Trump is Trying to Make America White Again

Some are condemning House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for stating the obvious about Der Trumpenführer's immigration reform proposals: they seek to decrease the entry of non-whites into America.  Driving home last night listening to "Steele and Ungar," former RNC chair Michael Steeler conceded that there is no other interpretation of Trump's goals, especially when he cited Norway, one of the most lily white nations on earth as a place he'd prefer to see immigrants come from.  The man is an out and out racist as over 45 years of documented behavior has underscored.  Personally, I cannot understand Trump's fears - or those of his white supremacist followers, which likely include a majority of evangelicals - of others simply because they have darker skin, yet he and they cannot see beyond skin color.  Or sexual orientation either for that matter.  Given my large Hindu client base, the proposals would hit the Indian community very hard given their history of hard working individuals immigrating, making their fortune, if you will, and then sponsoring their aging parents to come to America.  These people are no burden on the social safety net.  If anything, America needs more people like them and fewer poorly educated, bigoted whites. A column in the Washington Post looks at Trump's insidious immigration "reform" goals.  Here are  column excerpts:

President Trump’s immigration proposal reveals what he has been after all along: an end to family-based immigration and the “lottery visa,” which would mean fewer Latino, African and Muslim newcomers. And perhaps more Norwegians, if any want to come.

Yes, Trump is trying to Make America White Again. You’re probably not surprised.

The broad amnesty that the White House offers to 1.8 million undocumented people brought here when they were children is just a diversion. The $25 billion Trump wants for his “border wall system” — really more of an intermittent fence — is mostly a sop to his base. Much more important in the long run is the fundamental shift Trump wants to make in the nation’s system of legal immigration.

The administration seeks to drastically curtail the ability of immigrants to sponsor family members for entry into the country. This can only be seen as an attempt to halt the “browning” of America.

Under current law, U.S. citizens — including immigrants who are naturalized — can petition to obtain entry for their spouses, parents, siblings and sons and daughters of any age. Immigrants who are not citizens but hold green cards — meaning they are permanent residents — can sponsor spouses and minor or adult children for entry.

Trump proposes a sweeping change: Both citizens and green-card holders would be able to sponsor only spouses and minor children. As far as parents, siblings and adult children are concerned: Hasta la vista.

It is, of course, ironic that Republicans, who yammer so much about family values, would even entertain a proposal that is so deeply anti-family. But the party nominated and elected a thrice-married man who bragged about his habit of sexual harassment and allegedly paid hush money to a porn star for her silence about a tryst, so I guess that horse has long since left the barn.

Since it is difficult to argue against bringing close relatives together, proponents use the clinical-sounding term “chain migration,” as if we were talking about links of metal rather than flesh-and-blood human beings.

Trump also wants to eliminate the diversity visa program, which allocates 50,000 visas each year to countries that otherwise send few immigrants to the United States. Applicants are selected by lottery but then are carefully vetted. White House claims that individuals are admitted “at random” in a program “riddled with fraud and abuse” are lies.

The net result of Trump’s plan — the whole purpose, apparently — would be to welcome fewer people of color into the United States. In an Oval Office meeting, Trump reportedly demanded to know why there couldn’t be more immigrants from countries such as Norway. Surely it is not just a coincidence that Norway is one of the whitest countries in the world.

There’s a simple question here: Do you believe in America or not?  Throughout its history, the country has accepted waves of mostly low-skilled immigrants — German, Irish, Italian, Eastern European, now Latino. There are highly skilled immigrants, too; African newcomers, for example, are better-educated than the U.S. population as a whole, and an estimated 63 percent of people holding “computer and mathematical” jobs in Silicon Valley are foreign-born. But most immigrants over the years have arrived bearing not much more than grit, ambition and a dream.

Does an influx of workers with entry-level skills tend to depress wages? That’s the wrong question. Instead, we should be asking why the federal minimum wage is so low as to be almost irrelevant.

And we should recognize that immigration gives the United States a tremendous competitive advantage. In other advanced countries, populations are aging rapidly. Immigration provides a steady stream of younger workers whose brain and brawn keep programs such as Medicare and Social Security viable.

The only coherent — if despicable — arguments for Trump’s plan are racial and cultural. The way they used to put it in the Jim Crow days was succinct: White is right.

Conservative Christians Look the Other Way as Trump Debases the Presidency

It is Sunday morning and across America fundamentalist and evangelical Christians will be flocking to fill church pews and feign piety, many wearing their professed religiosity on their sleeves.  Many are against drinking alcohol, some won't even engage in dancing, and, of course they view loving same sex couples who are responsible members of their communities as an abomination to be annihilated.  Yet some 81% of them voted for Donald Trump and continue to support him largely because he appealed to their hatred of others and their desire to destroy the religious freedom of other citizens.  If one wants a reason to walk away from the Christian brand, these people are a strong argument that only hate-filled hypocrites call themselves Christian nowadays.  And the Millennials ARE paying attention: nearly one third have disavowed any religious affiliation, largely thanks to these self-anointed "godly folks."  A column in the Washington Post calls these so-called Christians out and ask the question of whether there is any debasement that Trump can do to the presidency or decency in general that might make these people disavow him.   Here are highlights:  

No group has been as blindly loyal to President Trump as Christian conservatives. They have not let religion or values get in the way of their support. Consider the “Access Hollywood” tape, the attack on a Gold Star family, a mass of inexplicable ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials (and the president’s open invitation to Russia to continue hacking), the firing of the FBI director, the humiliation of evangelical-favorite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the politicization of the Boy Scouts, the threats to the special counsel and now an interview with Trump’s out-of-control, potty-mouthed communications director.

What about Trump, exactly, reflects their values? (Taking Medicaid away from millions and separating families to deport law-abiding immigrants?) The Trump administration is a clown show — but it’s the evangelicals who supplied the tent, the red noses and the floppy shoes. Each day presents a new insult to the office of the presidency and a repudiation of civilized behavior.

Cumulatively — let’s not forget the erratic, impulsive declaration that he was throwing transgender military personnel out of the armed services — it is not clear whether Trump has reached a tipping point when Republicans decide he actually has to leave office. Yet if Trump nevertheless proceeds to fire Sessions and then order Justice Department officials to fire Mueller (or fire them if they won’t), Republicans will have no remedy at their disposal other than impeachment; they may very well choose not to use it, but then we have the makings of a constitutional crisis on our hands.

And the religious right, which intones “Judge Gorsuch, Judge Gorsuch!” when confronted with the series of Trump abominations, should do some soul-searching. Was this trashing of the White House, assault on civil language and conduct and contempt for the Constitution (the one the religious right thinks is so important that the new Supreme Court justice must protect it) worth it? And if it gets worse, is there any point at which the religious might put country above tribe, morality above partisanship? No, I don’t think it will do so ever. 

Last evening I was at a small, intimate fundraiser with mostly members of the local Indian community and the contrast between their expectations and what they looked for in a politician could not be a more stark contrast with the evangelical Christian crowd:  they look for the personal honesty, integrity and personal morality of a candidate and whether that candidate will seek to do the best for all citizens and not deliberately harm targeted citizens.  This versus the evangelicals and their support for Trump.  In my experience, these non-Christians time and time again reflect the values of the Gospel message more than the purported Christians of Trump's base. 

Donald Trump and the Call to Dehumanize Others

One thing that unites much of Donald Trump's base of support - especially the white supremacists and the evangelical Christians, although in my view, the two groups overlap to a great extent - is their hatred of those who are different.  Gays are target of their hate as are blacks, Muslims, non-Christians of every stripe, Hispanics, those born overseas.  They insist that they are the "real Americans," ignoring the fact that America was stolen from its original occupants through genocide or that some of those they deem "other" have ancestries in America that go back for many decades - or centuries - longer than their own.  Some of my own ancestors go back to New England prior to 1800 while others seem to trace back to Louisiana following the "Great Expulsion" of  French Acadians from Canada by the British during the 1755–1764 time-frame, but since I am gay, in the world of these people I do not rate "real American" status.  During his campaign, Trump called to the racism and simmering hate and has since incited violence against the media - CNN has increased security to protect its employees - and those who oppose his toxic agenda.  A piece in the New York Times looks at one of the victims of such hate, the wife of an Indian man murdered by "real American" in Kansas. With my large number of Hindu clients, the piece resonated with me and made me sad for what Trump and his followers are doing both to the country and to decent, hard working people who are just as human and deserving of life, liberty and happiness as anyone else.  Here are article excerpts (please read the entire piece):

Mr. Kuchibhotla, an Indian-born engineer, was confronted about his immigration status at a bar, then fatally shot. By the time the police arrived, Mr. Kuchibhotla was dying, and his close friend Alok Madasani was wounded. Another patron who tried to stop the attack was also struck by gunfire.

In some ways, what one man shouted in anger and one woman uttered in grief capture one of America’s most troubling intersections.

“Get out of my country!” the gunman would yell, before opening fire on the two Indian men he said he believed were from Iran.

The episode happened at dinnertime in America, in a neighborhood bar, part of a spasm of hatred uncoiling in small towns and big cities across the nation — and in rising numbers.

A month before the shooting, the Victoria Islamic Center in Texas was torched, destroying the mosque. A month after the shooting, a white supremacist traveled from Baltimore to New York City on a mission to randomly kill a black man. He did just that. The reason:a deep hatred of black men.

Ms. Dumala had wondered how the couple fit into this new narrative, if they should move to a different country, and once even asked her husband, “Are we doing the right thing of staying in the United States of America?”

The realization that her husband was killed because of intolerance, because he was not born in America, is what forced her to emerge from this personal, private hell. If people were to know the aftermath of a hate crime, the crater-sized void and endless questions left behind, if the victims were rendered as three-dimensional, maybe there would be less fear, less hate, she thought.

“My story needs to be spread,” she says plainly. “Srinu’s story needs to be known. We have to do something to reduce the hate crimes. Even if we can save one other person, I think that would give peace to Srinu and give me the satisfaction that his sacrifice did not go in vain.”

The best friends, more like brothers, were at Austins. Typically the two went with another close friend from the office, Manju Nag, but he had been out of town on business. That night, it was just Mr. Kuchibhotla and Mr. Madasani at their regular table on the patio, the one closest to the door, discussing Bollywood movies and drinking a pair of Miller Lites.

The assailant approached the friends. Witnesses recall him wearing a white T-shirt with military-style pins, his head wrapped in a white scarf. He was intent on finding out one thing: Did the men at the table belong in the country?

Adam W. Purinton, a white Navy veteran, turned to the two brown-complexioned men, both living in the United States for years, and demanded to know their immigration status.

Not long after, according to the authorities, Mr. Purinton returned to the bar with a handgun. He stood in the door entrance, pointed his gun toward the two men, and fired.

Mr. Kuchibhotla was hit first. Mr. Madasani, who had been sitting on the other side of the table, hit the ground, forced by a bullet, instinct or both. He crawled on his belly toward the opposite door. He thought the bullets were close by because the floor shook with each gunshot. “All I was thinking about at the time was about my baby, all I was thinking of was my wife’s belly,” said Mr. Madasani, whose wife was pregnant with their first child, a boy due in July. “In flashes, I was thinking, ‘I have to live.’”

Once outside, he realized he had been shot in the left leg. “I saw Srivinas on the floor, not moving. I kept on yelling to everyone, ‘Leave me, go and attend to him.’”

Mr. Grillot, the bar patron who had intervened earlier, chased Mr. Purinton into the parking lot. Mr. Purinton turned and shot him in the chest and hand.

Mr. Purinton, 52, was formally charged with premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of premeditated attempted murder. Last month, he was also indicted on federal hate-crime charges.

The term “hate crime” was being used over and over and by the police, journalists and politicians to describe the death of her husband. All of a sudden, Mr. Kuchibhotla was a hate crime statistic, an example to bolster anti-hate legislation  . . . . . 

This is not the America that I want to live in.  The majority of Americans I suspect do not either.  It is time we take back America from the bigots and haters. 

White American Terrorism in Trump’s Heartland

One of the main theme's of Donald Trump's, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, campaign pitches was to fan racism, xenophobia and a hatred of those white reactionary Americans deemed as "other."  The later category includes LGBT individuals, non-Christians, and, of course with skin of a different color. With Trump's election due to the failure of the Electoral College to protect the nation from a dangerous demagogue, the forces of hate within the ranks of both white supremacists and Christian extremists have been emboldened.  Even in gay friendly Key West, a gay couple was assaulted by an individual who sounds like a Southern red neck, who yelled to the victims that they were in Trump's America now.  A significant part of my client base is comprised of Indians from India who I have found to be loyal clients and wonderful people. After a hate crime motivated shooting in Kansas that left a young engineer dead, many in the Indian community in America are fearful.  Like other minorities, they fear what may be coming under the Trump/GOP agenda of diminishing the rights of those who are not white, heterosexual right wing Christians.  The Washington Post looks at the disturbing situation.  Here are highlights:

To most Americans, a shooting in Kansas last Wednesday will be remembered as just another incident of gun violence in a country where homicides are tragically commonplace and where far too many disturbed loners have ready access to firearms.

To many Indians, though, the murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla was the harshest warning yet about the reality of President Trump’s America.

Kuchibhotla, an engineer at satellite navigation company Garmin, was having an after-work drink with his friend and colleague Alok Madasani at their regular bar in Olathe, a town 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. The duo, both Indian nationals who received master's degrees in the United States, were confronted by 51-year-old Adam Purinton, who hectored them with ethnic slurs.

"He asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally," said Madasani to the New York Times. "We didn’t react. People do stupid things all the time."

But an enraged Purinton returned with a shotgun and opened fire, killing Kuchibhotla, 32, and injuring Madasani and Ian Grillot, an onlooker who intervened in defense of the Indian men. Eyewitness accounts suggest Purinton yelled at the pair to "get out of my country."

Purinton was arrested at another restaurant in Missouri after telling an employee there that he needed a place to hide because he had just shot some "Middle Easterners." News reports described Purinton as a mentally troubled man with an alcohol problem, but the racial undertones of his actions are unmissable.

The shooting led to anguish and anger both in India and among the South Asian diaspora in the United States, with many linking Kuchibhotla's senseless death to the xenophobic populism of the Trump campaign.

"There is a kind of hysteria spreading that is not good because so many of our beloved children live there," said Venu Madhav, a relative of Kuchibhotla, to India's ANI news agency.

Indians rank among the fastest-growing immigrant populations in the United States, but there are signs they could face tougher times under Trump. The White House is reportedly keen on curtailing the H-1B work visa program that has enabled tens of thousands of Indian nationals like Kuchibhotla to work for American tech companies. Trump's chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, one of the architects of the president's "America First" doctrine, previously articulated his dismay with the way in which South Asians supposedly dominate Silicon Valley.

[T]he shooting has deepened the fears of many South Asians — and other minorities living in the United States — over the racial tensions taking hold.

"The situation seems to be pretty bad after Trump took over as the U.S. president," said Kuchibhotla’s distraught father to local media in India. "I appeal to all the parents in India not to send their children to the United States in the present circumstances."

The Trump administration dismissed any suggestion of a link between the shooting, which could be justifiably defined as a terroris attack, and Trump's rhetoric.

[T]he Trump campaign rose in part through the unleashing of xenophobic passions and with the gleeful support of white nationalists. . . . But while Trump tweets incessantly about jihadist threats around the world, the White House has remained rather silent about the violence carried out by white nationalists against minorities, including a deadly attack on a mosque in Canada last month. So far, he has not tweeted anything about the Olathe shootings.

"Toxic rhetoric has contributed to scapegoating immigrants and religious minorities," said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) in a statement on Friday in which he linked Purinton's alleged xenophobia to Trump's politics of walls and bans. 

North Carolina is Closed to Non-Whites

One of the ironies is that even though I am one of the most "out" gay attorneys in Hampton Roads, I have a large and growing Hindu client base.   I sometimes say that perhaps this phenomenon is due in part to the fact that those who hate me - generally Christofascists and Republicans - also hate them.  I have found this client pool to be smart, focused on education, tolerant, and very loyal. A number are Facebook friends, so they are well aware of my political views and that I am gay.  Unlike, those on the right, they are able to look to one's character and competence rather than just see some ugly stereotype marketed by anti-gay extremists.  I deeply value these remarkable clients.  Sadly, pursuant to state law, North Carolinians are now free to discriminate and victims of discrimination face reduced legal remedies - all because the North Carolina Republicans surrendered to the demands of Christofascists for special rights to discriminate against those who are different.  The News and Observer has an op-ed by a Hindu graduate student that looks at the hideous agenda behind these "religious freedom" and pro-discrimination laws.  Here are excerpts:

My name is Jaisabrish Sankarkumar, a name that can be intimidating both by how many letters are in it and by how foreign it may look. Most people know me as Jai Kumar and call me Jai.

I was born in a small village in India, to two loving parents who were both physicians and had their own highly successful medical practice. In 1990, they decided to sell their practice and their house and relocate their family so that their children would have better access to education and opportunity. . . . Ultimately, they settled on North Carolina because we had family nearby, the schools were reportedly great, access to higher education was plentiful and excellent, and it was known as a welcoming and warm place.

Sadly, if they were left to make those choices today, I can’t say they would make the same choice.

You see, the message being broadcast by the reforms and policies is that, “North Carolina is closed.” By enacting voter ID laws, cutting funding to public schools, not expanding Medicaid and passing bills like House Bill 2, lawmakers are saying, “If you’re different, pick another state.”

Last year my mom was met with a horrific burn injury that left her hospitalized for the better part of nine months with ongoing surgeries and therapy that continue to this day. My parents had good insurance, and I saw the medical bills, and we were fortunate to escape with minimal damage to our financial security. However, there are countless others in this state who, if put in the same situation, would have to sacrifice everything to ensure their loved ones survived. By not expanding Medicaid, lawmakers have once again risked the future of an untold number of North Carolina families. And the door closes a little a more.

When they passed voter ID laws and House Bill 2, they finally came around to shutting the door on everyone who looks, thinks and acts a little differently from them. By removing civil protections to sue in state court for discrimination, they violated equal protection of their citizens. By positioning the bathroom issue as the crux of HB2, they chose to hide behind fear of difference rather than engage in conversation and learn about what they don’t know.

The narrative of a progressive welcoming place, a place where the entire nation should visit, a place where the most divisive issues were which style of barbecue you preferred has been cast aside.

If lawmakers took some time to get to know the people of their state, they’d find that this place is full of beautifully different people and that those who they never would have thought to befriend can become their closest of kin.

North Carolina is my home, and all of us, whether born here or transplanted here, owe it to her not to give up on her future and to reopen the door to invite everyone back in.

What is frightening is that Virginia Republicans would like to close the door to those who are different in Virginia just as the North Carolina GOP has done in our neighboring state to the south.  Fear and hate are not family values or Christian values if one listens to the Gospel massage - a message utterly ignored by the Christofascists. 

Bobby Jindal: A Case Study of a Political Prostitute

Jindal prostituting himself at Liberty University

Bobby Jindal seemingly still sees himself as a would be presidential candidate.  His main problem?  He's of Indian/Hindu descent, something that doesn't play well with the white supremacists and Christofascists of today's GOP base.  In an apparent attempt to win over these voters who are highly unlikely to ever vote for a non-white candidate, Jindal has given new meaning to the term political whore.  There seems to be no limit to how low Jindal will stoop or what level of insane batshitery he will embrace in order to sell his soul to the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  A piece in Salon looks at Jindal's shameless self-prostitution and his descent into crazy land.  Here are highlights:

Bobby Jindal was the great hope of the Republican Party. He was a fresh voice, the man most able to save the GOP from the dolts destroying it. But then something happened: Jindal decided that intellectual integrity was a political liability. He abandoned any pretense of serious governance, and began appealing to the basest elements of his party. He has since become a caricature of himself, a pandering hack with no moral compass and even less political intuition. So what happened? How did the man who decried his party for being too stupid become the dumbest of them all?

Jindal’s descent began in 2008. A young and promising governor, he attracted national attention, and for good reason. He was smart, competent and full of earnest ambition. Despite his bumbling response to Obama’s State of the Union speech, he became a rising star in the Republican Party.  And that’s when things began to change.

From 2009 on, Jindal has steadily debased himself for right-wing votes. He’s run Louisiana into the ground and spent most of his time fellating conservatives across the country with gaseous stump speeches and childish Op-Ed pieces. Since becoming the GOP’s golden boy, he has thought of nothing beyond his national conservative brand. Instead of reforming the stupid party, he’s encouraged it.

As governor of Louisiana, Jindal has attached himself to every regressive, anti-intellectual cause imaginable, and for purely political reasons. The man is an Ivy-educated biology major. He was even accepted into Harvard Medical School at one point. And yet he signed and supported the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows science teachers to teach creationism in public schools. Jindal knows creationism is a farce, and he knows it’s a tremendous stain on Louisiana’s reputation to allow it to be taught in science classes. But he doesn’t give a damn. He wasn’t concerned with Louisiana’s future; he was signaling his conservative credentials to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire; appearing smart to stupid people was a strategic decision on his part.

Jindal reached peak stupid in January 2015, when he staged a massive prayerapooloza in Louisiana. Modeled after Rick Perry’s 2011 prayer rally, it was a pathetic attempt to gin up support for his presidential campaign. The event itself was an orgy of bigotry and religious demagoguery. Here’s a passage drawn directly from the rally materials:

“We have watched sin escalate to a proportion the nation has never seen before. We live in the first generation in which…homosexuality has been embraced…While the United States still claims to be a nation ‘under God’ it is obvious that we have greatly strayed from our foundations in Christianity. This year we have seen a dramatic increase in tornadoes that have taken the lives of many…and let us not forget that we are only six years from the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina…”

You read that correctly: Gay people are responsible for a “dramatic increase in tornadoes” and other naturally occurring phenomena. That’s how low Jindal sunk; that’s how far he was willing to go. He embraced hate speech in order to appease bigoted fundamentalists, and he refused to distance himself from the fatuous assertion that gay people are the cause of bad weather.

Jindal’s desperation was on full display last week, when he announced his plan to issue an executive order to enforce the “religious freedom” bill. The legislation is nakedly discriminatory against gay people, and has very little support in Louisiana. Jindal backed this bill and threatened to unilaterally impose it on the state after the Legislature rejected it – a perfectly ironic thing to do for a small government conservative.

There was no sensible reason for Jindal to take this position, apart from his monomaniacal desire to impress religious conservatives in primary states. He even penned a puerile Op-Ed for the New York Times in order to take a courageous stand against civil rights for gay Americans. This is not the kind of leadership you’d expect from a guy hoping to distinguish himself from stupid people.

It’s worth asking what Jindal’s decline says about him personally and about the GOP more generally. As for Jindal, it’s fairly obvious: His ambition eclipsed his sense of duty. He exchanged his integrity for votes, and he did it in the most cynical fashion possible; Louisianans have suffered immensely because of it.

Jindal’s strategy also says something about the electoral base of the Republican Party. It’s increasingly evident that the most extreme elements of the right have become too influential.

Jindal’s asininity is a manifestation of this problem; he knows he’s appealing to a significant subset of Republican voters. He won’t win their votes, but someone else will, and they’ll have to pretend to be stupid in order to do it. This powerful minority within the GOP is the real problem; if the Republicans don’t do something about it, they will remain what they’ve become: the stupid party.

I have a great many Indian clients who, unlike Jindal, have remained Hindu.  Given Jindal's self-prostitution to the Christofascists - who hate non-Christians almost as much as gays - I find it hard to believe that Jindal will get any support from this demographic which has increasingly voted as the GOP has become the party of Christian dominionists.

 

U.S. Muslims and Hindus More Accepting of Gay Marriage that Evangelicals

click image to enlarge

While homophobia and anti-gay laws (and violence) remain significant problems in the Middle East and India, a new Public Religion Research Institute study reveals that American Muslims and Hindus are more accepting of gays and same sex marriage than the "godly" evangelical Christian crowd.  These findings underscore just how extreme evangelical Christians are and show that "non-American religions" from the perspective of the Republican Party are more assimilated into main stream American culture than the Bible thumpers and their sycophants in the GOP.  Leading the pack in the knuckle dragger set are the Jehovah's Witness (16% support) followed by the evangelical Baptists (23%) and Mormons (27%).  

On the modernity embracing side, 61% of Catholics support same sex marriage signally the reality that Pope Francis and the bitter old men in dresses at the Vatican have lost the anti-gay jihad still pushed by Rome.   Among Muslims, 42% support marriage equality and among Hindus, support is at 55%.  Here are highlights of other findings:

The most supportive major religious groups are Buddhists (84 percent), Jews (77 percent), and Americans who select “Other religion” (75 percent); additionally, more than three-quarters (77 percent) of the religiously unaffiliated also support same-sex marriage.

More than six in ten (62 percent) white mainline Protestants support same-sex marriage. Among white mainline Protestant denominations, support ranges from 69 percent support among white mainline Presbyterians and 68 percent among both white Episcopalians and white Congregationalists/United Church of Christ members, to lower support among white mainline Baptists (53 percent) and white mainline Church of Christ/Disciples (50 percent).

And while the Catholic Church officially opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage, about six in ten white (61 percent), Hispanic (60 percent), and other non-white Catholics (60 percent) support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. A majority of orthodox Christians (56 percent) also support same-sex marriage.

The study findings further confirm that the GOP is pandering to a shrinking ignorance embracing demographic.