It’s depressing how much progress has seemingly fallen apart before my eyes. I know some things are generally better than the have been. But these attacks are exhausting
Yeah, at this point, having the “if the Republicans win, my way of life is basically over” thing constantly over my head is really draining.
Agreed. I’m doing my damnedest not to catastrophize, but it’s hard when one of the two major political parties in this country is running on a platform specifically demonizing and targeting my community and people like me in particular.
Yep. I’m one of the lucky trans people, in that I have enough means that been planning for months now how I’m going to escape the country if 2024 goes badly.
Right? This is fucking exhausting.
Key info:
Only 41% of Republicans say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable, according to Gallup. That is a 15% drop from 2022, the largest single-year change since Gallup began asking the question. Democratic approval also fell from 85% to 79%.
I’ve always said that ultimately the only people we can rely on are ourselves, the queer community.
Ive had a large amount of people lately telling me about reaching across the aisle and “killing them with kindness” etc.
It’s like why. These people have no interest in listening or engaging with us in a good faith way. We have to advocate for ourselves
The people who talk about kindness are centrists. They’re the same people who want compromise between the left, who want rights and protections for citizens, and the right, who want to demonize and murder people. Do not tolerate centrists.
yeah, anyone trying any kind of “both sides make good points” argument these days is probably someone whose personal rights are not at stake.
They are also almost certainly a Republican who is pretending not to be one in order to gain credibility.
Don’t trust anyone who wants to meet half way. Half way between “genocide” and “no genocide” is “half a genocide” which is known as genocide.
There are three kinds of people who say “both sides” the apathetic, the Fascists, and the Libertarians (IE. Republicans who figured out being a republican makes everyone hate them)
The US Libertarian Party is really rather removed from libertarian parties of other natures or typical libertarian ideology. As far as I can tell the major difference between being US Libertarian or Republican is that Libertarians actively do not care if they’re hated. Notoriously, Penn Gillette divorced himself from libertarianism because the Libertarian Party got too obnoxious for him.
Typically, Republicans trying to distance themselves from Republicanism pretend to be conservative independents. Bill O’Reilly has asserted such as has others on the FOX News cast. (Tucker Carlson, maybe? I wonder if it’s a FOX News editorial guidelines to assert party neutrality, even as they were giving Trump softball interviews or letting him rant on the phone for 60+ minutes at a time.)
100% this. My parents live in a red-ish county. They’re very liberal themselves but constantly go on about how lovely people are up there and how they’ll really help you when you need it
That’s all fine and dandy, but I’m sorry I can’t help but see them as people voting against my rights
Why would I want to kill them with kindness when they’d much sooner kill me with a knotted rope and a sycamore?
yup. we have to raise hell ourselves, because even the non-queers who nominally support us won’t always fight for us.
Please keep in mind that the demographic they’re talking about don’t do any critical thinking; they just parrot the latest hate-fueled diatribe from Fox/Newsmax/OAN/CNN. This is how conservative “politics” works in the US. If they aren’t oppressing people, attacking workers, veterans, women, or minorities, and leveraging tax breaks for the rich on the backs of the poor, they’re busy stacking the deck so they can in the future.
The GOP jump seems notable and steep, but the Democratic dip feels like it’s in line with the normal noise and variance that you get with a reoccurring survey.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/507230/fewer-say-sex-relations-morally-acceptable.aspx
You’re going to get normal peaks and valleys with a reoccurring survey. The respondent pools are never identical year over year. And with progressives, who skew younger and don’t answer phone surveys, you’re going to have even more noise.
You relied on republicans?!
No, I was pointing out that it’s dropped significantly for Democrats too, and the overall point is that we can’t rely on society as a whole to do/believe what’s right and protect us.
I think the point is that there was also a dip with Dems. But IMHO, as someone who runs a lot of surveys for a living, the key it to look at the overall trend line, not one data point. And the overall democratic trend line over the past few years seems to have some noise in it that vacillates + or - 5% from the trend line.
The GOP line though… that feels like a change from historical trend line.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/507230/fewer-say-sex-relations-morally-acceptable.aspx
This was always the point of the “groomer” rhetoric and the attacks on trans people; the total removal of rights for LGBTQ people. Just like assaults on abortion access, where the point is to eventually remove all women’s rights.
It’s so coordinated and long-term-planned-out. I wish the news covered it with a bit more context, instead of sometimes writing as if these events are all unrelated and these are just ‘natural’ shifts in public opinion.
I wish the left (the real left, not corporate Democrats) were half as good at strategy as conservatives are. It’s a shame such brilliance is wasted on the worst people on the planet.
When the vast majority of people get “the news” from outlets that are all ultimately owned by a few specific billionaires … this is a surprise outcome to you?
Surprise, no. But it is very disheartening.
This is disgusting. 8 years ago people where getting to the point where they would say “why did it take us so long?” Now it’s sharply sliding backwards.
Just like the GOP with climate change. Full on aggressive denialism is back on the menu. Now that people are in echo chambers, reality can be whatever you want it to be.
Link to the study and infographics https://news.gallup.com/poll/507230/fewer-say-sex-relations-morally-acceptable.aspx
And here is the historical data chart
My 2¢ as someone who runs a lot of sentiment surveys…
I could be wrong, but the Dem dip feels like it could be normal survey noise. It seems to go up and down about 4 to 5% from the historical trend line. Also, progressives are kind of a bit more of a noisy respondent group. You have less old folks, less land lines, less people with the time / energy to talk to researchers.
The GOP dip though… that looks like it’s abnormal compared to the historical trend line.
Huh, I think Republicans are immoral after decades of actual grooming and convictions.
Let’s not forget the time they attacked our country on Jan. 6. Republicans are traitors to America. And on basically every other choice between good and evil they’ll choose evil every time, whether that be about treason, environmental protection, democracy, women’s rights, any kind of minority right, the economy, even the fucking metric system, they always choose the worst thing.
It’s almost like they’ve been a fifth column working to destroy us from the inside all along.
As heinous as their child predation and corruption of office have been, war profiteering, bonded labor exploitation, global pollution, suppression of harm assessment science and pushing deadly addictive pharmaceuticals all put their immorality at an exponentially higher scale.
god damn right
Anyone who is a Republican at this point is actively supporting the white power / Christian nationalist movement and the fascist takeover. That is to say, they’re in support of the purification movement and genocide whether or not they personally believe in the culture war or are a fiscal conservative loyalist.
43 years of failed fiscal conservative policy only served to accelerate the Republican party toward fascism and the Trump takeover of the GOP during the 2015-2016 primary. So it essentially was fascism all along.
I’m not surprised. They can’t win at anything else, so they create an artifical wedge issue to splinter multiple coalitions of voters while simultaneously making it more difficult for them to vote. This makes the republican party stronger despite their support being largely anemic. Gerrymandering doesn’t help, but democrats don’t vote in high enough numbers.
They will continue to pry away women, queer people, and POC while simultaneously shouting that “voting won’t do anything, why even bother?” To standard groups. And young people will buy it and think the only way to change is through protests, not voting.
There. I just disassembled the republican playbook in 5 minutes. Watch it work.
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Yep, I remember watching something on him. I always try to get my friends, family, and peers to vote. It’s led to some razor thin elections wins locally, by a margin of just 1,200 votes in the largest city in our state. Suffice to say, voting actually works.
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The amount of times on Reddit I saw supposedly left-wing people claiming the only solution in the US was violent revolution and anarchy and that our democratic institutions are not salvageable was very telling.
I often tried to bring reality into the conversation in these cases. Ask basic questions, how will millions get food when grocery stores are closed and roads are bombed out or sabotaged? What would stop the food producers from starving us out and protecting land preventing us from taking it? What about nuclear weapons? you can’t just leave them be. What about other countries? they’re not going to watch the most powerful military and economic power from the sidelines.
You want to win against capitalists? We need to learn to live without them first. Organized shared food production, libraries for everything, try to change culture, etc. What not to do? Revolution fighting our enemy at their strongest, or protesting giving them an event to sabotage and an excuse to hurt us.
Looking at Iran right now, I imagine there may come a point when violent revolution is appropriate. The Masha Amini protests (and the escalation to assassination, arson and sabotage) are the result of years of infrastructure failure and brutal retaliation by law enforcement and religious authorities. Pro-tip: If your side is the one bombing girls’ schools with poison gas, you might be the baddies.
I doubt the left in the US is going to start civil war, but the militant right is eager enough that I’m worried about lethal attacks on pride parades. But for now we still have alternatives to burning down police precincts.
I liken the right wing attacks on civil liberties akin to containing the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar. There’s enough integral complexity in the systems that pass and enforce execrable bills (and elect officials inclined to submit them) that they are prone to sabotage through malicious compliance with policy.
Still, according to retired CIA analysts interviewed on PBS, civil war in the US is inevitable (though they didn’t specify it was imminent) and the kind of election reforms and diffusion of political power back to the public that might prevent war is unpopular among state or federal officials. We’ll need to pressure them to pass such measures, probably with a level of extortion that equates to the threat of violence. Specifically what is well above my pay grade.
The question is worded in terms of morality, not acceptability within society. I might find non-veganism immoral, but I rarely mention this fact to others, and while I have lived a vegan lifestyle for almost 7 years now, I make no suggestion to others on the subject unless prompted directlt in conversation. If many Republicans feel that same-sex relationships are immoral, this may primarily impact their attitudes towards their own lives and not how they see those of others.
Furthermore, less than 50% support doesn’t mean over 50% direct rejection. Plenty of individuals don’t know what to think and will let anything happen as they drift through their lives. Thus, this statistic alone isn’t enough to conclude that most Republicans are against same-sex relationships.
I think this is actually pretty clear and useful information on Republican support for same-sex relationships - what-abouting between ‘moral’ and ‘acceptable’ isn’t useful here, particularly when you take this research in the (very important) context of recent lawmaking around rainbow communities.
My point is mainly that it does not mean that over 50% of Republicans want to put gay people behind bars, which can easily be concluded from something like this. I think it represents a general attitude but isn’t a concerning statistic on its own.
Your comment on the context of current legislation is a good way of conceptualizing the data, but nonetheless I don’t think that 43% acceptance is bad. Adding in probably 90%+ of acceptance from Democrats, the average is still well over 50% in most areas, so saying that a characteristically anti-LGBT group is anti-LGBT is not too concerning.
Either way, it’s obviously important to be aware of political trends, and I don’t want to discourage a high level of awareness. The swift erosion of rights in the US is cincerning enough for me to start learning German with a general idea of moving to Switzerland.
Thank you for commenting.
I don’t think anyone made the argument they want to out someone behind bars because of this post.
It’s dishonest to say that they wouldn’t, perhaps, support ending marriage equality and rights. Is that not bothersome? It’s really upsetting to see you downplay and side speak a very serious issue.
Dehumanizing leads to being alright with doing any number of things to someone. These numbers reflect them stepping towards that.
I think your putting a lot on most understanding the nuance of moral vs acceptable.
Black and white thinking, lack of critical thinking and appeals to populism are the mainstay of current discourse.
That’s definitely true, especially in the US. In the context of recent developments, I can see how the decrease itself is concerning.
In the survey conducted last month, just 41% of Republicans said that gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable, a 15% drop from 2022.
So, 59% ambivalent or against.
Given 73% of red team adherents strongly believe in God therefore have strong religious adherence, we’re still trending better than expected.
Of these, given the outsize skew toward red team from Evangelical Protestant and Mormon groups, it should be unsurprising a party with a strong representation of outspoken religious bigots is skewing toward bigotry. Disappointing, sure, but unsurprising.
Independents who say same-sex relations are morally acceptable has remained steady in recent years, with 73% expressing approval in 2023 compared to 72% the year before, according to Gallup.
Independents showing a detachment from a given team’s trend change is always good to see.
Overall, 64% of Americans still say that gay or lesbian relations are “morally acceptable,” including 79% of Democrats and 73% of self-described independents, according to the Gallup poll.
Americans have come a long way since 2001, when just 40% of respondents to the same poll expressed approval of same-sex relations.
And we’re still trending far improved from where we were in the early days of the acceptance movement.
They claim to believe in God but they just believe in money and fuck everybody else. One cannot be a Republican and a moral individual at the same time. They’re incompatible at the most fundamental level.
Why are Republicans so hypocritical?
If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
That can be said about all politicians
both sides are not the same
To Republicans it’s about loyalty over principle. Everyone who is part of the movement gets the benefit of doubt while anyone else is an enemy.
Of course this hasn’t stopped infighting within the Republican party, so they’re now factioning and fighting among themselves as well, each sect claiming to be the true base of the Republican party.
Shall we divide them even more?
Whenever we can
So far, Republicans are happy enough to stress-test the mutual loyalty doctrine with obnoxious officials embarrassing the integrity of their office, pushing / voting for odious bills that are poorly written and that overreach, or saying the incitement-to-violence and bigotry / exclusionist rhetoric out loud.
To clarify, there are no good, public-serving Republican subdivisions today: GOP and conservative values since the 1960s have pushed for policy that has led us to where we are now, where precarity (when not poverty) is so pervasive that Mussolini-wannabes and purge politics (culture wars) are popular. Every conservative alive who’s been voting either to cut social safety nets, cut taxes or elect officials to do so have bought tickets to ride this train. (Not to mention stock in the proverbial railroad company). The never-Trumpers and OG fiscal conservative Republicans are essentially members who wish there was still more altitude from which to plummet, and the impact point wasn’t so close.
So, it’s more that no-one wants to take responsibility for the consequences of their own voting histories, now that the train is rocketing forward at high speed, so they’re blaming each other.
But yeah, whether we meme this up to wedge the factions further apart, or find additional controversies with which to divide republicans, or even encourage factions to splinter and submit their own rival candidates to elect instead of Trump / DeSantis, we are doing good work to give US democracy (lower case) time to sort itself out.
Who cares? I mean I think straight marriage is immoral…. Think about it, who is the man and who is the other man? How are they going that to explain to their kids??
At this point I’d take bets on when the first news stories like “Republicans declare any *-sexual relations immoral”. Homo, hetero, cis, LGBTQ+, asexual, metrosexual, whatever. Anything regarding penises, vaginas, and anything “inbetween”.
It cannot be that far in the future anymore.
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