time and keep your religiously bigotry in the gayLeft closet where it rightly belongs.
posted by Carl on
“I can’t fault groups who push back against the insanity of gayLeft activists and the secularization of church-based social service agencies. If the gayLeft did that to a muslim agency, there’d be blood running in the streets.”
I see your point, but I don’t think any of the places which banned or talked about banning gay adoption or foster care were doing so because of secularization of church-based social service. That isn’t likely to ever happen in Ohio, or Arkansas, or Florida.
posted by Jorge on
Ahhh Jorge, you’re so predictably gayLeft that when confronted with truth it’s round out the wagon’s and attack the “Christianists” with that famous liberal screed of religious bigotry
Your mistake is in thinking I’m making fun of other people. I was being quite serious. You are talking to someone who sincerely believes that Pope Benedict is a living symbol of God’s grace, the true successor to the seat of St. Peter, and thus (taken to this thinking’s logical conclusions) an ominous sign of God’s will on earth on the issue of homosexuality. Just today I informed my co-workers that I’m ever authorized to hand out condoms to clients, I’ll quit. I am not ignorant to how silly and callous I sound.
I am a moderate. That makes me, if anything gayLeft.
Try staying on topic in at least one thread
Sorry. I tend to get carried away when I’m deep-sixing crusaders and fools.
posted by Jorge on
I am a moderate. That makes me, if anything gayLeft.
Uhhh, I mean gayRight.
posted by BobN on
Just today I informed my co-workers that I’m ever authorized to hand out condoms to clients, I’ll quit.
What if the directive to hand them out comes from the next “true successor to the throne of Peter”?
Anyone perusing the list of men the Holy Ghost has selected over the last century or so to act as Pope couldn’t miss the fact that God, if not utterly confused about what He prefers, is at least remarkably fickle. Alternate explanation: a really sick sense of humor.