Americans' Trust in Honesty, Ethics of Clergy Hits All-Time Low

Clergy honesty: click image to enlarge - source Gallup.

According to a new Gallup Survey, Americans are seemingly belatedly waking up to a reality that should have been obvious long before now: most church clergy are not trustworthy or ethical.  Not surprisingly, the view of Catholic clergy has taken a major hit and are seen as significantly less honest and trustworthy than Protestant clergy in general.  That said, evangelical clergy who have tied themselves to the thoroughly immoral Donald Trump have suffered as well - hence the exodus of young evangelicals who disdain the political partisanship and homophobia that now defines perhaps a majority of evangelical clergy.  Here are some survey highlights which found nurses to be the most honest and trustworthy of any profession:

Americans' view of the honesty and ethics of clergy has fallen to an all-time low in a ranking of different professions released by Gallup.

The Gallup poll, conducted between Dec. 3-12 of 1,025 U.S. adults, found that only 37 percent of respondents had a "very high" or "high” opinion of the honesty and ethical standards of clergy. Forty-three percent of people gave them an average rating, while 15 percent said they had a “low” or “very low” opinion, according to the poll that was released on Dec. 21. 

Gallup noted that the 37 percent "very high" or "high" score for clergy is the lowest since it began asking the question in 1977. The historical high of 67 percent occurred back in 1985, and the score has been dropping below the overall average positive rating of 54 percent since 2009.

"The public's views of the honesty and ethics of the clergy continue to decline after the Catholic Church was rocked again this year by more abuse scandals,” Gallup noted in its observations.

Sexual abuse claims, involving both children and adults, have rocked churches across the U.S., South America and Europe this year, affecting both Protestant and Catholic congregations.

In the Gallup poll, 48 percent of Protestants rated clergy positively, compared to only 31 percent of Catholics.

Nurses, meanwhile, came out on top of the rankings, with 84 percent of respondents rating their honesty and ethical standards as "very high" or "high."

Medical doctors, pharmacists and high school teachers followed near the top of the list, while at the very bottom were telemarketers, car salespeople, and members of Congress.

"One notable change this year is that one-third of Americans now rate the honesty and ethics of journalists more highly, marking a 10-point jump since 2016 to a level not seen in four decades,” Gallup observed.. 

Trumpism is a Politics of Loss and Revenge

A piece in Talking Points Memo looks again at the issue of whether Trump's rise is driven by economic decline and marginalization due to globalization, etc., or racism.  As the piece concludes, racism and perceived loss of white privilege is the real driving force.  The irony, however, is that it is those with the least exposure to immigrants and those they deem "other" who are most loyal to Trump's toxic scapegoating of basically anyone who is non-white.   Here are some column highlights:

I wanted to return to what is certainly the stupidest and yet also one of the most important debates of the 2016 cycle: Trumpers, angry racists or economically stressed victims of globalization? By calling it the stupidest debate I don't mean to insult anyone. I've participated in it to some degree and I generally place myself on one side of it. But like any debate which seeks to make a fixed ideological orthodoxy over whether the chicken preceded the egg or vice versa, it can't help but degenerate into something semantic, embattled and ultimately stupid. In any case, it is still a critical question since Trumpism is a hugely significant development in contemporary US politics. So we need to understand what it is, where it comes from and where it's going.

I want to start with this massive study of Gallup data by Gallup's Jonathan Rothwell which attempted and went a long way toward furthering our understand of Trumpism. For many the big takeaway was that the study had debunked the 'economic anxiety' theory because after controlling for race, education and other factors, it wasn't the most economically marginal who supported Trump. Indeed, greater affluence among non-college whites was positively correlated with supporting Trump. Ergo, no more economic anxiety explanation.

I tend to come down on seeing Trumpism more through a racial prism. But seeing the above evidence as ruling out 'economic anxiety' is a naive way of thinking about how societies and social groups work.

In any case, I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of seeing Trumpers as modern day revolutionaries. My point is that this kind of crude reductionism, on either side of the debate, proves very little. We don't simply respond to our own personal experiences but the collective experience of communities we identify with.

Two data points from the study seem much more telling to me. First, Trump support is highly correlated with areas experiencing rising mortality rates for whites - a massively important societal development, in addition to a tragedy for the many people affected. When that revelation was hot at the end of last year, some of the follow up debunking showed that a closer analysis of the data showed that the highest mortality spikes were among middle-aged white women. Critics said, well the angry Trumpers are mostly men, not women. So this argument falls apart. Once again, these correlations aren't that simple or linear.

The second, relatively little discussed, finding is that the people who are responding most to the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee politics are those most isolated from both groups. In other words, the people responding most to anti-immigration politics and xenophobia are ones living in fairly racially homogenous and white communities.

I don't want to attempt some grand overarching theory of Trumpism. But, broad brush, I continue to believe that it is best understood as a reaction to the erosion of white privilege, supremacy and centrality in American life. 

That brings us to the second key point: Trumpism is about loss. And that loss is real. It's not just about being haters or uneducated or stupid. The fact that what's being lost is in most respects something that wasn't legitimate to have in the first place - status, centrality and racial privilege - should not blind us to the fact that the loss is real and that it will have political consequences. As I mentioned when I wrote up that mortality study last December, I think this demographic and actuarial marker - an almost unprecedented reversal of a particular group's mortality statistics - is hugely significant to understanding our contemporary politics. It almost unquestionably points to some acute socio-cultural stress. It's just a matter of discovering what it is.

I looked this up when I started looking at the polls showing Hillary Clinton competitive or even in some polls ahead of Donald Trump in Georgia. There's a powerful story here. If you were a 25 year old white man in Georgia in 1980, you lived in a state that was almost literally black and white. And whites were the overwhelming majority of the population. A mere thirty six years later the picture is dramatically different. According to the 2015 US Census estimate, non-Hispanic whites make up only 53.9% of the population. The African-American population makes a up slightly larger percentage of the population - I assume descendants of the early 20th Great Migration returning to the state. The same year Hispanics made up 9.4% of the population, Asian-Americans made up 4% and the remainder is made up of citizens who identified as being of multiple races or 'other'. If you identify politically and culturally with your whiteness this is a profound and profoundly unsettling change.

If you look at the Georgia Republican primary this year, Trump won the overwhelming number of counties. But if you look at the percentages, he did best in counties with the lowest median incomes and those with relatively low percentages of white voters. (Of course, the GOP electorates were overwhelmingly white basically everywhere.)

One of the best and most frequently cited arguments against those who see Trumpism as driven by economic insecurity and globalization is: if that's the case, why does he get basically no support outside of the white community since non-whites are at least as economically stressed as whites and in most cases far more so? The best rebuttal is that if you're pushing a politics about globalization and declining economic opportunity which scapegoats non-whites as the source of the problem, of course you're not going to get a lot of traction with the people your scapegoating.

All true enough. But if you look at the language of Trumpism we see repeated references to getting stuff back, reclamation, anger. This is a politics of loss and grievance. The appeal of an extreme dominance politics is particularly to those who feel they've lost power and who feel increasingly marginal to the direction of the country as a whole. There's a strong theme of Trumpite rhetoric that is about revenge. Put that all together and I think the driving factor is the erosion of white dominance in American life. African-Americans, Hispanics and other rising racial and ethnic minority groups may have grievances or demands for greater inclusion, dignity and respect in American life. But pretty much by definition they're not looking to reclaim something that was taken from them or something they've lost. It is inherently future oriented in a way that this burgeoning white nationalism is not.

It makes perfect sense that this sense of loss and griavance would be felt most acutely by those lowest on the economic and education scale. But go back to what I said about Trump getting his biggest support with people with least contact with the country's new immigrant. If you're more affluent, consider yourself among those succeeding in contemporary America or live in one of the areas that is already defined by the more racially and ethnically diverse America that will define the 21st century, I think you're less likely to politically identify with your whiteness and the loss one inevitably experiences if that is a primary identification. It's hardly like economically vital and diverse major metropolitan areas are filled non stop post-racial Kumbayas. But if that's the world you live in, I suspect you tend to see Trumpism as if not offensive than simply an anachronism. This is almost certainly why Trumpism has virtually no purchase among the young. The numbers are actually quite astounding. A recent McClatchy poll showed Trump running 4th - behind Gary Johnson a nd Jill Stein - among voter 18 to 29 years of age. Jill Stein was at 16% and Trump was at 9%.

Of course, under 30 voters are considerably more diverse, less white, than the electorate as a whole. But they're not that diverse. Even among young white men, Trumpism seems to have very little traction. Trumpism is a politics of loss, nostalgia and grievance for a past these young voters have no experience of. It's driven by attitudes they find offensive or alien.

GALLUP: 64 Million Religious “Nones” In America

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If one believes that a decline in religion in America is a good thing as I do, a new Gallup survey contains good news: those identifying as Christian is at a new low and the numbers of those claiming no religious affiliation is at a new high and translates to some 64 million Americans.  Is the GOP noting any of this?  Of course not!  The GOP continues to focus on prostituting itself to the most extreme and ugly elements of the Christofascists.  Here are highlights from some of the findings:

[A] review of over 174,000 interviews conducted in 2015 shows that three-quarters of American adults identify with a Christian religion, little changed from 2014, but down from 80% eight years ago. About 5% of Americans identify with a non-Christian religion, while 20% have no formal religious identification, which is up five percentage points since 2008.

The general trends in the data over this eight-year period are clear: As the percentage of Americans identifying with a Christian religion has decreased, the percentage with no formal religious identification has increased. The small percentage of Americans who identify with a non-Christian religion has been essentially constant over this time period.

The percentage of Christians is highest among older Americans and decreases with each progressively younger age group. This trend reflects the high number of "nones" -- those without a formal religious identity -- in the younger generations, as well as a higher proportion of non-Christians among them.

One key to the future of Christian representation in the U.S. population will be shifts in the religious identification of today's youngest cohorts. Traditionally, Americans have become more likely to identify with a religion as they age through their 30s and 40s and get married and have children. If this pattern does not occur in the same way it has in the past, the percentage of Christians nationwide will likely continue to shrink.

Of the Millennials that I know who now have children, few have returned to identifying with any religious affiliation.  

Are Voters are shifting to Democrats

For nearly the last two decades, the Republican Party has attempted to move America backward in time to a mythical reality that never existed in the 1950's.  In the process, GOP policy has focused on empowering religious extremist, no nothing elements of the Tea Party and Christofascists, and doing the water carrying for vulture capitalists.  Add to that huge doses of racism, rank homophobia and fool's errand foreign wars.  Meanwhile, the nation is changing both in terms of demographics and social values and the core of the GOP base - aging, angry, far right whites is thankfully, literally dying off.   Thus, it should come as no surprise that Americans are moving away from the GOP. A new Gallup survey seems to confirm this trend.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

The Gallup organization reported its latest findings on party identification late last week, and the report contained good news for the Democrats and a flashing yellow for Republicans.

The Democrats “have regained an advantage” over the GOP in party affiliation, Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones wrote in an accompanying analysis. Republicans, he added, “have seemingly lost the momentum they had going into last fall’s elections.”

[T]he findings add to a series of data points that underscore the challenges ahead for a party trying to keep pace with a rapidly changing country.

The latest numbers essentially mark a reset that returns party affiliation to its modern historical norm. Democrats long have enjoyed the advantage over Republicans in Gallup’s measures.

In those few periods when the GOP drew even or slightly ahead (after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 or after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001), the party has been unable to hold that ground for long.

The Supreme Court’s decisions rejecting another legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act and ruling that same-sex marriage is now legal around the country gave the Obama administration two significant victories that were at odds with Republican doctrine.

What they have lost in affiliation over the past few months is not irretrievably gone, but having to make up lost ground is hardly the way Republicans wanted to start the 2016 campaign.

Obama has repeated his attacks on the GOP as a party out of touch with the country, as a party of the past during a time of historic change. Hillary Rodham Clinton is echoing that same message about the Republicans as she campaigns for the Democratic nomination.

The stronger Obama’s approval ratings next year, the more likely it is that the Democrats will retain the White House for a third consecutive term.

Republicans must hope that they nominate a presidential candidate who the public sees as sharing its values and who embodies the future direction of the country. For now, however, the contest for the nomination offers potholes and pitfalls.

Nor have the [GOP presidential] candidates begun to engage one another. When they do, the party will be plunged into a debate about the future — of health care, of the environment, of same-sex marriage, of the economy. On some of these issues, the divisions risk playing into Obama’s and Clinton’s characterization of the Republicans being caught in the past.

Confidence in Organized Religion at an "All-Time Low”

In more positive news, a new survey finds that Americans' confidence in organized religion is justifiably at an all time low.  Not that the Republican Party will get the message that it is clinging to a sinking ship.  Personally, I hope the decline continues and that eventually the toxic poison peddled under the smoke screen of "religious belief" will play a declining role in American politics.  Newsweek looks at the trust in organized religion's dramatic drop.  Here are excerpts:

Confidence in organized religion is at an an “all-time low” among Americans and the church has fallen in a ranking of the country’s most trusted institutions, according to new polls. 

Only 42 percent of Americans now have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in organized religion and the church, according to the Gallup poll. The church stands behind the military, small business and the police in a list of institutions in which Americans have the most confidence; but Americans do still trust the church more than the medical system, Congress and the media, Gallup said in a separate poll on Monday.

While confidence among Protestants fell to a new low this year, at 51 percent, confidence among Catholics, also at 51 percent, has reached a “steadying after more than a decade of varying confidence” that dropped as low as 39 percent in 2007, said Gallup.

“Poor behavior on the part of some religious leaders has caused serious self-inflicted wounds for the church and organized religion—damaging its image among Protestants and Catholics as well as many non-Christians,” said Gallup.

Non-Christians and non-religious Americans had even lower levels of confidence in the church. Fifty percent of non-Christians and the non-religious had “very little” confidence in organized religion, while only 10 percent had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence.

 More than a fifth of Americans are unaffiliated with any religion, with the number jumping to 22.8 percent in 2014 from 16.1 percent in 2007, according to a study from the Pew Research Forum published in May. The number of Americans involved with non-Christian faiths increased to 5.9 percent in 2014, according to the study.

The Rise of Social Liberalism: Time for a GOP Reality Check

Recent surveys have found that America is becoming more socially liberal - a reality lost on the Republican Party as it remains in a Fox News/Rush Limbaugh bubble.  For Democrats, its likely a positive development because by remaining slavish political whores of the Christofascists, the GOP will drive away more and more voters who simply are over the GOP's embrace of ignorance (and racism and general bigotry).  The growing acceptance of gays is only part of the phenomenon as more Americans walk away from religion entirely.  A column in the New York Times looks at the issue.  Here are excerpts:

There is a fascinating phenomenon taking shape in America: As the country becomes less religious, it is also becoming more socially liberal.

It makes sense that these two variables should closely track each other, but the sheer scale and speed of the change is astonishing.

After a Pew Research Center report earlier this month found that “the Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing,” this week Gallup released a report that found that “more Americans now rate themselves as socially liberal than at any point in Gallup’s 16-year trend, and for the first time, as many say they are liberal on social issues as say they are conservative.”

Gallup found this week:

“The upward progression in the percentage of Americans seeing these issues as morally acceptable has varied from year to year, but the overall trend clearly points toward a higher level of acceptance of a number of behaviors. In fact, the moral acceptability ratings for 10 of the issues measured since the early 2000s are at record highs.”

Acceptance of gay or lesbian relations is up 23 percentage points over that time. Having a baby outside of marriage is up 16 points. Premarital sex is up 15 points. Divorce and research using stem cells obtained from human embryos are both up 12 points.

At the same time, the death penalty is down three points (within the four-point margin of error) and medical testing on animals is down nine points.

This change poses a particular challenge for the Republican Party and its national aspirations, not so much at the congressional seats, many of which are safe, but for presidential candidates.

Part of the issue, as the likely candidate Jeb Bush put it last year, is that for a Republican to become president, he or she would have to be willing to “lose the primary to win the general” election.

It was a catchy phrase and everyone understood what he was saying: Don’t allow the Republican debates and primaries to drag you so far right that you will never be able to recover in the general election. But the problem is that there is no way to compete in the general without first winning the primaries securing the nomination.

Republicans are now involved in another election season that feels like the movie “Groundhog Day”: trying to out-conservative one another to be in the good graces of Republican primary voters, who in many states can be disproportionately religious and socially conservative.

Iowa and New Hampshire would be only the first two of a 50-state slog through a Republican electorate that is not necessarily where the rest of the country is — or is going — on religiosity and social liberalism.

There is only so much skipping one can do. At some point, the candidates must face the most conservative voters and one voice must emerge.

This process has not been kind or general-election-friendly for the Republican candidates in the last couple of cycles. But there is no indication that most Republicans — either candidates or voters — have drawn the necessary lessons from those defeats.

New Gallup Study Finds Gays Everywhere in America

A new analysis of Gallup survey data is offering perhaps the most detailed data yet about where people in the LGBT community live.  Cities in the West lead the way in the percentage of residents who identify as LGBT, but the analysis also finds that gays are pretty much everywhere across America - even in backwaters of ignorance and bigotry in the South.   Gays also tend to be more numerous in college and university towns that attract more educated populations that bring increased tolerance.  Overall, the conclusions are bad news for the Christofascists who claim gays are much less numerous than is the case and for the anti-gay GOP which can lose a close election if the LGBT vote goes heavily Democrat (as has happened in Virginia).  A piece in the New York Times looks at the findings.  Here are highlights:

The Gallup analysis finds the largest concentrations in the West — and not just in the expected places like San Francisco and Portland, Ore. Among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, Denver and Salt Lake City are also in the top 10. How could Salt Lake be there, given its well-known social conservatism? It seems to be a kind of regional capital of gay life, attracting people from other parts of Utah and the Mormon West.

On the other hand, some of the East Coast places with famous gay neighborhoods, including in New York, Miami and Washington, have a smaller percentage of their population who identify as gay — roughly average for a big metropolitan area. The least gay urban areas are in the Midwest and South.

Significant as these differences are, the similarities are just as notable. Gay America, rather than being confined to a few places, spreads across every major region of the country. 

Nationwide, Gallup says, 3.6 percent of adults consider themselves gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. And even the parts of the country outside the 50 biggest metropolitan areas have a gay population (about 3 percent) not so different from some big metropolitan areas. It’s a reflection in part of increasing tolerance and of social connections made possible by the Internet.

One factor behind the data — in Portland and elsewhere — may be people’s willingness to tell a pollster that they’re gay, lesbian or bisexual. In addition to having a larger gay population, places like Portland may also have a larger share of their gay population who publicly identify as such.

It’s no accident that some of the country’s most educated metro areas have some of the largest gay populations. Gay and lesbian Americans are not substantially more educated than the rest of the population, according to Gary Gates, a co-author of “The Gay and Lesbian Atlas,” who has studied the Gallup data. But university campuses — and the spillover neighborhoods from them, where college graduates congregate — have long been more accepting.

Boston, a city famous for its colleges, is the only East Coast metropolitan area to crack the top eight of Gallup’s ranking. Austin, home of the University of Texas, joins New Orleans as the only Southern city to be so high on the list.

Besides education, a few other factors correlate with having bigger gay populations. Metro areas with a greater share of gay and lesbian residents tend to lean Democratic. They have more adults under the age of 45 and larger Latino and Asian-American populations.

Many of the areas with the lowest percentages of L.G.B.T. people are in the South, and none have a lower share than Birmingham, where 2.6 percent of the population identifies as gay. Throughout the South, conservative Protestantism has shaped many people’s views.  

Below is a list of all 50 of the largest metro areas, along with Gallup’s estimate of the L.G.B.T. population in each:

San Francisco, 6.2 percent

Portland, Ore., 5.4

Austin, Tex., 5.3

New Orleans, 5.1

Seattle, 4.8

Boston, 4.8

Salt Lake City, 4.7

Los Angeles, 4.6

Denver, 4.6

Hartford, 4.6

Louisville, Ky., 4.5

Virginia Beach, 4.4

Providence, R.I., 4.4

Las Vegas, 4.3

Columbus, Ohio, 4.3

Jacksonville, Fla., 4.3

Miami, 4.2

Indianapolis, 4.2

Atlanta, 4.2

Orlando, Fla., 4.1

Tampa, Fla. 4.1

Phoenix, 4.1

New York, 4

San Antonio, 4

Washington, 4

Riverside, Calif., 4

Philadelphia, 3.9

Baltimore, 3.9

Buffalo, 3.9

Detroit, 3.9

Sacramento, 3.9

San Diego, 3.9

Charlotte, N.C., 3.8

Chicago, 3.8

Dallas, 3.8

Cleveland, 3.7

Kansas City (Mo. and Kan.), 3.6

Minneapolis-St. Paul, 3.6

St. Louis, 3.6

Oklahoma City, 3.5

Richmond, Va., 3.5

Nashville., 3.5

Milwaukee, 3.5

Houston, 3.3

San Jose, Calif., 3.2

Raleigh, N.C., 3.2

Cincinnati, 3.2

Memphis, 3.1

Pittsburgh, 3

Birmingham, Ala., 2.6

Note the percentages for Richmond and Virginia Beach.  I suspect Northern Virginia has even higher percentages but doesn't make the list due to how metro areas are defined.  The Virginia GOP needs to take note and accept the reality that its anti-gay bigotry is helping to make it non-competitive in state wide races. 

Support for Same Sex Marriage Reaches a New High

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The results of a new Gallup poll yields more bad for the Christofascists: support for same sex marriage has reached a new high with the under 30 generations supporting by a margin of 78% in favor and only 22% opposing.   The results should also send a chill down the spines of anti-gay Republicans who continue to a declining pool of angry, white, heterosexual conservative voters.  Meanwhile, only 31% of self-styled conservatives support marriage equality.  Here are highlights from a piece in The New Civil Rights Movement:

Support for same-sex marriage nationwide continues to shoot upward, and has reached an all-time high in Gallup’s latest poll. Gallup puts the number at 55 percent, with 42 percent of Americans opposed. That number is similar to a Washington Post poll earlier this year that found 59 percent support.

What’s staggering isn’t the number so much as the rapid change in opinion.

Gallup finds that overall, support for marriage equality jumped up two points since just last year, but among adults under 30, it jumped a staggering eight points — to a whopping 78 percent — since 2013. Moves like that are almost unheard-of.

Now, 74 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Independents support the freedom to marry, while a meager 30 percent of Republicans do. Looking at ideology, 82 percent of Liberals, 63 percent of Moderates, and 31 percent of Conservatives support marriage equality.

Given the numbers, if the GOP was smart, it would simply give up its opposition and tell the Christofascists that the war is over.

The Public Distrust of Clergy Is Growing

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The results of a new Gallup survey will warm the hearts of those who believe religion and clergy are afforded too much deference: Americans' rating of the honesty and ethics of the clergy has fallen to 47%.  Perhaps more encouraging or discouraging depending upon one's prospective (I see it as encouraging), only 32 percent of Millennials (those age 18 to 34 years) view clergy as trustworthy.  same.  Given the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church - and the fact that no one has been punished - combined with sleazy televangelists (why does Pat Robertson spring to mind?) and the overt racism of many self-styled Christian "family values" organizations, it is easy to understand the revulsion toward the clergy of Milennials.  These finding on the declining view of clergy also further underscore the long term idiocy of the GOP in its quest to totally prostitute itself to Christofascists.  Here is a summary of the survey findings:

Americans' rating of the honesty and ethics of the clergy has fallen to 47%, the first time this rating has dropped below 50% since Gallup first asked about the clergy in 1977. Clergy have historically ranked near the top among professions on this measure, hitting a high rating of 67% in 1985.

As Christianity Today noted, trust in the clergy varied significantly depending on one's political affiliation and age:

Americans are divided along party lines, as well as age. Gallup found more trust in clergy among Republicans (63%) than Democrats (40%). Similarly, clergy members appear more trustworthy to older Americans than millennials: half of Americans older than age 55 trust clergy members, while only 32 percent of millennials (18 to 34 years) report the same.

In an unrelated post, Bob Felton looks at another possible reason for the decline in trust in clery: the clergy are lying to the sheeple and they know that they are lying but they keep on lying.  The following quote comes from a former seminarian:

Without devolving into extraneous details, I will say that it was my seminary courses, the texts, coursework, lectures and research, which cast into question Biblical authority and thereby theology. While I had studied the Bible devotionally for years, it was only in the context of seminary that I was expected to study it critically. In other words, is the Bible the inerrant, infallible, unchanging word of God? Was it what it purported to be? Learning that the bulk of the Hebrew scriptures were altogether fictitious, plagiarized versions of other ancient mystery religions with a desperate agenda to galvanize and perpetuate an ethnic minority, and then to learn that the Gospels were not in fact the actual words or deeds of Jesus, since they were authored in thousands of variant forms generations after the death of Jesus, all produced an intellectual and theological crisis for which I could no longer authenticate myself as a minister of the gospel.

Curiously, my seminary professors cautioned us that the churches we served, that the congregations we pastored, weren’t ready to understand the Bible in these terms . . . 

 All things considered, I continue to view religion - especially fundamentalist denominations - as an overall negative force in the world.  Hate, hypocrisy, violence towards others, and bigotry are religion's main fruits and outweigh any positive benefits that might flow from it.  Hopefully, more and more Americans are figuring this out.

Majority Of Older Americans Support Same-Sex Relationships

A new Gallup survey has found that for the first time more than 50% of Americans over the age of 55 support same sex relationships and found them to be morally acceptable.  Obviously, this is not good news for anti-gay hate merchants like The Family Foundation here in Virginia, Family Research Council, American Family Association, the National Organization for Marriage, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention and the closeted queens at the Vatican.  Approval by those under 34 now is at 74%.  Obviously, the hate merchants are losing the culture war and will become even more hysterical as one of their main fundraising ploy becomes less and less viable.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement:

Three out of four younger Americans, aged 18 to 34, support same-sex relationships, and a similar number support same-sex marriage, but for years common wisdom has been that older Americans’ views were unchanging. Some, like conservative pundit George Will, have said that “quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people.”

Well, even that seems to be changing. In fact, according to a Gallup study just released today, for the first time ever, the majority of those aged 55 and older now find same-sex relationships “morally acceptable,” creating majority support across every age group.

“Americans’ attitudes toward gay or lesbian relations have shown the greatest overall change over the course of Gallup’s tracking, with moral acceptance increasing 19 points between 2001 and 2013,” Gallup reports:

Much of this change has occurred across the age spectrum. Acceptance of gay or lesbian relations among Americans aged 55 and older is now 25 points higher than it was in 2001. While Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have consistently reported support for gay and lesbian relations at higher levels than older age groups, their support has also risen by 22 points in the past 12 years.

The study did not ask about acceptance of same-sex marriage, but rates of support are similar in recent polls.

From my own experience, things outside of the Christofascist base of the Virginia GOP are changing even here in Virginia.  Last Saturday the boyfriend and I were included as guests at what could be best described as an "Old Hampton" party with many of the oldest and wealthiest families from the city.  No one batted an eye at a gay couple being included amongst the guests - and this was definitely an older crowd.   Sunday, we were at the James River Country Club with clients of the boyfriend and we had the same accepting experience.  Monday, we were at the Hampton Yacht Club where we are now full members.  Yes, things are changing even in Virginia.

Same-Sex Marriage Support Solidifies Above 50% in U.S.

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A new Gallup poll brings more bad news for the Christofascists and their political whores in the Republican Party: Support for gay marriage has solidified above 50%.   For those who welcome equality under the law and who believe that committed couples should enjoy the same civil law rights, it's good news.   For those who only feel good about themselves when they can stigmatize and denigrate others and/or force their religious beliefs on others, it is obviously not welcome news.   Here are some of the findings in Gallup's newest poll:

PRINCETON, NJ - Fifty-three percent of Americans say the law should recognize same-sex marriages, the third consecutive reading of 50% or above in Gallup polling over the past year. The 53% in favor ties the high to this point, also measured last November and in May 2011.

Gallup's May 2-7 poll suggests Americans' support for gay marriage is solidifying above the majority level. Recently, Rhode Island and Delaware legalized same-sex marriage, and Minnesota is likely to follow suit. That would bring the total number of states legally recognizing same-sex marriage to 12.

Just three years ago, support for gay marriage was 44%. The current 53% level of support is essentially double the 27% in Gallup's initial measurement on gay marriage, in 1996.

Nearly all U.S. subgroups are more likely to favor gay marriage now than in the past. Politically, Democrats, independents, and liberals all show increasing support for gay marriage over time, with each well above the majority level now. Republicans, conservatives, and moderates are more likely to favor gay marriage now than in 1996, but the increase in support among these groups may have stalled. Thus, most of the increase in the percentage favoring legal gay marriage in the last three years has come among left-leaning groups politically.

Although a majority of Americans now favor legalizing gay marriage, that is not necessarily because they think it will be beneficial to society more broadly. A relatively small, but growing, proportion believes legalizing same-sex marriage will change society for the better. Currently, 19% hold this view, up from 10% in 2003.

I am sure that there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in the offices of hate groups such as FRC, NOM and, here in Virginia, The Family Foundation.

AnThe Unprecedented Shift In Attitudes About Gay Marriage

In a piece that will likely cause the anti-gay professional Christians and hate group leaders to wail and gnash their teeth, Business Insider looks at the huge shifts that have occurred in public support for same sex marriage.  And the piece gives a great deal of credit to Barrack Obama for the the shift in support even though he has done little substantively to champion gay marriage rights.  The article also notes that religious based bigotry remains the main predictor of opposition to gay marriage and anti-gay animus in general.  Here are some excerpts:

But despite the rhetoric, Obama has taken few steps to influence a change of policy. That changed Friday night, as his administration weighed in with a friend-of-the-court brief in the Supreme Court case on Section 3 of the DOMA case, urging it to be struck down as unconstitutional.

"The law denies to tens of thousands of same-sex couples who are legally married under state law an array of important federal benefits that are available to legally married opposite-sex couples. Because this discrimination cannot be justified as substantially furthering any important governmental interest, Section 3 is unconstitutional," Solicitor General Donald Verrilli wrote.

Polls show that by weighing in, Obama and the White House are siding with the majority of Americans.  In the last decade — and especially in the last few years — Americans' attitude toward gay marriage has shifted dramatically.  . . . . ."The change in attitude is certainly unprecedented," Greg Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, told Business Insider in November. 

The shift has been similar at the state level. For example, in Iowa, a moderate swing state where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2009, two Public Policy Polling surveys show a 10-point net increase in support for gay marriage over the past 16 months alone. According to the PPP survey conducted this month, 76 percent of those surveyed said the state's legalization of same-sex marriage had no effect on their lives.

What's driving support? Self-identified independent voters. Here's a look at how they've shifted in Iowa from October 2011 to February 2013:

Religious attitudes continue to be the main driver of the opposition to gay marriage. Gallup found in a December poll that 63 percent of Americans opposed to gay marriage said they were opposed because of religious-related reasons. According to the same poll, 53 percent of respondents said they favored legalizing gay marriage, tying a record high..

The other big holdouts are conservatives and Republicans. According to Gallup, only 30 percent of Republicans think gay marriage should be legal. That compares with an astounding 73 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of Independents. 

The tie cited between religious extremists and Republicans, of course, is due to the fact that the GOP has become a sectarian party  controlled by Christofascist extremists.

New Gallup Poll On LGBT Issues Shows That The Christianists Are Losing Ground

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A new survey by Gallup indicates that support for LGBT rights is growing across all political parties with commanding majorities of Democrats and Independents supporting LGBT rights - not exactly good news for the Christofascist and professional Christian crowd who continue to strive to deprive LGBT citizens of civil rights as punishment for our refusal to submit to their fear and hate based version of Christianity.  Here are some of the findings:

Most Americans say gay and lesbian domestic partners or spouses should have inheritance rights and health insurance and other benefits. And a majority say gays and lesbians should be able to legally adopt children.

Republicans are less in favor of inheritance rights, health insurance and other benefits, and adoption rights for gays and lesbians than are either independents or Democrats. They are also less supportive of allowing openly gay Boy Scout leaders to serve. The partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats is at least 20 percentage points on all four issues.

Still, a majority of all partisan groups support inheritance rights and employee benefits for gay and lesbian spouses and partners. But slightly less than half of Republicans support adoption rights.

Bottom Line
While 53% of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage, significantly higher percentages support the idea of equal rights for partners or spouses of gays or lesbians when it comes to inheritance rights and employee benefits, and making it legal for gays and lesbians to adopt children.

Republicans may claim to support religious freedom and talk about liberty and freedom, but they still for the most part only want such rights for their fellow Bible beaters.  Everyone else in their view should remain second class citizens.

 

Encouraging News From Gallup Tracker, etc.

Many Democrats are in a funk right now over last week's poor debate performance by Barack Obama and the improvement of pathological liar Mitt Romney's numbers.  However, there are some indications that things are shifting back towards Obama as hopefully the truth sinks in with voters that Romney gave a lie filled performance last week and that he's still the same nasty man that they though he was before the fantasy land performance last week.  What those of us who oppose the backward looking, racist and discriminatory agenda of the GOP need to do is redouble our efforts and snap out of the funk.  Turn out will still make or break this election and the anti-GOP voters need to be encouraged to get to the polls rather than sit at home in a funk.  Blue Virginia is reporting the following positive news:

President Obama's still the favorite on November 6 in Nate Silver's model and elsewhere. Need more cheering up? How about the following numbers from Gallup, which just posted them at 1 pm.

*Obama has a +11 (53%-42%) net approval rating. It's VERY hard to see how a sitting president with a +11 net approval rating loses his bid for reelection a few weeks later (although I suppose anything's possible).
*Obama leads Romney by 5 points (50%-45%) among registered voters. That's a 2-point improvement from yesterday. So much for Romney's post-debate "bounce?"
*Obama and Romney are tied (48%-48%) in Gallup's likely voter model (up 2 points from yesterday). We'll see if that's accurate or not, but here's where I'm thinking the Obama "ground game," which they've invested huge resources in, should pay big dividends.
*According to Gallup, the unemployment rate has fallen again and is now at 7.3% (compared to 7.8% as of late September, according to Gallup, and also BLS). So much for unemployment being "above 8%," as lying liar Karl Rove and other right-wing SuperPACs keep FALSELY claiming on TV.
*Gallup's Job Creation Index, at +22 (up 2 points from yesterday), is close to the highest levels it's seen since early 2008, well before the collapse of Wall Street led our country into the Great Recession.
*Gallup's Economic Confidence Index (up 3 points today) is now 80 points (!!!) above where it was 4 years ago at this time.

Look at all these statistics from Gallup, and please explain to me how a sitting president with numbers like these loses his bid for reelection? I don't see it.

P.S. More good news on the polling front: Obama's up 49%-45% in Florida, an absolute must-win state for Romney.

UPDATE: Another good poll, this time of Minnesota by Public Policy Polling, shows "Barack Obama expanding his lead to 10 points over Mitt Romney at 53-43."

U.S. Adults Think 25 Percent of Americans are Gay

Obviously, the Christianists are losing the battle to depict LGBT citizens as a tiny insignificant portion of the population. In fact, the U.S. public thinks we are far more numerous than we are. A new Gallup poll - the chart above shows the results - found the following results:
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52%) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35% who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15%.
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Americans with lower incomes and less education give the highest estimates, on average, of the U.S. gay and lesbian population, and far higher estimates than those with higher incomes and more education. Americans aged 18 to 29 give a higher average estimate than older Americans, and women give a far higher average estimate than men.
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Democrats, liberals, and those who say they are socially liberal are also more likely to give higher estimates than those at the other end of the spectrum. However, the differences by political or ideological leanings are in most cases not as wide as those seen by demographic group.

Support for Legal Gay Relations Hits New High

Yet another new poll - this time by Gallup - underscores the fact that the Christianists are loosing the culture wars no matter what Jim Daly tries to claim to the contrary as he tries to appease the Christianist extremists. Gallup reveals that 56% of Americans deem gay relationships morally acceptable:
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Americans are somewhat less likely to consider gay or lesbian relations to be morally acceptable than to say they should be legal. However, the 56% who consider gay or lesbian relations morally acceptable is the highest Gallup has measured since this question was first asked in 2001.
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On the less positive side, the public continues to fall for the bullshit ex-gay myth disseminated by the professional Christian set and the registered "family values" hate groups:
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Though public acceptance of gay and lesbian relations has increased, Americans remain divided as to the origins of same-sex orientation. Forty-two percent say being gay or lesbian is "due to factors such as upbringing and environment," while 40% believe it is "something a person is born with." Prior to 2001, Americans were more inclined to think being gay or lesbian was a product of one's environment.

Changing Attitudes Towards Gays - And Views of Homophobes as Closet Cases

I have mentioned in passing a recent Gallup poll that must be making the fundies truly convulse on the floor with spittle flying: For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the fifty percent (50%) mark. The Gallup survey also shows that gay acceptance among men has increased, particularly among younger men who do not even remember the days when being gays was considered a form of clinical mental illness. All of this is tangible proof that the Christianists are losing the culture wars even if they continue to win some battles. In a New York Times op-ed column that looks at this development, the other encouraging trend is that increasingly the most focal homophobes are being perceived as closet cases reacting against their own homosexual urges. Maybe Tony Perkins, Robert Knight Peter Sprigg, et al, need to wake up to the fact that their loud protestions against gays say more about them than your avaeage gay American. Here are some column highlights:

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Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:
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1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.)
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2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.
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3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men . . . the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these “relations” as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.
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W]hat’s driving such a radical change in men’s views on this issue . . . Here are three theories:
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1. The contact hypothesis. As more men openly acknowledge that they are gay, it becomes harder for men who are not gay to discriminate against them. And as that group of openly gay men becomes more varied — including athletes, celebrities and soldiers — many of the old, derisive stereotypes lose their purchase.
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2. Men may be becoming more egalitarian in general. As Dr. Kimmel put it: “Men have gotten increasingly comfortable with the presence of, and relative equality of, ‘the other,’ and we’re becoming more accustomed to it. And most men are finding that it has not been a disaster.”
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3. Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality. Think Ted Haggard, the once fervent antigay preacher and former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, and his male prostitute. . . . Or George Rekers, the founding member of the Family Research Council, and his rent boy/luggage handler. Last week, the council claimed that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would lead to an explosion of “homosexual assaults” in which sleeping soldiers would be the victims of fondling and fellatio by gay predators. In fact, there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it.
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As for the aversion among men, it may be softening a bit. Professor Savin-Williams says that his current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as “mostly straight” as opposed to labels like “straight,” “gay” or “bisexual.” They acknowledge some level of attraction to other men even as they say that they probably wouldn’t act on it, but ... the right guy, the right day, a few beers and who knows. As the professor points out, you would never have heard that in years past.
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All together now: stunning.

What Alabamians and Iranians Have in Common

I lived in Alabama for four years right after graduating from law school - in the Mobile area to be precise. While the state was certainly conservative back in that time era, based on the state's recent voting record and my experiences traversing the state after Hurricane Katrina to bring back evacuees the state seems to be lurching much farther to the lunatic far right fringe. A new Gallup study shows that the driving force for this phenomenon may likely be the strength of religious belief in Alabama as opposed to say Massachusetts. In fact, religious fervor in Alabama is roughly the same as that in Iran. Yes, I said Iran. Obviously, that is a frightening realization and perhaps also a reflection as to why Alabama ranks so low in terms of per capita income. In fact, the Gallup study revealed that with few exceptions, the least religious nations in the world were also the ones with the highest standards of living. The results also clearly show that the states that voted for McCain/Palin are the ones that are most religious and the ones with the lowest standards of living.
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One unanswered question is: does religious belief drive down a nation's standard of living or does a low standard of living encourage a high level of religiousity? Here are some highlights from the Gallup study:
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In 2006, 2007, and 2008, Gallup asked representative samples in 143 countries and territories whether religion was an important part of their daily lives. The accompanying map shows religiosity by country, ranging from the least religious to the most religious on a relative basis.
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[A] population's religiosity level is strongly related to its average standard of living. Gallup's World Poll, for example, indicates that 8 of the 11 countries in which almost all residents (at least 98%) say religion is important in their daily lives are poorer nations in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the 10 least religious countries studied include several with the world's highest living standards, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong, and Japan.
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Lining up these percentages with those on our worldwide list allows us to match residents of the most religious states to the global populations with which they are similar in terms of religiosity. The results produce some interesting comparisons -- Alabamians, for example, are about as likely as Iranians to say religion is an important part or their lives.