No Country for Old Bigots

As noted yesterday, a new survey on religious belief in America shows that anti-gay religious and political beliefs are increasingly isolated among the over 65 age bracket - a group that is slowly but steadily dying off.  Moreover, the survey confirmed that anti-gay bigotry among certain religious denominations is driving nearly a third of the under 30 age bracket to walk away from organized religion (and the GOP).  The trend is for young people to be raised in anti-gay denominations and then go off to college or move out on their own and then simply cease church affiliation.  Yet despite this documented demographic change, the GOP remains fixated on pandering to the aging angry white Christofascist voter demographic.  A column in the New York Times looks at the long term insanity of this approach and the reality that anti-gay rhetoric is increasingly a loser in the public square.  Here are excerpts:

Arizona’s S.B. 1062, part of the conservative “Jim Queer” crusade to use religious liberty as means of codifying discrimination against people for their sexual identities, once again places conservatives on the wrong side of history and further marginalizes an intolerance-obsessed party during an inclusion-oriented era.

The Arizona bill, which has been copied by Republicans in several other states, would have allowed businesses to deny services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender customers on religious grounds.

The backlash to this bill was swift and strong, and rightfully so, as Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, weighed whether to veto it, which she did on Wednesday. But, in a way, the damage to the Republican brand has already been done. The bigotry continues to coagulate. The harsh read of history draws Republicans further into disapproving resolution.

History doesn’t look kindly on those who stand against equality. Yet, that’s where conservatives have chosen to stand, much to my dismay and their detriment. 

The pace of Americans’ changing attitudes has been breathtakingly swift and shows no signs of abating. 

In fact, a report by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute produced some rather striking findings.

According to the report, not only do most religiously unaffiliated Americans now support same-sex marriage, but so do most white mainline Protestants, white Catholics, Hispanic Catholics and Jews.

Most Americans across the ideological spectrum, including even a majority of Tea Party supporters, support protecting gay men and lesbians from workplace discrimination, and most Americans believe that discrimination faced by gay people is greater than that faced by Muslims, blacks, women or Jews. The group the participants said faced the least amount of discrimination was evangelical Christians — the current campaign to portray them as an aggrieved and embattled class notwithstanding.

If young people will move away from religion over these issues, it’s not a stretch to believe that many might also move away from a political party because of them. 

[T]he courts keep striking down same-sex marriage bans. On Wednesday, another one fell when a federal judge found Texas’ ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional.   The tide has turned. But Republicans think that they can still move against it. 

Will America, and the Republican opposition, be true to the Declaration of Independence, which states without equivocation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”?

We are greater than our base elements. We feel — love, sorrow, a need for connection, the pains of longing. And we aspire, in our greatest hours, to justice. S.B. 1062 and the Republican preoccupation that fuels it was simply not our greatest hour.