Pete Buttigieg: The Benefits and Burdens of Being Gay

There was a time when I viewed being gay as a curse, tried to "pray away the gay" and even tried to end my own life because of the vicious fallout I experienced.  Now, to no doubt the surprise of some, I see being gay as a gift.  True, life might be easier in someways if I was straight, but in so many ways being a part of an often oppressed - even hated - minority has given me a much wider perspective when it comes to empathy towards others, understanding the importance of minority rights and even being better able to view those who are different as fellow humans. This is not to say that all gays experience or benefit from these expanded perspectives (in my view, these benefits are utterly lost on white, gay Republicans, many of whom seemingly believe their skin color and socioeconomic status protect them from the woes of other gays and other minorities).  All of this brings me in a very round about way to Pete Buttigieg and how his sexual orientation brings both pluses and minuses to his presidential campaign effort.  A piece in the New York Times - by a gay columnist - looks at Buttigieg and also speculates as to whether America might once again surprise and elect someone whom some say is not electable by virtue of who he is.  Here are excerpts: 

Pete Buttigieg vaulted into the top four of a crowded Democratic presidential field because he has an agile intellect, is fiercely articulate and both espouses and embodies a fresh perspective that many voters of all stripes crave.

He also got there because he’s gay.

He’d be the first to acknowledge that. In fact he did acknowledge it when we spoke last June about the state of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in America. Referring to his sexual orientation and his marriage to another man, he told me, “It’s safe to say that it led to there being more interest and attention early on.” He stood out among the dozens of Democratic aspirants, each desperate to do precisely that.

But there’s a big difference between winning over enough Americans to land in his current position — he placed second, behind Elizabeth Warren, in one survey of Iowa voters last week — and having an appeal broad enough to nab the party’s nomination, let alone the White House. Is being gay an insurmountable obstacle on the path to those prizes?

Anyone who answers with an unequivocal yes or no is just guessing.

The question is now being asked more urgently than before, as the primary contests draw closer and many Democrats simultaneously assess the risks of the two front-runners, Warren and Joe Biden, and survey the field anew, wondering if anyone in the tier of candidates just below them might be a better opponent for Donald Trump. Their gazes invariably fall on Buttigieg, but their apprehensions include whether America could really elect a gay president.

Obama’s candidacy always held the promise of extraordinary support from a crucial Democratic constituency that has thus far been cool to Buttigieg — and could well remain so.

“Among a significant segment of African-American voters who are socially conservative, he’s not polling well,” Axelrod said, noting a frustration of Buttigieg’s campaign that my colleague Trip Gabriel explored in a recent article in The Times.

It’s complicated. While there’s a history of resistance to gay marriage at many black churches, other factors could explain Buttigieg’s lack of success with African-Americans, some of whom surely look at him and see what many white critics of his also do: a charmed 37-year-old on the kind of glide path to greatness (Harvard, a Rhodes scholarship, a stint as a consultant with McKinsey) that defines privilege.

In a Gallup poll published in May, 83 percent of Democrats — and 82 percent of independents — said that they’d be willing to vote for a gay presidential candidate. That leaves a significant percentage who wouldn’t. A Reuters/Ipsos poll published the following month showed that among all voters, 34 percent were less likely to vote for a gay candidate. But that figure was lower than the 48 percent who said they were less likely to support a candidate over 70 — as Trump, Biden, Warren and Bernie Sanders will all be in November 2020.

Buttigieg’s fund-raising haul of more than $51 million through Sept. 30 places him behind only Sanders and Warren.

And while being gay obviously disqualifies him for a sizable group of Americans — 36 percent of whom, according to Gallup, still oppose the legal recognition of same-sex marriage — what fraction of them were likely to vote for a Democrat, anyway? Besides, didn’t Trump’s election prove that many voters could and would overlook elements of a candidate’s personal life if he gave voice to matters they cared about?

Could the ranks of the Buttigieg-resistant be offset by Americans eager to send the kind of message about their values and their desire for change that a vote for Buttigieg would? Obama benefited from that impulse. When a candidacy seeks to make history — as Buttigieg’s does and Obama’s did — it can stir extra excitement.

Buttigieg told me that when fans approach him at campaign events, “it’s not unusual for someone to be in tears just because the fact of our candidacy is so unbelievable to them as something they would see in their lifetimes.”

For all its potential drawbacks, Buttigieg’s sexual orientation can be woven into his personal narrative to powerful effect, humanizing him, making him more approachable rather than less, forging a bridge to other minorities, establishing a familiarity with struggle and thus a capacity for empathy. All of that hinges on how deftly he integrates it into his remarks.

His sexual orientation is indisputably a challenge, but one that’s surmountable if opponents stumble, if voters’ mood is just so, if his personality sparkles, if his message sparks. We’re a country of deeply ingrained prejudices. But we can also be open-minded and openhearted, and our need for a savior outweighs any interest in what he or she does in bed.

Having heard Buttigieg speak in person, he is an amazing speaker and perhaps the closest to Obama of any of the Democrat field of candidates.   Should he win the nomination and defeat Trump, it would be a huge f*ck you to Christofascists and evangelicals - just the thought of their shrieks and lamentation brings a smile to my face. . 

51% of Millennials Do Not Consider Themselves Christian

For roughly two decades I have argued that right wing evangelical Christians - particularly the hate mongers and scamvangelists they continue to support such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, et. al. - and the Catholic Church hierarchy would be the death of the Christian brand. Under the helm of these factions, a religion that is supposed to be focused on love, good works, and caring for and about others has become synonymous with hatred of others and staggering hypocrisy not to mention indifference about the sexual abuse of children and youths.  A new Pew Research report suggests that my prediction is perhaps close to coming true as a only 49% of Millennials identify as Christian, with survey respondents finding themselves repulsed by all the hatred, the embrace of ignorance, and the lock step with the Republican Party and Donald Trump who pursue an agenda that is the antithesis of the Christian social gospel. While the right wingers blame the plummeting data on "war on Christianity," for the real cause it would seem they need only look in the mirror.   A  column in the New York Times looks at these new report findings:

Perhaps for the first time since the United States was established, a majority of young adults here do not identify as Christian.

Only 49 percent of millennials consider themselves Christian, compared with 84 percent of Americans in their mid-70s or older, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

[S]something significant seems to be happening. The share of American adults who regard themselves as Christian has fallen by 12 percentage points in just the last decade.
“The U.S. is steadily becoming less Christian and less religiously observant,” the Pew study concluded.

Some on the religious right will thunder that this as a result of a secular “war on Christianity.” . . . . But a far bigger threat to the “brand” of Christianity comes, I think, from religious blowhards who have entangled faith with bigotry, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. For some young people, Christianity is associated less with love than with hate.

“Pompous right-wing political chest-thumping, and an unwillingness to listen on matters like climate change or racism, has contributed to a perception by millions that Christianity is irrelevant, or worse yet, a threat to progress,” the Rev. Richard Cizik, the leader of a group of self-described “new evangelicals” with moderate views, told me.

Christianity’s reputation suffers from backward views on women’s issues and from the unwavering support among evangelical hard-liners for President Trump.

It would be difficult to imagine a president more at odds with Jesus’ message than Trump, a serial philanderer and liar who has persecuted refugees, divided families, exploited the poor and allegedly committed sexual assaults.

That is the opposite of the Christianity whose heroic side I’ve often praised: A Catholic doctor in Sudan’s Nuba mountains … a missionary doctor in Angola … nuns everywhere. If they were the face of Christianity, its reputation would be golden.

Pew’s latest report found that nonbelievers are gaining ground fast. “Nones” — those with no particular religion — now account for more than one-quarter of the American population. There are substantially more nones than Catholics.

The decline in religion is particularly evident among young people. Those born between 1928 and 1945 are only two percentage points less likely to identify as Christian than they were a decade ago, while millennials are 16 percentage points less likely to call themselves Christians.

[T]he data seem consistent with the argument made by leading scholars that young adults have turned away from organized religion because they are repulsed by its entanglements with conservative politics. “Nones,” for example, are solidly Democratic.

The central issue is that faith is supposed to provide moral guidance — and many moralizing figures on the evangelical right don’t impress young people as moral at all. Senator Jesse Helms said in 1995 that AIDS funding should be cut because gay men get the disease. The Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson initially suggested that God organized the 9/11 terror attacks to punish feminists, gays and lesbians.

God should have sued Falwell and Robertson for defamation. But, in some sign of karma, a survey found that gays and lesbians have higher public approval than evangelicals do.

 I love the last part: gays and lesbians have higher public approval than evangelicals do.

The Coming GOP Apocalypse

As long time readers of this blog know, I have long predicted that the GOP is headed towards potential long term extinction if it does not adapt to the changing demographics of America and the views of younger voters who will eventually replace the elderly white voters on whom the GOP has staked its existence. In the past many Republicans mocked this point of view and continued to act as apologist for the worse policies of the GOP and even the open racism of the current Trump/Pence regime.  Once such individual was New York Times columnist David Brooks who in his own way helped pave the way for the rise of Trump.  Now, apparently Brooks has belatedly pulled his head out of his ass and sees the coming apocalypse ahead for the GOP if it doesn't change course radically (unless, of course, Trump. Pence and McConnell overthrow the U.S. Constitution).  Brooks' columnist is on pointy and, I believe, accurately predicts what is coming.  Too bad he didn't open his eyes years ago.  Here are column highlights:

Much of the 20th century, young and old people voted pretty similarly. The defining gaps in our recent politics have been the gender gap (women preferring Democrats) and the education gap. But now the generation gap is back, with a vengeance.

This is most immediately evident in the way Democrats are sorting themselves in their early primary preferences. A Democratic voter’s race, sex or education level doesn’t predict which candidate he or she is leaning toward, but age does.

In one early New Hampshire poll, Joe Biden won 39 percent of the vote of those over 55, but just 22 percent of those under 35, trailing Bernie Sanders. Similarly, in an early Iowa poll, Biden won 41 percent of the oldster vote, but just 17 percent of the young adult vote, placing third, behind Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The generation gap is even more powerful when it comes to Republicans. To put it bluntly, young adults hate them.

In 2018, voters under 30 supported Democratic House candidates over Republican ones by an astounding 67 percent to 32 percent. A 2018 Pew survey found that 59 percent of millennial voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, while only 32 percent identify as Republicans or lean Republican.

The difference is ideological. According to Pew, 57 percent of millennials call themselves consistently liberal or mostly liberal. Only 12 percent call themselves consistently conservative or mostly conservative. This is the most important statistic in American politics right now.

Recent surveys of Generation Z voters (those born after 1996) find that, if anything, they are even more liberal than millennials.

In 2002, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote a book called “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” which predicted electoral doom for the G.O.P. based on demographic data. That prediction turned out to be wrong, or at least wildly premature.

But it’s hard to look at the generational data and not see long-term disaster for Republicans. Some people think generations get more conservative as they age, but that is not borne out by the evidence. Moreover, today’s generation gap is not based just on temporary intellectual postures. It is based on concrete, lived experience that is never going to go away.

[M]illennials and Gen Z voters live with difference every single day. Only 16 percent of the Silent Generation is minority, but 44 percent of the millennial generation is. If you are a millennial in California, Texas, Florida, Arizona or New Jersey, ethnic minorities make up more than half of your age cohort. In just over two decades, America will be a majority-minority country.

Young voters approve of these trends. Seventy-nine percent of millennials think immigration is good for America. Sixty-one percent think racial diversity is good for America.

They are much more sympathetic to those who identify as transgender. They are much more likely than other groups to say that racial discrimination is the main barrier to black progress. They are much less likely to say the U.S. is the best country in the world.

These days the Republican Party looks like a direct reaction against this ethos — against immigration, against diversity, against pluralism. Moreover, conservative thought seems to be getting less relevant to the America that is coming into being.

The most burning question for conservatives should be: What do we have to say to young adults and about the diverse world they are living in? Instead, conservative intellectuals seem hellbent on taking their 12 percent share among the young and turning it to 3.

There is a conservative way to embrace pluralism and diversity. . . . . A better multiculturalism would be optimistic: We can communicate across difference; the American creed is the right recipe for a thick and respectful pluralism; American structures are basically sound and can be realistically reformed.

So far that’s not visible. My mentor William F. Buckley vowed to stand athwart history yelling “Stop!” Today’s Republicans don’t even seem to see the train that is running them over.

Trump - and Pence - are the embodiment of what these younger generations detest. Yet, the entire GOP has turned into a group of Trump ass kissers only too happy to perform political fellatio to the horrible individual occupying the White House. 

Pete Buttigieg and Husband Make History on Cover of TIME

Even as the Trump/Pence regime announces yet another attack on LGBT Americans through a regulation that would allow "Christian" healthcare workers - perhaps even ambulance drivers - to refuse to treat LGBT patients and others who offend their religious sensibilities, something remarkable has happened.  Pete Buttigieg and his husband (to the abject horror and character assassination attempts of Christofascists and those who prostitute themselves to them politically) have made the cover of Time Magazine with a caption  "First Family."  Where Buttigieg's campaign will go is anyone's guess as more and more Democrats, many totally unknown to the general public, throw their hats in the nomination ring.    Here are some excerpts from a very lengthy story:  

As Pete Buttigieg addressed supporters off a back porch in Marshalltown, Iowa, the Devil was whispering his name. “Pete,” the Devil hissed into a microphone. “You’re sooo smart, Pete.”

Buttigieg ignored the heckler, plowing forward with his stump speech about American decency as his husband ­Chasten looked on. “Pete,” the Devil whispered. “I want the heartland, Pete.”

The man in the devil costume was Randall Terry, an antiabortion activist. He had traveled to Iowa to torment the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., the early breakout star of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Four years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed his right to marry, Buttigieg has become the first openly gay person to make a serious bid for the presidency. And Terry is hardly the only right-winger worried about the rise of “Mayor Pete.” Buttigieg’s saying that “God doesn’t have a political party” prompted evangelical leader Franklin Graham to tweet that being gay is “something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized.” Concerned by the campaign’s rise, right-wing provocateur Jacob Wohl was recently caught trying to fabricate sexual-­assault allegations against Buttigieg to slow him down.

But to some Americans, Buttigieg may just be the man to vanquish America’s demons. In a field of more than 20 ­candidates­—including six Senators, four Congressmen, two governors and a former Vice ­President—Buttigieg (pronounced Boot-edge-edge) has vaulted from near total obscurity toward the front of the Democratic pack, running ahead of or even with more established candidates and behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Buttigieg is a gay Episcopalian veteran in a party torn between identity politics and heartland appeals. He’s also a fresh face in a year when millennials are poised to become the largest eligible voting bloc. Many Democrats are hungry for generational change, and the two front runners are more than twice his age.

But Buttigieg’s greatest political asset may be his ear for languages. He speaks eight, including Norwegian and Arabic, but he’s particularly fluent in the dialect of the neglected industrial Midwest. Buttigieg is a master of redefinition, a translator for a party that has found it increasingly difficult to speak to the voters who elected President Donald Trump. The son of an English professor and a scholar of linguistics, he roots his campaign in an effort to reframe progressive ideas in conservative language. “If the substance of your ideas is progressive but there’s mistrust about them among conservatives, you have three choices,” Buttigieg tells TIME, sitting on his living-room couch in South Bend. “One is to just change your ideas and make them more conservative. The second is to sort of be sneaky and try to make it seem like your ideas are more conservative than they are. And the third, the approach that I favor, is to stick to your ideas, but explain why conservatives shouldn’t be afraid of them.”

His platform is “Freedom, Security and Democracy,” which wouldn’t sound out of place coming from a Bush-era Republican yet actually harks back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But in order to maintain his momentum, Buttigieg will have to do more to flesh out those ideas. Unlike many of his opponents, he hasn’t posted any detailed policy proposals on his website. He’ll also have to convince Democratic voters that his experience running South Bend (pop. 102,245) is adequate preparation for running the world’s most powerful country. And he’ll have to make inroads with black and Hispanic voters who have so far appeared unimpressed with his campaign.

Buttigieg likes to say he has more government experience than Trump, and more military ­experience than any ­President in 25 years. And Trump’s victory in 2016 proved that many Americans were willing to elect a President without a traditional Washington résumé. But some voters long for stability after three years of chaos, and it’s not clear whether the Trump presidency has made it easier or harder for outsiders.

In many ways, Buttigieg is Trump’s polar opposite: younger, dorkier, shorter, calmer and married to a man. His success may depend on whether Democrats want a fighter to match Trump, or whether Americans want to “change the channel,” as Buttigieg puts it. “People already have a leader who screams and yells,” he says. “How do you think that’s working out for us?”

Buttigieg met Chasten Glezman, then a Chicago grad student, on the dating app Hinge in 2015. They talked over FaceTime for a few weeks before Chasten drove to South Bend for their first real date, at an Irish bar famous for its Scotch eggs. Less than three years later, Pete proposed in gate B5 of Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the exact spot where Chasten had first noticed his dating profile.

Both men grew up closeted in conservative Midwestern communities. “Being gay was not culturally acceptable where I grew up, mostly for a lack of understanding,” Chasten says. “And so my family and I were just at a crossroads, and we didn’t really know how to talk to one another.” When he came out after his senior year of high school, tensions at home forced him to spend months crashing on friends’ couches and sleeping in his car. His parents ultimately changed their minds, welcomed him back home and now fully support their son and his marriage.

It was a sign of how rapidly public opinion on LGBTQ issues has changed. In 1996, only 27% of Americans supported same-sex marriage; today 67% do, including 44% of Republicans. Some of Buttigieg’s fellow officers who had used gay as an epithet in his presence reached out to express their support. “I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know?” he says. “Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people.”

All this informs his belief that it’s still possible to reach across America’s political divide. “We’ve got to get away from this kill-switch mentality that we see on Twitter,” he says. He has seen once disapproving parents dance at their gay son’s wedding and homophobic military officers take back their words, and so he believes in the power of redemption and forgiveness. “This idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil,” he says. “The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”

Other black leaders in South Bend say Buttigieg listened to the concerns of the community and adjusted when he was wrong. “I trust him,” says Stacey Odom, founder of a local organization that helps families on the West Side repair their homes. “I asked him for five different things, and he gave them all to me.” Buttigieg created an office of Engagement and Economic Empowerment to help address the wealth gap, and issued an executive order on diversity and inclusion in response to local demands, Williams-Preston said. When local leaders asked for $3.5 million to renovate the Charles Black community center, Buttigieg came up with $4.5 million, according to ­Cynthia Taylor, the center’s director. “You’re gonna have to invite him in, you’re gonna have to sit him down, you’re gonna have to show him the issue,” she says. “Because he definitely will listen.”

Buttigieg’s sexuality has imbued his campaign with a sense of historical promise. After the valedictorian at Brigham Young University, a conservative Mormon school, came out as gay in his commencement speech in April, he cited Buttigieg as his inspiration. (“I know that kid is going to make it easier for somebody else,” Buttigieg told BuzzFeed News.) Buttigieg’s campaign has also gotten a boost from a network of wealthy LGBT donors.

The millennial mayor’s call for generational change could also prove to be a powerful one. Even as young voters stay enamored with Sanders, older voters seem attracted to Buttigieg’s youth: according to an April 29 Morning Consult survey, his highest polling numbers come from baby boomers. “I like the idea of a millennial,” says Alice Mayer, 62, who voted for Sanders in 2016, as she waited for Buttigieg’s speech in South Bend. “He’s looking at the future, while Bernie’s been there, done that.”

U.S. Church Membership Plummets Over Past 20 Years

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

On the good news front - at least in my opinion - a new Gallup survey indicates that church membership in the USA has plummeted since 1999 from 70% of Americans belonging to a church to only 50%.  Meanwhile, the percentage of U.S. adults with no religious affiliation has jumped from 8% to 19%.  Only 24% of Millennials have any church affiliation which portends a huge problem for churches as older generations die off.  I continue to credit much of the exodus from Christianity in particular to evangelicals and other "conservative" denominations - think Southern Baptists - who have repeatedly demonstrated that hatred of others and rank hypocrisy are synonymous with religion.  With Republicans fully self-prostituting themselves to the Christofascists and pushing to grant them special rights, with luck the exodus will accelerate.  Here are highlights from the Gallup findings:

As Christian and Jewish Americans prepare to celebrate Easter and Passover, respectively, Gallup finds the percentage of Americans who report belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque at an all-time low, averaging 50% in 2018.

U.S. church membership was 70% or higher from 1937 through 1976, falling modestly to an average of 68% in the 1970s through the 1990s. The past 20 years have seen an acceleration in the drop-off, with a 20-percentage-point decline since 1999 and more than half of that change occurring since the start of the current decade.

The decline in church membership mostly reflects the fact that fewer Americans than in the past now have any religious affiliation. However, even those who do identify with a particular religion are less likely to belong to a church or other place of worship than in the past.

Religiosity is strongly related to age, with older Americans far more likely than younger adults to be members of churches. However, church membership has dropped among all generational groups over the past two decades, with declines of roughly 10 percentage points among traditionalists, baby boomers and Generation X.

Most millennials were too young to be polled in 1998-2000. Now that they have reached adulthood, their church membership rates are exceedingly low and appear to be a major factor in the drop in overall U.S. church membership. Just 42% of millennials are members of churches, on average.

The low rates of church membership among millennials conform with the generation's weaker attachment to religion in general. On average, 68% of millennials identify with a religion in the 2016-2018 church membership surveys, while 29% do not. In all other generations, at least 79% have a religious affiliation, with correspondingly lower percentages expressing no faith preference. Not only are millennials less likely than older Americans to identify with a religion, but millennials who are religious are significantly less likely to belong to a church. Fifty-seven percent of religious millennials belong to a church, compared with 65% or more in older generations. [T]he emergence of an increasingly secular generation to replace far more religious older generations suggests the decline in U.S. church membership overall will continue.

[C]hurch attendance has dropped more among Catholics than among Protestants. Consistent with this, the decline in church membership has been greater among Catholics. Twenty years ago, 76% of Catholics belonged to a church; now, 63% do.

Meanwhile, 67% of Protestants, down from 73% in 1998-2000, are members of a church. Much of the decline in Protestant membership is attributable to the increasing percentage of Americans who simply identify their religion as "Christian" rather than as a specific Protestant denomination such as Baptist, Lutheran or Methodist.

Republicans show a relatively modest decline in church membership of eight points since 1998-2000 (from 77% to 69%). In contrast, Democrats show one of the largest subgroup declines, of 23 points, from 71% to 48%. A sharp increase in the proportion of the population with no religious affiliation, a decline in church membership among those who do have a religious preference, and low levels of church membership among millennials are all contributing to the accelerating trend.

The challenge is clear for churches, which depend on loyal and active members to keep them open and thriving. . . . . Church leaders must also grapple with the generational slide away from religion. Millennials are much less likely than their elders to indicate a religious preference, and presumably the nearly one-third of millennials without a religious preference are unlikely to ever join a church.

Another obstacle churches face is Americans' eroding confidence in the institution of organized religion. While organized religion is not the only U.S. institution suffering a loss of confidence, Americans have lost more confidence in it than in most other institutions.

These trends are not just numbers, but play out in the reality that thousands of U.S. churches are closing each year. Religious Americans in the future will likely be faced with fewer options for places of worship, and likely less convenient ones, which could accelerate the decline in membership even more.

Again, in my view, all encouraging news. 

"Nones" Now More Numerous than Catholics or Evangelicals

click image to enlarge

One thing the wrongly named "Christian Right" - they are neither Christian nor right - is doing most effectively is poisoning the Christian brand and driving people from religion, especially younger Americans.  As noted in the prior post, evangelical support for Donald Trump - likely the most morally bankrupt individual to ever occupy the White House - illustrates just how false and toxic religion can be (and that's without adding the horrors religion has caused over the centuries).   Adding to the exodus no doubt is the Catholic Church's never ending sex abuse scandal and the Church's refusal to hold bishops and cardinals truly accountable for their malfeasance if not active cover up of abuse. Now, for the first time, the so-called "Nones" are the largest "religious" group in the USA.  Given the current trends, their numbers will likely continue to soar (and yes, I see this as welcome news).  Politically, this new reality has not yet translated into representation in elected office, but that time is likely coming.  Here are highlights from CNN:

For the first time "No Religion" has topped a survey of Americans' religious identity, according to a new analysis by a political scientist. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey.

Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor, found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion. Catholics came in at 23.0%, and evangelicals were at 22.5%.  The three groups remain within the margin of error of each other though, making it a statistical tie. Over 2,000 people were interviewed in person for the survey. "Religious nones," as they are called by researchers, are a diverse group made up of atheists, agnostics, the spiritual, and those who are no specific organized religion in particular. A rejection of organized religion is the common thread they share.
 "It is the first time we have seen this. The same questions have been asked for 44 years," Burge told CNN.  The meteoric rise of religious nones began in the early 1990s and has grown 266% since 1991, he said.  Burge estimates that 'No Religion' will be the largest group outright in four to six years.
 Robyn Blumner, executive director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, sees the change as a generational trend driven by millennials.  "We are seeing the rise of a generation of Americans who are hungry for facts and curious about the world," she says.
 Whatever the causes, the non-religious represent a growing constituency. Yet this demographic is greatly underrepresented in Washington's halls of power. There is not a single open atheist amid the most diverse Congress in history, according to a Pew study.
 The Congressional Freethought Caucus's 10 members try to represent non-theist interests while protecting the secular character of government.  "This growing group of Americans can feel like there is at least some people in Congress who believe they matter." says the co-chair and founder, Rep. Jared Huffman of California.

A piece in The Daily Mail also reports as follows:

Shifting political ideologies about social issues has also played a role, with fewer Americans comfortable with the rhetoric of their religious leaders.

'Another (theory) is that the religious right kind of cleaved moderate Christianity and a lot of moderate Christians who were moderately attached said they didn't want to defend Jerry Falwell … and all the anti-gay and anti- abortion religious rights leaders,' Burge said. 'So they said, 'You know what? I'm out.'

As the 'nones' have ascended, the number of mainline Protestant Christians has fallen 62.5 percent since 1982, to now account for just 10.8 percent of the U.S. population, according to the survey.

Again, I hope the trend continues and that politicians are forced to stop prostituting themselves to the shrinking "religious right."

How "Red America" is Becoming Queer Friendly

At times it is easy to get despondent in the face of the Trump/Pence regime war on LGBT rights and the continued alliance of Republicans with animus filled Christofascists. Yet, at the same time, progress is being made across the county in mid-sized and larger cities where LGBT non-discrimination protections are being enacted and LGBT acceptance is growing.  Sometimes the progress is in the most unlikely places: Jackson, Mississippi has more LGBT protections than Norfolk, Virginia.  A column in in the New York Times looks at the pleasant surprises happening in many parts of red America.  Here are some highlights:

In July 2017 — the same month that President Trump announced on Twitter that he would ban transgender troops — I left on a six-week-long road trip across the red states. I wanted to understand what motivated L.G.B.T. people to stay in the heartland at a time when some progressives were still pondering escaping to Canada.

What I learned on the way from Utah to Georgia only reaffirmed what I have come to believe over the past decade: Attitudes toward L.G.B.T. people are changing rapidly in conservative states, and no one inside the Beltway can stop it. This country’s bright queer future is already here, hiding where too few of us care to travel.

From a bird’s-eye perspective, it may not seem that life has changed for L.G.B.T. Americans in so-called flyover country. State laws prohibiting discrimination against them remain elusive in red states — although Utah notably passed one in 2015. But in their absence, midsize cities have become pockets of L.G.B.T. acceptance.

In the West, cities including Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City; Bozeman, Mont.; and Laramie, Wyo., have passed L.G.B.T.-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances in the past decade. Below the Mason-Dixon line, the list of cities with such laws includes Atlanta and New Orleans; Birmingham, Ala.; and Jackson, Miss. L.G.B.T. Texans have had to fend off all manner of horrific state-level bills, but if they live in Austin, Dallas, Plano or Fort Worth, they have solid local laws on their side. And Midwestern hubs like St. Louis and Omaha likewise offer L.G.B.T. protections.

A majority of Americans — in all but six states — now support same-sex marriage. Most support transgender military service. Most oppose businesses’ turning away L.G.B.T. customers in the name of religion. Public opinion on L.G.B.T. people is finally turning a corner, not just on the coasts but between them as well.

That shift is thanks in large part to the increasing proportion of Americans who identify as L.G.B.T. themselves. According to Gallup polling data, 4.5 percent of American adults now identify as L.G.B.T., which is a full percentage point higher than in 2012. Millennials may not be more likely to be L.G.B.T., but their increased willingness to come out of the closet is driving the community’s numbers up.

Queer people, simply put, are everywhere. . . . . As more millennials move to the South and West — and as more Americans all over the country come out as L.G.B.T. — cities like Louisville, Ky.; Norfolk, Va.; New Orleans; and Salt Lake City are all seeing huge spikes in the percentage of their residents who identify as L.G.B.T., as data from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, shows. At the same time, between 1990 and 2014, that same statistic stayed relatively static for longstanding hubs of gay culture like San Francisco and Los Angeles — and it even fell in New York City.

America’s queer center of gravity is moving toward the middle. Before we know it, this country will have become L.G.B.T.-friendly not from the outside in but from the inside out.

There are plenty of reasons for L.G.B.T. Americans to feel despondent right now. But hope is just down the road.

Cyber Warfare: The Battle for American Minds

One need only look at the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom or the outcome of the 2016 presidential election to see the growing risks of foreign cyber warfare inducing societies to be deceived into taking self-destructive actions. American intelligence agencies expect things to get even worse in the future as Russia and other opponents intensify their efforts.  Who is the most vulnerable to fake news and deception on social media?  Older voters who ought to know better but who are duped into promoting falsehoods at far higher rates than Millennials. The answer as to why such is the case is still elusive although it may in part be due to Millennials' greater experience with social media and the Internet age.  It may also be that they do not carry with them the accumulated prejudices that seemingly plague older voters, especially so-called "conservatives" who are predisposed to believe outlandish propaganda.  Personally, I have seen Republican "friends" share shockingly untrue information without ever questioning the source or the information since it fits with their prejudices. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:  

Congress’s annual worldwide-threat hearings are usually scary affairs, during which intelligence-agency leaders run down all the dangers confronting the United States. This year’s January assessment was especially worrisome, because the minds of American citizens were listed as key battlegrounds for geopolitical conflict for the first time. “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways,” wrote Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Coats went on to suggest that Russia’s 2016 election interference is only the beginning, with new tactics and deep fakes probably coming soon, and the bad guys learning from experience.

For years, studies have found that individuals come to faulty conclusions even when the facts are staring them in the face. “Availability bias” leads people to believe that a given future event is more likely if they can easily and vividly remember a past occurrence, which is why many Americans say they are more worried about dying in a shark attack than in a car crash, even though car crashes are about 60,000 times as likely.

In an information-warfare context, we need to understand not just why people are blind to the facts, but why they get duped into believing falsehoods. Two findings seem especially relevant.

The first is that humans are generally poor deception detectors. A meta-study examining hundreds of experiments found that humans are terrible at figuring out whether someone is lying based on verbal or nonverbal cues. In Hollywood, good-guy interrogators always seem to spot the shifty eye or subtle tell that gives away the bad guy. In reality, people detect deception only about 54 percent of the time, not much better than a coin toss.

The second finding is that older Americans are far more likely to share fake news online than are younger Americans. A study published in January found that Facebook users 65 and older shared nearly seven times as many fake-news articles as 18-to-29-year-olds—even when researchers controlled for other factors, such as education, party, ideology, and overall posting activity. One possible explanation for this age disparity is that older Facebook users just aren’t as media savvy as their grandkids. Another is that memory and cognitive function generally decline with age. It’s early days, and this is just one study. But if this research is right, it suggests that much of the hue and cry about Millennials is off the mark. Digital natives may be far more savvy than older and wiser adults when it comes to spotting and spreading fake news.

The landscape may seem bleak—we’re a deception-ready species, it seems—but I have come across a touch of good news. Even as trust in institutions—including governments, media, and universities—is declining, researchers have found that trust in people is increasing. Looked at one way, such trusting behavior makes us more vulnerable to deception. But trust isn’t a one-way virtue: It often leads to trustworthy behavior—the more we trust others, the more they earn our trust. This suggests that, over time, societies can become less deceitful. There’s hope out there.

This much is clear: It will be far easier to shore up our technical defenses against information warfare than to fix our psychological vulnerabilities.

For those fearful of thinking for themselves and inclined to believe myths and falsehoods - think evangelicals - the risk of being duped increase exponentially.  Yet, these people seemingly are the last to grasp that they have been played for fools. 

Young Voters Keep Moving to the Left on Social Issues

In other good news - unless one is a Christofascist or an older Republican - are findings that among the younger generations, voters are moving to the left on social issues and rejecting the ignorance and bigotry that defines the political and social right.   Better yet, even young Republicans are moving away from the dogma of their elders making it increasingly difficult for Christofascists to inflict their hate and bigotry on society.  The other good news found by the Pew Research survey is that Donald Trump is accelerating the exodus of younger generations from the GOP.  For years I have been arguing that the GOP has placed short term gain ahead of a long term strategy, hoping that disenfranchising voters and gerrymandering districts would compensate for policies viewed as toxic by growing numbers of Americans, especially the younger generations. As the older racists and religious extremist so important to the GOP die off, there simply will not be enough voters to replace them.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on the survey findings:

As a self-described political conservative, Reagan Larson might seem to be a natural fit for the Republican Party. The 19-year-old college student from South Dakota grew up in a Catholic household that objected to same-sex marriage, and she remains firmly opposed to abortion.

But in many ways, that is where the ideological similarities end. Ms. Larson, a dual major in biology and Spanish at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., does not oppose the legalization of marriage equality. She views climate change as undeniable, believes “immigrants make our country richer,” and disagrees with her parents on the need for a border wall.

Ms. Larson is part of Generation Z, one of the most ethnically diverse and progressive age groups in American history. People born after 1996 tend to espouse similar views to the age cohort just ahead of them, the Millennials, but they are far more open to social change than older generations have been, according to the findings of a new report by the Pew Research Center. The findings mark a shift that could substantially reshape the nation’s political and economic landscape. [O]nly 30 percent of Generation Z respondents said they approved of President Trump’s performance; more than half believed humans were fueling climate change; and 70 percent said they wanted the government to do more to solve the nation’s problems. Those views roughly mirror attitudes held by Millennials, and together, the two age groups may add up to a powerful voting bloc at odds with Republican orthodoxy, political scientists say. “This should be an alert to the Republican Party as they think about generational replacement,” said Elizabeth Bennion, a professor of political science at Indiana University South Bend.

Each succeeding generation of Americans tends to be more progressive than those that came before, Ms. Bennion noted, a trend that potentially poses a long-term threat to the Republican Party’s power.

“If there isn’t a will to change within the party,” she said, “it could become permanently in the minority moving forward.”

Democrats of all ages tend to align fairly closely on major social and political issues, but the report highlights a sharp generational divide among Republicans. For example, more than half of the youngest Republicans surveyed said that racial and ethnic diversity was good for American society . . . . Young Republicans are also more likely to approve of same-sex marriage and accept transgender people.

Michael Schaefer, 18, a politically conservative college freshman from Youngstown, Ohio, said he was in the sixth grade when some classmates came out as gay, and had a number of transgender students as friends in high school.  “For over half my life, I’ve been shown the other side of sexuality and gender,” he said. “I don’t care about their sex or gender, I just care about the individual.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans’ political and social views do not tend to drift to the right as they age, according to Kim Parker, who oversees research into social demographic trends at the Pew Research Center.

“The differences we see across age groups have more to do with the unique historical circumstances in which they come of age,” she said, noting that demographers have not seen a generational pattern of growing more conservative or more Republican over time.

The Republican Party has lost younger Americans like Travis Gaither, though, as it has moved farther to the right on issues like immigration, gun control and climate change.

Mr. Gaither, who grew up in Tennessee, described his parents as “typical southern white Republicans” who belong to two country clubs and are active in the Chamber of Commerce. But Mr. Gaither, 20, was chairman of the High School Democrats of Tennessee during his senior year, a political transformation fueled by his liberal social views and cemented by his outrage over Mr. Trump’s hard-line policies.

The Pew study found that two-thirds of Mr. Gaither’s generation believe, as he does, that black people are treated less fairly than whites in the United States.

“I feel like I’ve moved toward the left, as the Republican Party has shifted toward the right,” he said.

Good!  Let's hope the phenomenon accelerates and that the GOP goes the way of the Whigs sooner as opposed to later.

Karen and Mike Pence's Anti-Gay Animus Puts Them Far Outside the Mainstream

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Mike Pence has delusions of being president, yet the anti-gay views of he and his wife place them far outside the main stream of American opinion.  Indeed, the only evangelical Christians - who have demonstrated to the rest of the country their complete moral bankruptcy by steadfastly supporting Donald Trump - seemingly share their anti-gay animus.  As CNN notes in referencing a Pew Research survey, two-thirds of Americans said gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable.  The third of the population who share anti-gay beliefs equates to almost the same percentage of the population that supports Trump.  If Pence dreams of the White House, he needs to stop clinging to and loudly supporting views rejected by a strong majority of Americans.   Here are highlights from CNN:  

Second lady Karen Pence has taken a job as an art teacher at a Christian school in Northern Virginia that bans gay students, parents, and employees.

The policy places the school on the other side of US public opinion; recent polling on the issue suggests most people don't see the homosexuality as immoral or even as an issue of morality.

According to a Pew poll from May 2018, two-thirds of Americans said gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable and only 30% said they are morally wrong. This was the highest number to say gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable since Gallup began tracking the question in 2001.
 Pew's findings that homosexuality isn't controversial are backed up by a Gallup poll from December 2017. While fewer overall said homosexuality was either morally acceptable (22%) or morally wrong (34%), that's because they offered a third option: not a moral issue. When offered the third option, 44% said that homosexual behavior wasn't a moral issue.
 And most people don't want religion to dictate government policies on LGBT issues, from an AP-NORC survey in August, 2018. Almost half of all respondents said they thought religion should have no influence at all on government policies. A third said it should have a lot or some influence and 16% said it should have "not much."
 In a May, 2018 Gallup poll, 67% of Americans said that marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid and have the same rights as other marriages.

Note: half of Americans want religion to have no influence on government policies.  As Millennials become more politically engaged, expect Mike Pence's anti-gay bigotry to become even a bigger political liability.  

Catholics Want Vatican to End Anti-Gay Stance

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A new survey indicates that 63% or more of Catholics from the eight countries with the largest Catholic populations want the Catholic Church hierarchy to end the Vatican's continued anti-gay dogma and animus.  The countries surveyed were Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Philippines, United States, France, Spain and Italy. Collectively these countries comprise half of the world’s total population of baptized Catholics.  Among Millennials and younger generations anti-gay stances are a number one factor in the decision to walk away from religion (rank hypocrisy of supposed "Christians" also plays a significant role).  The release of the findings comes less than two weeks before the beginning of the Catholic Church’s Synod on Young People in Rome which, among other things, seeks to find ways to stem the hemorrhaging of younger generations from the Church (my own three Millennial children have all walked away).   Gay Star News looks at the findings and Pope Francis' statement earlier in the year that psychiatric help was appropriate for LGBT youth.  Many saw this as an endorsement of discredited "conversion therapy."  Here are article excerpts:

The majority of practicing Catholics want the Church to be more inclusive of young LGBT people, a survey reveals.

Many Catholics are calling for a more positive approach towards young people. They are also urging the Church to change its teaching on LGBTI in order to be more welcoming of lesbian, gay, bi and trans teens.

YouGov carried the survey for the Equal Future 2018 Campaign.  Equal Future 2018 is an international campaign aiming to convey a positive message of acceptance to LGBT kids. Its goal is to raise awareness around the world of the damage done to children when they perceive that being LGBT would be a misfortune or a disappointment.

These poll findings are a clarion call to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church from its members that it is time to change their approach to LGBT people,’ Campaign Director of Equal Future 2018 Tiernan Brady said.

‘The people of the Catholic Church are leading the way on LGBT issues and it is time the upper management caught up with their flock.’

“The figures clearly show that Catholic people across the globe believe that the current teaching and approach of the hierarchy towards LGBT people is now damaging to children and young people and the clear majority wants the Church to change its approach.”  This is not a call for change from outside the Church, it is from its own people.’

‘The truth is that far too many children and young people grow up thinking that if they or someone they knew turned out to be LGBT it would be bad luck or a disappointment. Most of the damage that comes from learning such attitudes happens to children and young people long before anyone knows if they are LGBT or not,’ Brady continued.

On his way back from Dublin, where the Meeting of Families took place in August, the pope replied to a journalist asking what to do if a child comes out as gay, bi, or trans.

He said that if children comes out as LGBT in their early years, therapy might be a useful solution.  Perceived by some as an eerie reference to conversion therapy, the statement received the criticism of the LGBT community.

My own Catholic upbringing did severe damage to me and it took years of therapy to get over the damage.   The Vatican's position on gays certainly played a role in my children's exodus from the Church.  Historically, lost of membership and the attendant loss of financial revenues are the only things that has caused the Vatican to change.  The question ultimately becomes one of whether the Vatican is willing to have the Catholic Church shrink in size and have an increasingly ignorant and uneducated membership. 

Upward Mobility is Now a Myth in America

For many Americans it has been taken as gospel that upward mobility is the norm in America and that each generation can expect to achieve a higher status than that of their parents.  Perhaps that was true once upon at time, but it is no longer the case except in increasingly rare instances.  Indeed, a number of studies have found that Europe - derided as "Old Europe" by many "conservatives" - offers younger generations more chances at upward mobility than can now be anticipated in America. Now, downward mobility is what terrifies even middle class and upper middle class families. What happened?  A number of things, not the least of which has been decades of Republican warfare against labor unions, state right to work laws, and policies that enable big corporations to reap huge profits while workers are treated as disposable and easily replaceable trash.  Wages have stagnated even as the cost of living has soared.  Hardest impacted are Milennials who even with college degrees often cannot secure high paying jobs.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the growing myth of upward social mobility in today's America.  Here are some highlights:

It’s an axiom among many Americans that each future generation will live better than its predecessor. New technologies, greater efficiencies and a can-do spirit will reward us with higher living standards. There might be periodic stumbles, but the long-term trajectory is up. And the people most guaranteed to enjoy this bountiful future are the children of today’s upper-middle class.

That’s the conventional wisdom. Ditch it.

If you are an upper-middle-class parent, as I am, you must have noticed that the real world isn’t playing according to script. Among many young Americans, there is downward mobility. The children aren’t achieving what they (and their parents) expected. Even when they have (and many have), the gains could be eroded in the future. The trajectory is not inevitably up. Parents worry about their children’s fate.

Partly, this reflects the memory of the 2007-2009 Great Recession and its huge job losses. But it’s more than that. Compared with their elders, many younger Americans are doing worse. Despite today’s strong economy, they’re falling behind.

 

We know this from an important study by Raj Chetty and fellow economists from Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley.  . . . .

 

What they reported is fascinating. About 90 percent of children born in 1940 ultimately exceeded their parents’ incomes. That is, almost everybody. . . . . However, for children born in 1970, only 61 percent earned more than their parents, and for those born in 1980, only 50 percent did.

 

That’s a sea change. It suggests that we’re already at the point where many in the present and next generations of younger Americans won’t live as well as their predecessors. If current trends continue, that certainly will be true.

You can see the consequences among millennials, those born from 1981 to 1996. Their squeezed incomes have forced them to rearrange their lives. They’re marrying later, buying homes later, having children later and — to save money — living longer with their parents. What’s also surprising is that the biggest losers seem to be the children of the middle and upper-middle classes, precisely those who are supposedly most protected against adverse changes, . . . .

“This seems to have become steadily harder to achieve for those born into middle-class families in particular from 1950 onward.”

Their explanation is simple. Those in middle and upper-middle classes have more to lose than, say, the poor. The incomes of the poor can’t drop much lower; indeed, with small gains, they can pass their parents’.

The result: The higher the parents’ incomes, the less likely that their children will match them. This is even true for the richest 1 percent of families, says economist Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise Institute.

Just what has caused the slowdown in incomes is a tangled tale with the usual suspects: poor schools that produce poor workers; income inequality that stifles consumption spending; weak housing construction; inadequate innovation;  . . . .

[T]he broad trends seem reliable. The paradox is apparent. Today’s strong economy notwithstanding, there’s an underlying worry about the future.

Economic anxiety is increasingly an equal-opportunity affliction. No one can escape it. The poor worry about staying poor. The lower-middle class worries about paying bills or losing jobs. Now upper-middle class parents have joined the crowd, because their own well-being is often judged by how well their children are doing. That is the stubborn source of their angst.