New survey suggests decline has strong correlation between Christian nationalism and opposition to inclusive policies
Public support for same-sex marriage and nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans has fallen, even as the overall share remains high, according to new findings by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute.
Broad majorities of Americans, regardless of political party or faith, continue to support LGBTQ+ rights and protections, the analysis found. But after years of rising public support, the decline is notable, said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the PRRI.
The survey analyzed Americans’ attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights across three policies: same-sex marriage, nondiscrimination protections and religion-based service refusals. It found support for all three measures had softened for the first time since the PRRI began tracking views of the issues nearly a decade ago.
While the “vast majority of Americans continue to endorse protections for LGBTQ Americans”, Deckman said the results may serve as a “warning sign” for those working to safeguard the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans amid a conservative legislative and legal effort to erode them.
So despite the combined statistic, this is really just the right-wing doubling down on extremism. Those that had moderated social views seem to be following the toxic leaders who have made abusing LGTBQ+ people as their pet “two minutes of hate” project.
Centrist gonna centrist, even when it comes to blindly deciding how much to hate someone for no fucking good reason.
Centrist position is not hating on lgbt, that’s just misrepresentation
The centrist position might now currently have shifted to not hating LGBTQ people, but it is also a misrepresentation to say that positive change came from a realization, capacity for intellectual agency, or evolution within the ideology of centrism rather than just a shifting calculus for where the perceived middle is on a particular issue.
In other words, centrists don’t actually give af, they just realize it is probably not a good idea to be perceived as hating on the LGBTQ people so they just let go of their hate and adjust their position no problem. Yes, most of them no longer hate LGTBQ people in their hearts, but do I really give a fuck if they would as soon hate LGTBQ too if that better fit the calculus of the center?
If you want proof of this, just look to the colossal sea of centrist celebrities and media figures who appear to be utterly mystified by the seemingly arbitrary new rules that are always being made about what is offensive and what they can’t say… and the even more colossal sea of normal people who triangulate their own opinions and views off of those figures. The popularization of the concept of “identity politics” is in a large way a forging of this nebulous, diffuse confusion over the reasons behind why culture is changing into a singular named entity that can be pointed at, blamed and thus minimized to comfort and give space to centrists struggling to keep up with memorizing the new scripts of respectability culture without any understanding of their meaning (that would render a memorization of the details unnecessary).
That’s not the case for a lot of people. When I was in middle school, I had the centrist position that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, as was the law at the time, but gays should have the right to form civil unions.
But because I’m not a literal child anymore, I realized it’s not going to work because conservatives will fight every right at every step so civil unions can’t be equal.
The non-voting public and celebrities are not centrist because they don’t even know what that means. They might randomly have opinions that are an average of what their friends think, but that’s not the same as forming your own opinion with nuance after thinking about the issue
Honestly, high five, you just proved my point better than I could, I am just going to stop talking and let you keep talking!