More Anti-Gay Bigotry - and Hypocrisy - in Gloucester County, Virginia

As some readers may recall, last year I wrote about the small, tastefully Gay Pride Month display that was erected in the Gloucester County library only to be hastily taken down after knuckle dragging Gregory Woodard,  member of the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors - who just happened to also be an anti-gay fundamentalist pastor in his day job - complained about the display and said it was "promoting homosexuality."   Here's how one reader who actually saw the display described it:

The only sign on the display read, "June is Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Month" with a graphic of a person in rainbow colors, a copy of the Rainbow flag and a graphic that said "Gay Pride" and "Be Yourself".
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The materials included in the display included works by Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Rita Mae Brown, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman and Alice Walker; music CD's by Sir Elton John, Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls; a movie DVD, "Milk", starring Sean Penn, about Harvey Milk.
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There were also biographies Andy Warhol, T.E. Lawrence, Alexander the Great, and Michelangelo, together with non-fiction books about LGBT issues and some fiction books for adults and young adults.

Not exactly risque or indecent stuff.  Nonetheless, it was too much for the homophobic Pastor Woodard who would seemingly like to pretend gays do not exist. Thankfully, Woodard decided not to seek re-election.  That being the case, I decided to make an inquiry to Gloucester County as to why there was no Pride Month display this year.  Here's the response I received from Brenda Garton the County Administrator:

Dear Mr. Hamar:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Gloucester County’s behalf.  In the area of public library displays, the library director approves displays in the libraries.  Displays change from year to year except for established programs and activities, seasons, holidays and community events.

Respectfully yours,

Brenda Garton

One of my sources in Gloucester County described Ms. Garton's reponse in this way:

What a load of horse shit! Typical Gloucester County...skirt the issue, slough it off, etc.

It seems that in fact many of the library displays never change and are ALWAYS annual events:  there's always a Black History Month display, always something about Christmas, always a military appreciation month display, etc.   And other Gloucester County reader states that the Library is up to it armpits in offering all kinds of "programs" which they describe as "mostly kitschy arts and crafts, and such."  Another, reader said "This library reflects the community's character...tacky and shallow."

All of which brings me to the issue of hypocrisy.  The mere acknowledgment that gays exist and that, yes, some of us have made major contributions to society is just too much for the good residents of Gloucester County.  But guess what book I'm told has a lengthy waiting list with library patrons?   Fifty Shades of Grey - a best seller that has been dubbed "mommy porn" because of the titillating sex (at least titillating if one is a middle aged matron from backwards Gloucester County).  Here's how Wikipedia describes the book:

The plot traces the relationship between recent college graduate Anastasia Steele and manipulative billionaire Christian Grey.  .   .   .  Upon learning that she is a virgin, Grey agrees to have sex with her in order to prepare her for later encounters, fully intending that the contract would be signed. As she gets to know him, she learns that his sexual tastes involve bondage, domination, and sadism, and that childhood abuse left him a deeply damaged individual. In order to be his partner, she agrees to experiment with BDSM, but she struggles to reconcile who she is (a virgin who has never previously had a boyfriend) with whom Christian wants her to be, his submissive and a to-do-with-as-he-pleases partner in his "Red Room of Pain".   .   .   .  The book's erotic nature and perceived demographic of its fanbase as being composed largely of married women over thirty led to the books being dubbed "Mommy Porn" by some news agencies.^[9][10] The book has also been reportedly popular among teenage girls, and college women. 

A review of the book on Amazon.com has this to say in part:

Then come the sex scenes. The first one is tolerable but as she goes on, they become so unbelievable that it becomes more laughable than erotic. She orgasms at the drop of a hat. He says her name and she orgasms. He simply touches her and she orgasms. It seems that she's climaxing on every page.

One has to wonder how a tasteful Gay Pride Month display that was historically accurate and featured noted authors, artists, etc. was too offensive for the sensibilities of Gloucester residents, yet there's a lengthy waiting list for Fifty Shades of Grey made up of women who are apparently just dying to read about "butt clamps" and "vagina balls" and more.  But there may be one explanation - at least for the book's popularity.  If you've seen many of the men from Gloucester County, the female inhabitants have good reason to read fiction to fulfill their sexual fantasies.  The male population for the most part is a veritable nightmare.  They make celibacy look like a really attractive option!

Was The Anti-Gay Parenting "Study" Politically Calculated?

Having followed the anti-gay propaganda disseminated by a number of "Christian" and "family values" organizations for well over a decade, the one thing that I've come to know is that no one lies more often or more deliberately that the "godly Christian" crowd that pretends to be concerned about "protecting marriage" or "the needs of children."   As I often point out, if their lips are moving, it's about a 99.99999% chance that they are lying.  So much for the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness.  Now, there is growing evidence that the recent "study" on gay parenting - which (i) was fatally flawed from the get go given it's disingenuously structured "sample" group and (ii) truly only showed that children from more impoverished homes and single parent homes did less well than those from affluent and intact home settings - may have been deliberately coordinated for release in the run up to the 2012 elections where same sex marriage will be on the ballot in multiple states.  Think Progress looks at this likely politically contrived "study."  Here are highlights:

Mark Regnerus’ parenting paper, with its faulty negative claims about gay parenting, has been roundly criticized by LGBT groups and mainstream psychological organizations and widely praised by anti-gay groups, in particular the National Organization for Marriage. Regnerus’ paper was published simultaneously in Social Science Research with a brief by professor Loren Marks critiquing the American Psychological Association’s support of same-sex parenting.

Scott Rose at The New Civil Rights Movement is building a compelling case that the publication of these two papers was coordinated with anti-gay groups who would capitalize on its political implications. Here are some of the clues Rose has discovered:

• Regnerus and Marks published their pieces together, but Marks cited Regnerus’ paper, so he clearly had foreknowledge of its conclusions. This suggests it is likely they intentionally published simultaneously as a “one-two election year punch.”
• Marks was originally called to testify in favor of Proposition 8, but admitted in deposition that he only had read parts of the studies from which he drew conclusions and had considered no research on gay and lesbian parents. His present research, published just two years later, attempts to make the same claims.
• Marks also made his paper available for the House Republican legal team defending the Defense of Marriage Act long before it was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
• There are multiple obvious ties between NOM co-founder Robert George, the Witherspoon Institute (which funded Regnerus’ research), Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (which is defending the research), National Review (where NOM’s Maggie Gallagher frequently writes and where she has promoted the paper), and Mark Regnerus himself, suggesting particularly convenient collusion for spinning the political implications of the paper’s publication.

If these suspicions prove true, one can only hope that Regnerus will soon be regarded as the modern day Paul Cameron and likewise regarded as a charlatan.

Mitt Romney: Mendacous Liar?

Image from Mario Piperni

As often seems to be the case once again a major foreign newspaper - in this case, the British newspaper The Telegraph - is exposing political lies in America in a fashion that the American mainstream media is either too lazy or too gutless to undertake.  The target in this hard hitting piece?  Mitt Romney who is exposed as little better than a mendacious pathological liar.   Living in Virginia and finding it difficult to escape the constant television ads placed by Romney and/or millionaire financed PAC's, The Telegraph article seems 100% on target.  Here are some article excerpts:

Four years ago, when I was writing about the 2008 presidential campaign, I wrote with dismay and surprise at the spate of falsehoods coming out of John McCain's campaign for president.

At the time, such false and misleading claims from a presidential candidate seemed shocking: they crossed an unstated line in American politics – going from the usual garden-variety campaign exaggeration to wilful lying.
Ah, those were the days … after watching Mitt Romney run for president the past few months, he makes John McCain look like George Washington (of "I Can't Tell A Lie" fame).

Granted, presidential candidates are no strangers to disingenuous or overstated claims; it's pretty much endemic to the business. But Romney is doing something very different and far more pernicious. Quite simply, the United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney.

[L]lying is really the only appropriate word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot. But that's a criticism you're only likely to hear from partisans.My personal favorite in Romney's cavalcade of untruths is his repeated assertion that President Obama has apologized for America..   .   .   .   President Obama never went around the world and apologized for America – and yet, even after multiple news organizations have pointed out this is a "pants on fire" lie, Romney keeps making it.

But foreign policy is a relatively light area of mistruth for the GOP standard-bearer. The economy is really where the truth takes its greatest vacation in Romney world. First, there is Romney's claim that the 2009 stimulus passed by Congress and signed by President Obama "didn't work". According to Romney, "that stimulus didn't put more private-sector people to work." While one can quibble over whether the stimulus went far enough, the idea that it didn't create private-sector jobs has no relationship to reality. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus bill created more than 3m jobs – a view shared by 80% of economists polled by the Chicago Booth School of Business (only 4% disagree).

Romney also likes to argue that the stimulus didn't help private-sector job growth, but rather helped preserve government jobs. In fact, the Obama years have been witness to massive cuts in government employment.

And the list goes on. Romney has accused Obama of raising taxes – in reality, they've gone down under his presidency, and largely because of that stimulus bill that Romney loves to criticize. He's accused the president of doubling the deficit. In fact, it's actually gone down on Obama's watch.

Romney took credit for the success of the auto bailout – even though he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt".
Then, there is the recent Romney nugget that the Obama administration passed Obamacare with the full knowledge that it "would slow down the economic recovery in this country" and that the White House "knew that before they passed it". It's an argument so clearly spun from whole cloth that according to Jonathan Chait, the acerbic political columnist for New York Magazine, Romney is "Just Making Stuff Up Now".

Also of Obamacare, Romney has said that it will lead to the government taking over 50% of the economy (not true)

The lying from the Romney campaign is so out-of-control that Steve Benen, a blogger and producer for the Rachel Maddow show compiles a weekly list of "Mitt's Mendacity" that is chockfull of new untruths. Benen appears unlikely to run out of material any time soon, particularly since Romney persists in repeating the same lies over and over, even after they've been debunked.

This is perhaps the most interesting and disturbing element of Romney's tireless obfuscation: that even when corrected, it has little impact on the presumptive GOP nominee's behavior.
[I]t is virtually unheard of for a politician to lie with such reckless abandon and appear completely unconcerned about getting caught.  Back in the old days (that is, pre-2008) it would have been considered unimaginable that a politician would lie as brazenly as Romney does – for fear of embarrassment or greater scrutiny.

Romney is charting new and untraveled waters in American politics. In the process, he is cynically eroding the fragile sense of trust that exists between voters and politicians. It's almost enough to make one pine for the days when Sarah Palin lied about "the Bridge to Nowhere".

 As I have said before, if Romney will so shamelessly now, what the Hell would he do if elected?

Quote of the Day: If Monsignor Lynn, Why Not Pope Benedict?

In a post today, Andrew Sullivan sums up the criminal nature of the Catholic Church hierarchy.  He posits why, if Monsignor Lynn is guilty of a felony, should not Pope Benedict XVI - who is documented to have egaged in similar conduct that led to the rape of children - be likewise charged and convicted.  Of course, in addition to Benedict XVI, the same situation applies to countless bishops and cardinals as well.  Here are highlights from Andrew's post:

Finally, finally ... some modicum of accountability for the cover-up of child rape in the Roman Catholic church. A senior cleric in Philadelphia, Monsignor William J Lynn, acquitted of conspiracy and a second count of endangerment, was nonetheless found guilty by a jury of covering up child-rape in such a manner that the rapist was able to strike again.

I might add that this precise chain of events - in which a child-rapist priest was reported as a criminal to the church authorities, then sent to therapy, then reassigned only to rape again - is exactly what Joseph Ratzinger did in Munich in the 1980s. How does an institution allow a lower priest to go to jail for such an act, while allowing the chief pontiff to carry on as if nothing had happened, as if children had not been raped because of his direct complicity in protecting the rapist?



Monday Morning Male Beauty

Largest Latino Civil Rights Organization Endorses Same Sex Marriage

In yet another development that will cause the anti-gay professional Christians and members of the homophobic GOP gnash their teeth, National Council of La Raza ("NCLR"), the nation's largest Latino civil rights organization has endorsed same sex marriage.  The Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Church can proclaim all they want that gay rights are not civil rights but their message is increasingly contradicted by those truly in the civil rights business.  Similar resolutions have been passed by other Hispanic organizations.  The move by NCLR and other Hispanic organizations demonstrate that NOM's goal of dividing Hispanics from gays is failing miserably.  A piece in the Washigton Blade looks at this development.  Here are excerpts:

Board members of the country’s largest Latino civil rights organization earlier this month unanimously passed a resolution in support of marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Eric Rodriguez, vice president of public policy for the National Council of La Raza, confirmed to the Blade that the vote took place on June 9 during a previously scheduled board meeting. NCLR did not provide a copy of the resolution, but Rodriguez stressed that there was little opposition to it.

The resolution passed less than a month after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons’ Board of Directors endorsed marriage rights for same-sex couples.

President Barack Obama on May 9 publicly backed nuptials for gays and lesbians during a White House interview with ABC News. NCLR President Janet Murguía applauded him for his “historic remarks expressing support for marriage equality” after the network broadcast them.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund President Thomas A. Saenz has backed same-sex marriage. His organization has not only represented people with HIV in discrimination cases, but filed amicus briefs in support of lawsuits that challenge California’s Proposition 8 and other states’ prohibitions on nuptials for gays and lesbians.

The Texas chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens earlier this month also passed a same-sex marriage resolution during their annual convention. 

Ortega said he expects some Latinos will criticize the resolution, but Pino stressed that the majority of people to whom she has spoken about it are supportive.

“Our community is really evolving,” she said. “We’re coming to a place where we’ve realized that marriage equality is basically a civil rights issue. It doesn’t mean that Latinos want to get married in any of the churches. It’s about equality. And I think that a lot of our Latino brothers and sisters realize that and don’t think that we should be denied that opportunity.”

NCLR plans to formally announce the marriage resolution next month during its annual convention in Las Vegas.

Expect more whining from Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown and, of course, Tony Perkins.

The Catholic Bishops' Crusade Against Gay People

With so many problems on so many fronts - with parishes closing, the ranks of the priesthood dwindling, and church membership falling - one would think that the Catholic bishops would have better ways to spend the large amounts of money being directed towards the suppression of the civil rights of LGBT citizens.  But instead we continue to witness an almost extreme hysteria against gays in dioceses across America country and the world.  One of the worse anti-gay zealots is Archbishop John Nienstedt of Minnesota (at left). Interestingly enough, however, it seems that more and more of his flock are ignoring his message.  Even more interesting is the refusal of Fr. Mike Tegeder to preach Nienstedt's message of anti-gay hate.  A lengthy piece in City Pages looks at the confrontation and the Catholics who are refusing to buy into Nienstedt's message.  Here are some highlights:

Which is why Mike's here, talking about it, slamming his finger on the desk and calling out the shame that his church promulgates. Calling out the way his church robs homosexuals of their dignity, the way it stares them down and claims they are "intrinsically disordered."

"The greatest threats to marriage are the economy, joblessness, alcoholism, drug abuse — there are a lot of threats to marriage, but it has very little to do with homosexuals having a committed relationship," says Tegeder, who's also a pastor at the Church of Gichitwaa Kateri. "I know committed same-sex people who are doing God's work."

Tegeder knows what the Bible dictates on homosexuality — along with what it dictates about shellfish, and mixed-cloth clothing, and all those other Bronze Age concerns. And he knows there's no single person responsible for the shame his church lifts from these passages.

But there is one person who could single-handedly end it all in the Twin Cities: His Excellency, the Most Reverend Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis John C. Nienstedt.

"Nienstedt is just so rigid about these things," Tegeder continues, growing animated. "But, you know — just let go of it. What are we trying to defend? Marriage? Has the Catholic Church protected marriage? I mean, [Nienstedt] has a priest who impregnated one of his staff members, broke up their marriage, and the guy's still functioning! ... Why don't we take care of our own issues before we start imposing views onto other people who don't have the same religious beliefs?"

"I'm afraid these men have sex on the brain, and between you and me that's not the best place to have sex," says Leonard Swidler, a prominent Catholic theologian and professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University. "Issues of birth control, marriage, divorce, married priests, female priests, same-sex marriage — it's all sex, sex, sex. They're sex maniacs."

Few fit Swidler's caricature of the current episcopacy more naturally than Nienstedt. Born in Detroit in 1947, Nienstedt took to the church early. His parents were devout Catholics, and it took little time for Nienstedt to find his calling, claiming from an early age that he'd someday become a priest.

 Nienstedt first showed his willingness to tow the church's anti-gay line while working as a bishop in New Ulm, which happened to coincide with the release of Brokeback Mountain. Nienstedt forbade his fellowship from seeing the film — a unique step among American bishops. Even more odd, he felt the need to explicitly detail the reasons for his decision in the diocesan bulletin.

Next he inserted into Mass what was colloquially called a "marriage prayer," instructing priests to force parishioners to "proclaim and defend [God's] plan for marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman."

This year, Nienstedt has also taken the extraordinary step of assigning priests and married Catholic couples to carry anti-gay messages to seniors in the archdiocese's Catholic high schools. The couple dispatched to DeLaSalle High School compared same-sex relationships to bestiality.

Nienstedt is, of course, parroting the Vatican's party line, and was recently burnished by Pope Benedict in a March visit to Rome. Still, few bishops have taken such public, vocal stands on the matter — and none have employed the panoply of methods the archbishop has utilized to get out the anti-gay message.

"[Nienstedt has] this idea that the truth is already complete, that he's got it, that he's the keeper of it, and that you make sure your experiences match this truth," says Bayly. "Such hubris. It makes him and the system they've built into what I consider to be a clerical caste. And it's the antithesis of what Jesus was about."

"There's a fear that the bishops utilize: If gays get the right to civil marriage, then the church will be sued if we don't marry them," Bayly says. "That's a crock. The church can choose not to marry divorced people, but you don't see straight couples getting turned away because one of them is divorced."

Bayly is planning more gatherings, more vigils. He's planning to write more op-eds, and will be trying, against the odds, to finally discuss with Nienstedt why the archbishop carries such a preoccupation, such an obsession, with the idea of same-sex attraction.

"I think this whole issue of homosexuality is the last one the bishops still have any sort of control over, and they see that going," Bayly says. "And that's why they're putting up such a huge fight. Because after that's gone, there's nothing left in the realm of sexuality that people will listen to them about."

Personally, I believe the main hallmarks of today's Church leadership are rank hypocrisy and a pathological obsession with all things sexual and gay sex in particular.  Most of the bishops are in my view very psychologically disturbed individuals.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Continued Turmoil at UVA and in Charlottesville

The backlash against the coup lead by Helen Dragas to fire University of Virginia president Teresa Sulliavn continues to roil the University and the City of Charlottesville which is dominated by the University.  Faced with Gov. Bob McDonnell's ultimatum that they fix the mess by Tuesday or be removed the members of the Board of Visitors who thought so highly of themselves have certainly reaped a well deserved whirlwind.  While state financial support of the University of Virginia has dwindled to a pittance give the GOP controlled Virginia General Assembly's anti-tax and ant-knowledge agenda, Ms. Dragas and her fellow conspirators forgot that UVA is still nevertheless a PUBLIC university.  Actions that one can get away with in a privately owned corporation - like the one Dragas inherited from her far more diplomatic father - simply do not fly in a public university context.  Adding to the uproar is the Richmond Times-Dispatch report that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges will be contacting the University to ensure that it is in compliance and can remain accredited.  Ms. Dragas and her henchmen truly need to go NOW.  An article in the Washington Post looks at the continued controversy.  Here are highlights:

While the leadership limbo continues at the University of Virginia, the verdict from students on the ouster of President Teresa A. Sullivan is clear: They feel angry, bewildered and betrayed.

Most of the university’s 21,000-plus students have dispersed across the state and the globe for summer break. But they have made their collective frustrations heard here loud and clear. What’s driving them is more than just admiration for a popular president.

News of Sullivan’s ouster, which reached most students via mass e-mail nearly two weeks ago, has prompted strongly worded Facebook posts, chiding tweets, trips back to campus to protest and lobbying campaigns.

A student-led “Rally for Honor” is scheduled for Sunday afternoon on the university’s iconic Lawn.

Why such intensity?  .   .   .   .  the actions this month of the governing Board of Visitors don’t square with how decisions are typically made at U-Va., several student leaders said. They say they are not accustomed to being caught off guard by major university changes. This is a school where admissions tour guides rave about the “community of trust,” where students refer to founder Thomas Jefferson as if the third U.S. president were a close friend and where those caught cheating on homework face the judgment of their peers, not administrators.

“It seemed that almost everyone kept going back to this notion that what had unfolded just doesn’t happen at U-Va.,” said Stephen Nash, chairman of the Honor Committee, a 170-year-old student-run judiciary system that upholds the university’s code of honor. All students pledge not to lie, cheat or steal, and the committee holds them to that.

The Honor Committee issued a statement last Sunday that chastised the governing board for creating “an environment that is inconsistent with the value of trust that runs through the very fabric of our University.”

The words “trust,” “integrity,” “honor” and “community” have been used repeatedly as students have tried to pinpoint why this situation has struck a nerve.

At other times when controversy has struck at U-Va. — such as the case of former student George Huguely V, convicted this year of murder in the death of his ex-girlfriend, classmate Yeardley Love — most students and faculty have refused to talk to reporters.  Not this time.

“When there’s one entity that isn’t part of the community of trust, that hurts that community. People begin to talk about it,” Vroom said. “It’s logical to me that there would be such an outcry.”

New Poll: Virginians Conservative but Prefer Obama

Yet another poll spells less than good news for Mitt Romney who is barraging Virginia with less than honest campaign ads.  Indeed, the more I hear the deliberate untruths, the more I cannot stand Mr. Romney.  If he will flagrantly lie to get elected, it's a pretty safe bet that he'd lie once in office.  Do we really want a reprise of the Chimperator Bush/Emperor Palpatine Cheney regime?  Frankly, I don't think the country could survive it.  Especially when it's likely that the USA's debt would explode under a Romney regime. Here's why via Andrew Sullivan who noted that the GOP cannot deal with reality:

More evidence of the Republican refusal to deal with reality, once something conservatives prided themselves on:

YouGov asked: "Which of the following would you support as ways to reduce the nation's budget deficit?" They altered the rules of polling slightly, however, to deny respondents a "don't know" answer. Respondents had to answer something, either yes or no ...

The Dems favored big cuts in defense and tax hikes for the wealthy as ways to cut the deficit. But they didn't want to touch Medicare or Medicaid much - which means much higher taxes for the wealthy and much bigger defense cuts. But at least they chose. Republicans couldn't:

Many fewer Republicans supported tax increases on the wealthy (27.1%) and cuts in military spending (15.5%). Yet when denied the "don't know" exit, Republicans were scarcely more accepting of cuts to Medicare or Social Security than Democrats, only 13.5% and 15% approving, respectively. A majority of Republicans, 53.3%, answered "none of the above"—no changes to taxes, defense, or entitlements.

And people wonder why our debt exploded under Reagan and George W Bush. And why it will explode once again if Romney becomes president. A party this irrational - a party hysterical about debt whose members do not actually want to cut spending or raise any taxes, a party a majority of whose members have somehow persuaded themselves that there were indeed WMDs in Iraq in 2003  - should not be a mainstream party in a Western democracy.

Virginians seem to understand both Romney's dishonest and the fact that the GOP's rhetoric doesn't match the numbers.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

More Virginia voters prefer President Barack Obama than Republican candidate Mitt Romney, but many consider themselves more conservative on economic issues than the president, according to a statewide poll by Old Dominion University and The Virginian-Pilot.

When asked whom they would vote for on Nov. 6, 49 percent of those surveyed said Obama, 42 percent chose Romney, 5 percent said they wouldn't vote for either and 3 percent were undecided or wouldn't say.  Obama's 7-percentage-point advantage is significant, said Jesse Richman, an assistant professor of political science at ODU who analyzed the poll results.

When asked about social issues, such as abortion rights, contraception and same-sex marriage, voters considered themselves more in the middle, between the two candidates.  More than a third of those polled said they're social liberals, 44 percent said they're conservatives and close to one in five said they're moderates. About three-quarters of them consider Romney conservative and Obama liberal on these issues.

Emily Cole, a 23-year-old college student who participated in the survey, said that although she's more conservative than Obama on economic policies, she still plans to vote for him.  Obama's supportive stance on abortion rights, same-sex marriage and other "civil rights" matters, Cole said, are more important than monetary policy.  "Definitely for my generation, that's a big concern," the Virginia Beach resident said. "We're not willing to compromise on that."