Two New Surveys: Good
Two interesting surveys published this week give cause for optimism. Pew and Gallup polls document a long-term trend in the US toward accepting differences among people. It might seem counterintuitive in light of the big immigration blow-up, but that might be another one of those tempests in a teaparty where a small band of Nutty Ones generates a lot of noise and attracts the media's attention, while normal people are evolving into something decent.
Since we tend to address LGBT issues here (and have you been following Amanda Hess's series at the City Paper about whether it should be LGBT or GLBT?), we'll start with the Gallup survey.
They plot the trend, acceptance of homosexuality has been slowly and relentlessly climbing for ten years. It has been a difficult campaign as the LGBT community insisted that the media and the public take them seriously as people, and one by one individuals came out and the straight world realized how crucial gays and lesbians are to every aspect of our society's functioning. So now half the population believes that "gay and lesbian relations" are "morally acceptable," it's a breakthrough but you can't really claim it as a victory quite yet. If fifty-two percent think it's morally acceptable then forty-eight do not, sorry but that glass is still nearly half empty.
The victory though is in the demonstration that the decades-long campaign has been working. The number is rising, it's rising slowly but there have been no relapses, the trend is monotonic as we say, it always goes upward, at least within the margin of error.
That's all good news, or at least unsurprising. Bible-thumpers and Republicans don't like gay people, everybody else is coming around.
At the same time, the Pew Research Center reports:
The weakening of longstanding cultural taboos. Exactly. Puritan America had its straight-and-narrow view, we do things this way because that's the way we do them, that means that's the right way and those who do different are wrong. But with time, with waves of immigration from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America and Haight-Ashbury, the Puritan tradition has been diluted to the point that reason can get a foothold.
It is not coincidental, I'm sure, that people are coming to accept two kinds of outgroups simultaneously. The boundary between "us" and "them" is becoming thinner, as "we" recognize that "they" are actual real, breathing, feeling people just like us. This kind of enlightened perspective-taking is definitive of liberalism and is anathema to conservatism, which comprises a set of ad hoc formalisms to justify and protect the ingroup.
I doubt that a group loses its identity in this kind of boundary-thinning. It is interesting to see people living in a place like Europe, where folks just over the mountain speak a different language and have a different history, where you are always aware that people who live in your town are different from people in the next town. You don't have to believe your town is better, you just know that towns are different, societies are different, norms vary. Communities have retained their identities, their norms and uniqueness, over thousands of years in that kind of situation. Americans do not get to have that experience, being insulated by oceans on two sides. Americans used to claim to have a "way of life," back in the days of Norman Rockwell and Leave It To Beaver, we don't say that any more, and I'm glad. It wasn't true at the time, and now people are realizing it isn't true. We have always been a country of different kinds of people, different ways of life, that is our strength as a country.
Since we tend to address LGBT issues here (and have you been following Amanda Hess's series at the City Paper about whether it should be LGBT or GLBT?), we'll start with the Gallup survey.
PRINCETON, NJ - Americans' support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010. At the same time, the percentage calling these relations "morally wrong" dropped to 43%, the lowest in Gallup's decade-long trend. Americans' Acceptance of Gay Relations Crosses 50% Threshold
They plot the trend, acceptance of homosexuality has been slowly and relentlessly climbing for ten years. It has been a difficult campaign as the LGBT community insisted that the media and the public take them seriously as people, and one by one individuals came out and the straight world realized how crucial gays and lesbians are to every aspect of our society's functioning. So now half the population believes that "gay and lesbian relations" are "morally acceptable," it's a breakthrough but you can't really claim it as a victory quite yet. If fifty-two percent think it's morally acceptable then forty-eight do not, sorry but that glass is still nearly half empty.
The victory though is in the demonstration that the decades-long campaign has been working. The number is rising, it's rising slowly but there have been no relapses, the trend is monotonic as we say, it always goes upward, at least within the margin of error.
Additionally, Gallup finds greater movement toward acceptance among independents and Democrats than among Republicans, and a big jump in acceptance among moderates. Liberals were already widely accepting of gay relations in 2006, and have remained that way, while conservatives' acceptance continues to run low.
Notably, there has been a 16-point jump in acceptance among Catholics, nearly three times the increase seen among Protestants. Acceptance among Americans with no religious identity has expanded as well.
That's all good news, or at least unsurprising. Bible-thumpers and Republicans don't like gay people, everybody else is coming around.
At the same time, the Pew Research Center reports:
A record 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States in 2008 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
That figure is an estimated six times the intermarriage rate among newlyweds in 1960 and more than double the rate in 1980.
This dramatic increase has been driven in part by the weakening of longstanding cultural taboos against intermarriage and in part by a large, multi-decade wave of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic
The weakening of longstanding cultural taboos. Exactly. Puritan America had its straight-and-narrow view, we do things this way because that's the way we do them, that means that's the right way and those who do different are wrong. But with time, with waves of immigration from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America and Haight-Ashbury, the Puritan tradition has been diluted to the point that reason can get a foothold.
It is not coincidental, I'm sure, that people are coming to accept two kinds of outgroups simultaneously. The boundary between "us" and "them" is becoming thinner, as "we" recognize that "they" are actual real, breathing, feeling people just like us. This kind of enlightened perspective-taking is definitive of liberalism and is anathema to conservatism, which comprises a set of ad hoc formalisms to justify and protect the ingroup.
I doubt that a group loses its identity in this kind of boundary-thinning. It is interesting to see people living in a place like Europe, where folks just over the mountain speak a different language and have a different history, where you are always aware that people who live in your town are different from people in the next town. You don't have to believe your town is better, you just know that towns are different, societies are different, norms vary. Communities have retained their identities, their norms and uniqueness, over thousands of years in that kind of situation. Americans do not get to have that experience, being insulated by oceans on two sides. Americans used to claim to have a "way of life," back in the days of Norman Rockwell and Leave It To Beaver, we don't say that any more, and I'm glad. It wasn't true at the time, and now people are realizing it isn't true. We have always been a country of different kinds of people, different ways of life, that is our strength as a country.
posted by JimK at 2:32 PM
18 Comments:
this is a classic conflating of discrimination based on behavior and discrimination based on race
they are different concepts
Congrats to Rush Limbaugh on his fourth traditional marriage
"...as Newt Gingrich does while standing next to his third wife (who, as was true for Gingrich's second wife, was previously known as his "adulterous mistress"), Rush Limbaugh will now crusade for Traditional Marriage with his fourth wife (and counting) at his side. As is so often the case, the Traditional Marriage movement is led by people who discard their wives and get new, younger replacements the way most people change underwear [Limbaugh is 59, Rogers is 33]. That's how so many Americans sit on their sofas next to their second and third spouses, with their step-children and half-siblings surrounding them, and explain -- without any recognition of the irony -- that they're against same-sex marriage because they believe the law should only recognize Traditional Marriages. And it's how Rush Limbaugh can hide from his followers that, by demanding state recognition for his fourth "marriage," he himself believes "that traditional marriage should not have privileged status." As usual, all of the actual rules of Traditional Marriage are casually discarded when it comes to the law (all that dreary, annoying stuff about "till death do us part" and "in sickness and in health" and "for as long as we both shall live") and the only one that's maintained is the one that is easy and cost-free for most Traditional Marriage proponents people to fulfill (the one about needing "a man and a woman").
As the gay Wired writer Steve Silberman wrote yesterday: "Between them, Gingrich and Limbaugh have had 7 marriages. And they want to abolish my one."..."
Just another study shooting down the lies of the anti-GLBT bigots:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/07/lesbian.children.adjustment/index.html?hpt=T2
Anon complained:
“this is a classic conflating of discrimination based on behavior and discrimination based on race
they are different concepts”
This is a classic case of ignoring the obvious point and trying to redirect attention elsewhere.
Sort of like trying to blame environmentalists for BP’s oil spill, when it was actually due to BP’s complete and utter disregard for basic safety and operating procedures.
The similarity is the DISCRIMINATION, not the particular characteristics that happen to be the FOCUS of the discrimination. Obnoxious bullies will always find SOMETHING to harass a minority about – it might be their red hair, their clothes, their choice of clothing, their religion, their politics, or their sexual orientation. What is the same in all these cases are the consistent, persistent, and unrelenting efforts of the bullies to denigrate, marginalize, and harass their victims, and convince other members of society that they should do the same. The bullies often provide contrived “reasons” to justify their behavior and promote the continued marginalization of the victims, but time and education eventually show that the true reason for their animosity lies deep in roots of fear and ignorance.
The polls show that the efforts of groups like the CRG and people like Peter Sprigg, who have made a career out of marginalizing the GLBT community, are consistently losing ground. It seems more and more of the public have realized that their efforts are just refined, money backed versions playground name-calling, and that the targets of their hatred aren’t anywhere nearly as vile as these folks paint us to be. Even their laughable efforts at “science” are seen as obvious and contrived by anyone with a modicum of analytical thinking skills. The only people these folks can continue to convince are those that are already staunch homophobes.
The latest poll shows that the concerted conservative effort to keep basic human rights away from GLBT people is eroding slowly but inevitably, month by month. Partly because these groups can find no truly valid reason to discriminate, but also because the GLBT community is showing the world we are at least as good as they are, which admittedly, is not a very high bar.
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
"The similarity is the DISCRIMINATION, not the particular characteristics that happen to be the FOCUS of the discrimination."
life is impossible without discrimination, cynco
the salient question is whether the particular discrimination is justified
argue that discrimination against homosexuals is not justified, if you will
but don't pretend discrimination against a behavior is the equivalent to discrimination based on race
that's an insult to your own intelligence
I wonder what about our species leads so consistently to bullying.
I wonder what about bullies leads so consistently to their blaming their victims.
Discrimination against people who commit the act of bullying is justified.
Anon claimed:
“life is impossible without discrimination, cynco”
There are a multitude of ways in any given situation where we can be selective without being discriminatory. My life, and that of my friends is full of discrimination. It makes me wonder what life could be like if we could live just one month without having to deal with it.
“the salient question is whether the particular discrimination is justified”
By “discrimination” I am referring to:
“treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.”
(From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrimination )
Ultimately, there is no justification for this type of discrimination.
“argue that discrimination against homosexuals is not justified, if you will”
I have, didn’t you notice? I have over 480 pages of stuff that I’ve posted to this blog and others about how discrimination against LGBT folks is not justifiable. I would think a few people would have noticed by now.
“but don't pretend discrimination against a behavior is the equivalent to discrimination based on race
that's an insult to your own intelligence”
Re-read my original post. I made no argument for equivalence of race and behavior. Your pretending that I did may help hide your failure to come up with a cogent argument, but it does not insult my intelligence, as I fully expect attempts at rhetorical tricks like that from the Anons.
My argument was solely about the act of DISCRIMINATION, which I also capitalized in the original post, and by the definition shown above, with regard to the LGBT community, has to do with denying people jobs, housing, or spouses based on their class, not on their individual merit. This has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with classifying a large group of people as “unworthy” of receiving the same benefits other people in our country enjoy, with no coherent reason for doing so.
Many right-wingers keep trying to make the claim that they are only discriminating on “behavior,” and they should be allowed to do that since it is not a “genetic,” in-born quality, and is a “choice.” These same people also adamantly claim that sexual orientation is a “choice” and therefore is not subject to legal discrimination protections.
However, many jurisdictions (including Montgomery County) also include religion and marital status in their protected classes, both of which are overwhelmingly choices, and other jurisdictions also include parental status and political affiliation, which are also choices. (Even if abortion were to be outlawed, deciding to be a parent would still be a choice.)
Religions are essentially a collection of beliefs and behaviors, and assuming we are not FORCED to practice a particular religion we do so by CHOICE. Our constitution even protects the choice of voodoo and ritual animal sacrifice:
From http://www.paganinstitute.org/PIR/animal_sacrifice.shtml
“In the 1980s, members of the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, a Santeria congregation, began leaving the bodies of sacrificed chickens near trees and bushes in Hialeah, Florida, where the Church was located.
Some have argued that such discrimination is an attack on religious liberty; that is to say, that bullying in the name of God is righteous, and permissible.
Santeria priest Ernesto Pichardo thought this was a good idea. The City Council did not. The government of the city of 240,000, 11 miles northwest of Miami, prosecuted the church under a law banning animal sacrifices. The church contended that the ritual scatterings were an indispensable part of their religion, and of its Afro-Cuban cultural roots. In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional religious discrimination.
Although they are now recognized as legal, Pichardo says that authorities still occasionally hassle church members. Pichardo is an orite, a priest empowered to conduct sacrifices. He is philosophical about the situation. "I learned one thing" he says. "When you bring something forward that is outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, the dominant culture is going to cause you problems.”
Our laws convey full legal protections and tax breaks to churches of witches (Wiccans - see http://www.wicca.org/ ), Scientologists, and even Catholics. All of these are choices, and not some in-born quality. You can not be fired simply because you chose to be a witch, or a Catholic, or chose to perform ritual animal sacrifices, but you can be fired for being gay.
Back to the “behavior” argument. Exactly what gay *behavior* do you justify denying people jobs, housing, and spouses for?
It’s certainly not SODOMY, as countless heterosexual couples have engaged in sodomy for millennia as a cheap form of birth control (Ruth Jacab’s admonitions about proper anus direction notwithstanding. http://blog.mattalgren.com/2009/11/dr-ruth-jacobs-once-and-returning-foe-testifies-in-washington-dc/ ). Or is there something sacred about sex with a female anus that a male anus simply can’t emulate?
It’s certainly not PROMISCUITY or the destruction of the institution of marriage, otherwise, Tiger Woods wouldn’t be allowed to get married after his latest fiasco, and neither would Larry King, after cheating on his SEVENTH wife.
We don’t even discriminate against heterosexual murderers when it comes to marriage – we still allow them to get married IN-SPITE of their deplorable behavior. In fact, numerous death row inmates have gotten married WHILE IN PRISON. (http://www.prisonerlife.com/deathrow/deathrow16.cfm)
Legally, we can’t discriminate against Catholics when it comes to jobs, housing, or spouses, despite the fact that they have a centuries long history of kidnapping children and giving them to “Christian” parents (http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Me-Pa/Mortara-Abduction.html ), burning people at the stake, harboring pedophiles and paying off witness so they don’t inform authorities, and participating in both the Nazi and Rwandan genocides. In fact, the Catholic Church is still fighting lawsuits regarding loot they may have stashed in the Vatican Bank from the Nazis (http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/nazi-loot-suit-against-vatican-dismissed ).
How many gays have been involved in behaviors as deplorable as the Catholic Church? As an ex-Catholic, I consider this a very important question that needs to be answered, not just a rhetorical flourish. Given the total history of the Catholic Church, I can make a far better argument for keeping our society safe by discriminating against Catholics than I can for gays.
The Anons often make paranoid claims about how allowing gays to marry will lead to the “destruction of our society,” yet they have provided no coherent explanation of how this will happen, or shown ONE example of how a heterosexual marriage was harmed by any of the thousands of gay marriages now existing on the planet.
When you say you only discriminate against behavior Anon, you have to explain to me how that discrimination *also* applies to heterosexuals, murderers, people who perform animal sacrifices, Catholics and others who have engaged in essentially the same or even FAR WORSE behaviors, and why they are not subject to the same job, housing, and marital restrictions that gays are.
Until you can do that, without resorting to “because they’re gay” in some form, you don’t have a valid argument.
Cynthia
"When you say you only discriminate against behavior Anon"
looking up at the comments I don't see an anon, or anyone else, who has said this
take a pill, cynco
you're having your 19th nervous breakdown
are you allowed to discriminate against those who rant like nuts?
seems to me like, when people are subject to pitching the kind of fit cynco has here, one shouldn't be forced to employ or engage in any type of transaction with them
live and let live, people
if someone isn't into you, move on and find someone who is
Exactly the point, "Anonymous"..."live and let live"! Your rights end at the tip of your nose, especially when what you do or say interferes with my rights.
I discriminate every day of my life...for example, if I do not like the attitude or behavior of a particular checker at Giant, I simply avoid dealing with that person. If someone on the Metro is being obnoxious, or threatening, or smells bad, I change my seat.
I do NOT, however, advocate that persons whom I find to be bigoted or hate-mongers, or whose behavior or attitude I find insulting or disgusting, should have legislation or acts of Government that prohibit them from having a job, being protected by the same rights as other citizens (unless, of course, they have transgressed in their behaviors against other citizens), or living in housing or having access to other public facilities.
By the way, your characteristic of Cynthia's reasoned, logical, and well-argued discussion as "pitching a fit" or "you're having your 19th nervous breakdown", are indecent, intolerable, and infantile.
Comments like these tell us more about your level of intelligence than anybody in here could ever imagine. And you ironically talk about "ranting like nuts"?
Citizen
Anon noted:
"When you say you only discriminate against behavior Anon"
>> looking up at the comments I don't see an anon, or anyone else, who has said this”
No, no one said that per se, but “behavior” was the _only_ reason implicitly given for discrimination. (See “this is a classic conflating of discrimination based on behavior and discrimination based on race”) The “behavior” argument has been used a number of times here in the past to try and justify discrimination against LGBT folks. This was my introduction to the rest of the post. I can see how my choice of phrasing implied more than was explicitly said; perhaps I’ll be more meticulous in my wording going forward.
>> “take a pill, cynco”
Soon I will take my Premarin and multi-vitamin, after I finish brushing my teeth. Thanks for reminding me.
>> “you're having your 19th nervous breakdown”
Actually, I have never had what is colloquially revered to as a “nervous breakdown,” so it could hardly be my 19th. As a Rolling Stones fan though, I do appreciate the reference (I particularly enjoy their tune “She’s a Rainbow”: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2276602068569254017# ).
I have had to deal with other peoples’ nervous breakdowns in the past, including picking up or dropping off someone very dear to me at the hospital. Fortunately, even though I have faced more than my share of difficulties, I have never gotten anywhere near the “nervous breakdown” point.
I recommend not making any psychoanalytical evaluations unless you are actually qualified to do so.
>> “are you allowed to discriminate against those who rant like nuts?”
And here we see the crux of the problem with the homophobe argument. The entire thesis of my post could have been blown out of the water if someone had just provided ONE example of how gay behavior was fundamentally and objectively worse than the behavior of heterosexuals or Catholics – something that gay people do that heterosexuals or Catholics haven’t done – that would justify sanctioning gays in terms of housing, jobs, and marriage. Granted, finding behavior that is worse than what Catholics have done for centuries can be difficult, but if you’re going to discriminate against them and NOT Catholics, you need to have a pretty good reason.
Lacking the ability to find even ONE behavior that can be quantifiably designated as worse than behaviors exhibited by others protected by law, one is left to trying to dismiss my argument as a “rant” and make unqualified aspersions about my sanity. Thus once again providing even more evidence that there is no underlying justifiable reason for discrimination against the GLBT community, and what arguments they do have simply devolve into name calling. This is why the homophobes are losing ground at the national level as well – people are on to them.
>> “seems to me like, when people are subject to pitching the kind of fit cynco has here…”
I would hardly call ripping apart the specious, unsupported logic of the “behavior” argument a “fit.” Granted, the tone my recent posts has not been as mellifluous as some in the past. However, since the suicide of a young transman in Bethesda (http://aidenriveraschaeff.com/) it has become clear that my efforts so far to combat the homophobe agenda have been woefully inadequate. I have been posting on this site since February of 08. I have heard the same bogus arguments and lies about the GLBT community day after day for over two years now. Ruth Jacobs still has her “notmyshower” site up which has all sorts of allusions to trans folks being mentally ill and likely to be prostitutes infected with AIDS; and Peter Sprigg is now promoting the idea that allowing the estimated 66,000 gays currently serving in the military to finally do so openly will suddenly lead to a rash of night-time rapes of our innocent heterosexual servicemen. ( http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/family-research-council-end-of-dadt-means-more-gay-rape-in-the-military.php )
I can’t sit idly by and let this kind of trash talk ruin the lives of innocent GLBT people. People have died because of the insidious perfusion of this animosity into the darker corners of our society. Call my posts “rants” if you like, but if you’re going to try and justify discrimination, be prepared to support it with some facts, and not just name-calling.
>> “… one shouldn't be forced to employ or engage in any type of transaction with them”
YOU are the one that came to Jim’s blog, and you most likely knew that several of the regular posters are part of the GLBT community. Who FORCED you to come here and post comments that you knew would rub against the grain of the people here? YOU are the one that started the transaction the ultimately ended up in the thesis of your behavior argument being exposed as an unsupported house of cards. No one in the GLBT community forced you into that transaction. As best I can tell, you entered into it of your own free will. Don’t complain if subsequently you weren’t able to defend your position.
>> “live and let live, people”
Perhaps you should have considered that mantra BEFORE posting demeaning commentary about LGBT folks.
>> “if someone isn't into you, move on and find someone who is”
Indeed, if you find some conservative right wing site, maybe they will give you comfort and support your unexamined dogma, and you won’t have to be subjected to transsexuals exposing your discrimination argument as an empty shell.
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
"I discriminate every day of my life...for example, if I do not like the attitude or behavior of a particular checker at Giant, I simply avoid dealing with that person. If someone on the Metro is being obnoxious, or threatening, or smells bad, I change my seat."
thank you
that's the point I have always made
and why can't be people have a similar reaction to homosexuality?
"I do NOT, however, advocate that persons whom I find to be bigoted or hate-mongers, or whose behavior or attitude I find insulting or disgusting, should have legislation or acts of Government that prohibit them from having a job, being protected by the same rights as other citizens (unless, of course, they have transgressed in their behaviors against other citizens), or living in housing or having access to other public facilities."
I don't advocate that either. But the government shouldn't be forcing someone to hire or house someone whose values they object to
government should just stay out of interpersonal relations
""When you say you only discriminate against behavior Anon"
>> looking up at the comments I don't see an anon, or anyone else, who has said this”
No, no one said that per se, but “behavior” was the _only_ reason implicitly given for discrimination."
What I meant, cynco, is that I don't personally discriminate against homosexuals, or at least I don't think I do. Still, I don't see why anyone should be prohibited from doing so. I agree with Citizen that the government shouldn't require discrimination against homosexuals but, at the same time, they shouldn't prohibit it.
"Actually, I have never had what is colloquially revered to as a “nervous breakdown,” so it could hardly be my 19th. As a Rolling Stones fan though, I do appreciate the reference (I particularly enjoy their tune “She’s a Rainbow”"
That's what I'm talking about.
Glad someone here has a sense of humor.
Pretty funny comment, cynco.
"Call my posts “rants” if you like, but if you’re going to try and justify discrimination, be prepared to support it with some facts, and not just name-calling."
Why, you unmitigated jackass!
"YOU are the one that came to Jim’s blog, and you most likely knew that several of the regular posters are part of the GLBT community. Who FORCED you to come here and post comments that you knew would rub against the grain of the people here? YOU are the one that started the transaction the ultimately ended up in the thesis of your behavior argument being exposed as an unsupported house of cards. No one in the GLBT community forced you into that transaction. As best I can tell, you entered into it of your own free will. Don’t complain if subsequently you weren’t able to defend your position."
Again, you seem to think I'm referring to myself.
I was talking about people being forced to employ or house or feed homosexuals. I never meant to imply someone forced me to post here, and don't think you guys should legally be forced to allow my comments.
Block 'em, if you want.
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