Survey of Hispanics on Homosexuality is Bad News for GOP and NOM

The Republican Party is already facing major problems in attracting Hispanic voters. A new study of Hispanic attitudes on homosexuality suggests that the GOP vitriolic campaign against LGBT citizens may not be helping the GOP cause with this growing demographic either. The new survey from Social Science Research Solutions on Hispanic views of homosexuality, in fact, found that a majority of Hispanics support same sex marriage and by huge majorities support legal protections for gays, including employment non-discrimination protections. Thus, the GOP will be faced with deciding whether it wants to continue to pander to the diminishing anti-gay white Christianist demographic or perhaps lose additional ground with the fastest growing segment of the nation's population. The news is also not positive for the Catholic Bishops who have relied on growing Hispanic church membership to hide the decline in white Catholics taking place. Here are highlights from Religion Dispatches on the survey findings:

A majority Catholic Hispanics support legal gay marriage. It’s actually Protestant Hispanics that are under 50% support of gay marriage,” Dutwin said.

Indeed the study found that “sixty-four percent of Latinos support civil unions. No less than 83 percent of Latinos support legal protections for hate crimes, job discrimination, housing discrimination, as well as support for health care and pension benefits for gay and lesbian couples. Over three out of four (78%) support open military service.”

This tracks with numbers shown in the general population. But these findings are significant because of the persistent belief that Hispanics are strong supporters of “traditional family values.” It was this belief that prompted the National Organization for Marriage to target Hispanics to try and increase their opposition to marriage equality. In its document NOM plays to the traditionalists who may not want to “assimilate” into the more permissive American culture.

Hispanics who actually exercise their right to vote are more likely to be supportive: nearly two-thirds of those who voted in both 2008 and 2010 elections support marriage equality.

The study found that “Protestants are far more likely to say that homosexuality is a sin (59%) compared to Catholics (37%) and other Hispanics (20%).” Those views are often driven by the clergy and the messages they are sending about homosexuality.

Respondents who report clergy who expound anti-gay messages in their church are nearly twice as likely to say that homosexuality is not biological. Even more substantial is the finding that, while only 20 percent of respondents with pro-gay clergy say that homosexuality is a sin, the same is true for 62 percent of respondents with anti-gay clergy, a 42 percentage point increase.

“There’s this thought that Hispanics are more traditional than other groups in America and I just don’t see that having any bearing based on this data. Hispanics are as open to ‘alternative communities’ as any other group in the United States,” Dutwin said.

Obviously, these findings are not good news for Maggie Gallagher and her fellow hate merchants at NOM.