“And the thing that I think is getting a little tiresome is the gay community, they have so bullied the American people and they have so intimidated politicians that politicians fear them and so they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere. Well, not with the Constitution you don’t.”
The graphic is from this Pew poll.
Belafon
It would be nice if those young Republicans actually cared about gays. If they did, they would either leave the party or force it to change. Instead, they’re just waiting for their tax cut. Then again, you have people like Sullivan or Log Cabin Republicans who know what the Republican party wants to do to them, and yet they back them anyway.
Shorter: Their votes are all about the money.
jonas
Man, 60% of young Republicans. That’s some serious frickin’ bullying.
Ash Can
Hey, cut Bachmann some slack. She’s an old lady.
SatanicPanic
That’s pretty fucked up actually- people like Michelle see gay teens killing themselves after being bullied and she wants to get some of that sympathy
Wag
I checked out the study, and what I found most interesting was that the young Republicans favored gay marriage by just under the number of Democrats age 56+ did, 61% in favor for the young GOP, 62% for older dems.
And, not surprisingly, the rest of the Dems favored gay marriage by even higher margins
Tommy
I say this over and over again, and happy to say it. My brother married into a very Republican family. Like far right (many “birthers” and flat world folks). You can count my family members on one hand. Their family, well lots and lots of folks. Many 15-25. They are not so against “the gays.”
In fact, for the first few years they knew me, they thought I was gay. I am not, but in their world a 44 year old man that has never been married, well he must be gay.
Now I am NOT proud to say this, I think I could bring a male to a family function as a date and get less static then if I brought an African America.
Wag
where is my edit button?. the older Dems in the survey were 65+, not 56+.
sparrow
I may be wrong, but speaking as someone who identified as republican at the tender age of 17-18, some of those young republicans may be more compassionate people who are making the political transition to more liberal ideas.
Even when I was a rabid right-winger who believed “communism” was the root of all evil (I didn’t even understand what it meant), you would never have got me to condemn gay people, or say that they shouldn’t have the same rights as anyone else. Because, I like to think, I wasn’t really a mean person at heart. I was a bit (or actually a lot) brainwashed by my parents and their political beliefs.
But people who are still republicans today in older adulthood are probably pretty well cemented in their bigoted beliefs. Still, it’s good to see the rising curve.
Suffern ACE
@Wag: it’s what I expect from young republicans; they are born middle aged.
MikeJ
If there were such a thing as a smart Republican they would back marriage equality just to get the issue off the table. They’ve lost. The smart thing to do would be to tell gay people, “hey you guys have two incomes, fewer children, more money. You should vote for the party of tax cuts.”
p.a.
Respect (the word tolerance seems to imply a position of dominance): winning, one funeral at a time.
Violet
Of course Michele Bachmann doesn’t want gay marriage. Her husband Marcus might leave her if that were legal.
Davis X. Machina
Too bad it won’t affect their voting. Or turn into an interest in social democracy.
Smells like team spirit. Or trend-chasing. Or both.
Fuzzy
I am trying to figure out how Bachmann gets to bring the Constitution into this. Is she claiming she is not getting her equal rights? Wait until the gays claim they have the right to open carry guns because they feel threatened. I want to see a rainbow flag colored holster or long gun stock just for the FREAK OUT.
MikeJ
@Davis X. Machina: If you were straight and wanted eternal war, tax cuts for the rich, grinding the poor under your heel, and marriage equality you’d wind up with more of what you wanted by voting for Republicans and what you didn’t get wouldn’t really affect you that much.
cleek
@Belafon:
Sullivan doesn’t back the GOP. IIRC, he voted for Obama, twice.
Jamey
“‘Constitution.’ You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Tommy
@MikeJ: But that is something they don’t get. They lost. I tend not to fight fights I know I have lost going in. An example I use is my parents. Moderate Republicans. They openly said they had never met a gay couple. I had a family member and her partner of 20+ years literally move in next door. I wondered how that would work.
It worked out really, really well.
They now are about as pro-gay marriage and gay rights as I am.
Funny how that works out isn’t it ……
ronin122
@Belafon: Call it clapping louder, but I like to think that they’re at least trying to moderate the party from being totally bonkers. At least I hope so, and hope they stay in the party: if they left, the wingnut concentration will just get larger and larger. Since enough non-psychos will still vote for them in appreciable numbers, anything that keeps them from falling off the ledge would be best for the country (unless you subscribe to the idea that they’ll go so crazy no one will vote for them, but history shows that’s wishful thinking at best).
Comrade Dread
You’ve lost, Representative.
And the reason you’ve lost is because most people have realized that there is no secular rational argument to keep gay people from forming their own families under the law and because the more people encounter gay friends, the more they realize that they are not abominations or pariahs, but are very much human like the rest of us with all of the good, the bad, and the inbetween that we all have within us.
Tommy
@Fuzzy: Gosh I can’t find the tweet. It was a gif of a chat conversation. A person asking why there isn’t a National Association for White People. Or why men don’t have an organization.
The person said it was like in Mario Kart. When you are in the lead you don’t have the “blue” (all powerful) car. Lightening bolts. YOU ARE IN THE LEAD ALREADY!
Xecky Gilchrist
Michele, dear, you’re thinking of the NRA.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tommy:
This is just factually wrong. Whites and men have any number of organizations. The KKK, for example. Or the Republican Party.
Botsplainer
They went all in on gay marriage in 2004 for short term electoral advantage. What they are now seeing is backlash on a delay.
This is also going to be the case on Obamacare. The 2020 cycle may lead to current California-type results.
Schlemizel
And yet those same young Rethuglicans are young Rethuglicans. So the end result will be 1%’er politics + gay marriage. I understand that the plus is a huge win for gay people and a great thing for the country but I don’t see it as the sea change in any of the other ignorant, backwards, Randian bullshit the GOP is dragging the nation through.
EDIT: and I see @Belafon: got here first.
NotMax
“and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Write that 100 times on the chalkboard after class, Ms. B.
gbear
@Violet: MN has gay marriage now so Marcus is free to bolt any time he wants. The thing that’s killing the Bachmanns is that Marcus’s ‘pray away the gay’ therapy business is going to tank if it hasn’t already. The Bachmanns may have to go back to living on farm subsidies. I can’t wait until she’s out of office and hopefully out of the spotlight forever.
Schlemizel
@cleek:
Yet Sully always sides with the GOP, eternal war, eternal tax cuts, other people expecting fair and equal treatment are bad. Sure, occasionally, 6 months after it matters he will do a bit about how he was misunderstood or some other bullshit but when it matters he stand with the dark side every time. It hardly matters who he votes for.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I’ll take what I’d call civil rights to start with. The color of your skin, your sex, how you love, well they all should all be equal and embraced under the law. For me that should be a “base” starting point.
Then we can move the folks to other more “liberal” ideas.
Bobby Thomson
@Fuzzy: The free exercise clause of the First Amendment. If you don’t allow religions to exercise the coercive power of the state to enforce religious dogma, then you are repressing believers. That seriously is the argument. They just pretend the establishment clause doesn’t exist, or read it narrowly to prohibit only the government establishing a religion or rules for existing religions.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
This. Its the big reason the bigots are so dead set against ‘race mixing’. Once you actually know a black family, a Hispanic family, a gay family, and learn that they are fighting to make ends meet, to raise the kids the best they can to just get by day to day it dawns on you that those superficial differences are just that – superficial – and that they deserve the same sort of treatment every human does. When that happens in large enough numbers the bigots lose & humanity wins.
Rob in CT
They’ll play the presecuted ones now, of course.
Look at Roh Dreher’s whining (highlighted today by the aforementioned Sullivan). It’s almost (not quite, IMO, but almost) funny.
Except they’re serious and expect to be taken seriously and some folks who should know better WILL take them seriously.
jomike
I swear, for a group that claims to love states’ rights and the 10th Amendment, social conservatives sure are keen on securing federal protection for their right to discriminate. But in 29 states (Arizona among them) they are absolutely, perfectly, completely, totally 100% free to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
In the 21 states plus D.C. that do prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation these folks are free to petition their legislatures to amend the laws to provide the religious exemptions they seek. And in states where there’s zero chance of getting the laws changed to suit them, business owners who can’t in good conscience comply with public accommodation requirements are always free to do business on a private, membership-only basis, are they not? Am I missing something?
Ash Can
@gbear: What’ll you bet that at least the local MN news outfits will keep seeking her out for quotes after she retires, for no other reason than they know she’ll always bring the batshit?
Violet
@cleek: Unless Andrew Sullivan wasn’t an American citizen in 2008 nor, I think, 2012 so he didn’t vote for anyone for President.
Tommy
@Bobby Thomson: I just got off the phone with a client of mine. A good client. I had called to tell him the referral he sent me didn’t work out. That the guy asked me if I had accept Jesus as my savior and if I knew his words were the words of God. I was like, nope, not so much.
My client laughed at me when I told him this and said he should have mentioned that might happen. That he gets the same thing from the guy, and he is a devote Jew, so he doesn’t really hold the same ideas.
We then, as a Jew and Atheist (that would be me) mocked him.
I’ve been doing business for 20+ years and that was a first for me.
Chris
@Belafon:
Exactly.
Unless they’re gay themselves, young Republicans don’t support gay rights any more than their parents and grandparents did. Young Republicans don’t care about gay rights, which is something entirely different. They’re the VSPs you see dismissing “social issues” as a “distraction” from the “REAL issues,” and wishing all these unserious people would stop bickering about irrelevancies and get back to their tax cuts. But when they say “all these unserious people,” they’re talking about gay rights activists just as much as the religious right.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
Its the second part of your equation I doubt. Granted I work in IT but the young goopers I meet day to day are gay friendly because they see no problem with that but they still buy into all the other libertarian bullshit that feeds the modern Republican Party. They luvs them some Ayn Paul & believe he should be Prez and that all government is evil and has never done a thing for them that they could not have done better all by their lonesome. They will continue to vote against their best interests and the betterment of the nation while ignoring the real damage they are doing.
@Chris: and we have a BINGO!
gbear
@Ash Can: I can see her having a future on a talk radio, but I think she’s toast for local newspapers and television. Knock on wood…
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I had this exact conversation with my mom.
“They are just like us,” my mom said.
“She gets mad at Barb for the same things I get mad at your dad. It is like they are an old married couple.”
I was like, yeah Mom, they have been together for 20+ years. They are married, although just not in the eyes of the State of Illinois (that can now change). Not kind of like, but just like you and me.
Violet
@gbear: Isn’t Michele in some kind of financial legal trouble–campaign donation issues or something?
Chris
@Rob in CT:
There’s nothing more pathetic than a fascist mewling about his oppression.
jonas
@Schlemizel:
I’ve read Sullivan for a long time and he really doesn’t hold any of these positions. If you’re still pissed at him for supporting the Iraq War early on, fine, but he has repeatedly said he was really, really wrong about that.
gbear
@Violet: Someone on her campaign staff got into trouble in Iowa but I’m not up on the details and can’t look them up right now.
Butch
@gbear: No, she’ll get a permanent spot on Fox News right next to Palin.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I don’t disagree that much. The “teach them more liberal ideas” isn’t easy. I work in IT as well and the libertarian bullshit is strong. Hurts my head!
I tend to agree with the Charles P. Pierce rule. If you listen to libertarians you can nod your head in agreement for like 5 minutes. Then at 5.0001 they go totally off the rails.
jibeaux
I know that everything is about the “death throes” of gay rights, but honestly, this is “death throes” stuff. Notice how the focus is not on how the gays are bad; it’s turned to their own persecution complex. When you’re in a position of strength, you argue substance. They barely mention substance anymore.
Eventually, maybe even Marcus Bachmann can find a world in which he is welcomed for who he really is. Him and his dog that he bought sunglasses for.
Omnes Omnibus
@jonas: How about the The Bell Curve? How about the fifth column BS (I don’t think he has apologized for that). He reacts to just about any political choice by emotionally choosing the conservative POV. Later, he realizes he is wrong. Rinse and repeat. You would think that a person of his supposed intellect would notice the pattern and try to avoid it. He does not.
Gypsy Howell
We’re winning on the gay rights front, but man o man, we’re losing on almost every other front for social and economic issues. Women’s reproductive rights, voting rights, collective bargaining, wealth redistribution and income inequality, the environment…
Considering how badly we are losing the reproductive rights battle in state after state 40+ YEARS after making abortion legal, it’s hard to see how we’re ever going to hang on to gay marriage, let alone the ACA.
So terribly depressing.
Violet
@jonas: There was a Sully thread last night that covered this issue in depth, so go read there for more info. In short, he may have been wrong about the Iraq war and apologized, but for women and any man with an ounce of sympathy, the conclusion he came to after running his series on abortion, and reading heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story from women who had later term abortions, was unforgivable. Callous doesn’t begin to describe him.
He may or may not be a Republican, but he’s got the character trait that most defines them–lack of empathy. If it doesn’t affect him personally, like gay marriage or pot legalization, then he’s full of judgment and closed-mindedness. He lacks the ability to put himself in someone else’s shoes, as he more than illustrated in deciding that later term abortion was wrong because it didn’t fit his religious worldview, despite story after story explaining just why it was essential that it stay legal to help women and families in with heartbreaking situations, and how sometimes it’s the most compassionate choice.
The Golux
@Schlemizel:
You apparently haven’t read Sullivan either a) recently or b) carefully.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is exactly right. He does it again and again. Every once in awhile he admits he “reacts emotionally” but that’s “just who he is”. That’s no excuse. Babies react emotionally. Adults, especially those whose job is like his, should have moved beyond that at some point.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Golux:
I certainly haven’t. I didn’t see him offering any real value as a writer and/or thinker. I know his pattern on issues (described above). If he has changed, good for him, but I’ll have trouble believing it is a lasting change.
Hal
Great. They support gay marriage, then vote for whatever anti-gay republican is running for office. That’s the problem I’ve always had with Megan McCain. She can be as pro gay marriage as she wants but if all she does is turn around and vote for Romney or Santorum or whatever undoubtedly anti-gay person who will be running in 2016, than her support is moot.
Napoleon
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t think he has either. I have a serious problem with him because of that.
cmorenc
@sparrow:
I too was at that age the equivalent of what would now be a Rand Paul Republican, chock full of glibertarian notions on the domestic front and cold-war hawkishness on the foreign policy front, but over my college and first few adult years underwent a progressive transformation. But having grown up in a small southern town among the substantial majority harboring no doubts whatever about themselves being heterosexual (graduated h.s. in 1967) – anyone known to be gay (particularly known to be sexually active as such) was regarded as disgustingly sick and repulsive – the word “queer” had an extremely nasty connotation back then.
That said, there was a paradoxical acceptance for men and women who were widely suspected of having closeted gay sexuality, but successfully maintained a public front of asexuality (Lindsey Graham being a prime example of someone like this in southern society). No one looked the least askance at e.g. a spinster female schoolteacher who was best pals with a spinster female art teacher, for example, and there was a forever-single male in my hometown who most of the cool-kids, male and female, took ballroom dance from in junior high school, even though there was no doubt whatever among the other adults in the town what the real situation was with these folk. But if they ever did something to create strong suspicion of a specific homosexual act – that threatened to pop their bubble of acceptance and wilful overlooking by others, and rumors fly with nearly the speed of light in small southern towns.
Hawes
Sixty percent?
But “percent” means per hundred.
Are you saying there are a hundred Young Conservatives?
VOR
@Ash Can: Actually, the local Minnesota news outlets have generally avoided covering her outbursts. The national media does a much better job of exposing her antics.
One of her half-sisters is an out lesbian. Then there was the time she crouched in the bushes to spy on a LGBT rally at the Minnesota capital.
The Other Chuck
@Violet: Sully treats all women like dirt, save for Margaret Thatcher. Color me unsurprised. Hell, his treatment of Palin actually left me feeling sympathy for HER.
Narcissus
Can we get a Founding Fathers gay porn parody please
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Jamey:
Because conservatives don’t actually understand the Bill of Rights the word “Constitution” is for them the same as the word “Abracadabra.”
Villago Delenda Est
If someone hit Bachmann over the head with an original copy of the Constitution, she wouldn’t recognize it, because she was expecting the REAL one that is on stone tablets brought down from Mt. Sinai.
schrodinger's cat
@cleek: AFAIK Sullivan is not a citizen yet, he got his GC less than 5 years ago. One has to wait for 5 years at least (or 3 for the spouse of a US citizen), so he couldn’t have voted for Obama in 2008.
gbear
@Butch: If she gets a ‘permanent’ spot on Fox, it won’t last six months.
schrodinger's cat
What I don’t get about Sullivan is why he identifies with the Tories, seems very Ben Carsonesque. I do think he wishes he was a toff.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Butch:
Although Bachmann’s rhetoric is just what the FOX News demo (Approaching death from old age) loves, the crazy eyes do not good viewing make.She has a great face for radio.
Davis X. Machina
The odds on waking up in 20 years to an America where 40 states have legal gay marriage and a right-to-work law are way greater than the zero it should be.
(The remaining ten would be the sum of the neithers and the boths.)
Violet
@The Other Chuck: He does indeed treat women poorly. His assessment of Sarah Palin, however, was spot on. He was one of the few people outside of Alaska bloggers looking into her crazy stories that didn’t add up. Don’t think I could ever feel sorry for Sarah Palin, but then I’m female and have dealt with my share of mean girls. Know one when I see one and she’s not to be trusted one bit.
Cheryl from Maryland
@MikeJ: Except under those circumstances, a couple/family pays more taxes. My husband and I paid a higher rate than Mitt Romney. That’s why we belong to the Democratic party.
another Holocene human
@p.a.: good catch. The call for tolerance goes back into Western modernity to the development of humanism and from what I recall develops political currency among the elite during the continental Enlightenment. Tolerance was explicitly about religious tolerance and meant accepting explicitly adherents of minority religions, such as Judaism, to greater social and civic participation in society. It was a call by elites to elites that predates democratic institutions in Europe. It was an idea that prepared the way for Napoleon’s army to abolish the ghettos as it swept through Europe. (Reactionaries in Italy, led by the RCC, aimed to put them back there, until the revolution put the church in its place; later, of course, there was the Holocaust. )
Tolerance is still an important idea. If you live in a diverse urban area and have to deal with cults that you may not particularly like but as long as they aren’t breaking any laws, you know both sides need to learn to put up with each other. Hoeever with respect to our government we Americans prefer to speak of rights. All rrligions have ‘minority’ status inthat are not officially recognised by the state, but each individual has equal rights.
I guess the later t’s the religious right off but they’re going to have to learn to tolerate us.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemizel:
Actually, I’m pretty much okay with that, especially if we can get racial politics out at the same time. IMO, it will be a LOT easier to fight the 1%ers if we don’t have to fight Gheys corrupting youth and Young bucks eating steak on food stamps at the same time.
another Holocene human
@Hal: I’m going to stand up and give Megs credit for participating in that NoH8 campaign. Even rich asshats can step out of their bubble to be decent human being s esp. if it doesn’t impact their portfolio.
I miss her crazy late night selfies on Twitter, though. I guess get thing was Wonkette made too much fun of her and called her ‘fat’ but boooobies. Cmon, Megs, it made you seem human and not just another Luke Russert.
Ksmiami
@The Other Chuck: sully is a moron who can’t even see that without full actualized rights for women there would be no rights for gays… It is the women who provided the empathy and the overall push toward more better rights for all… In fact the idea of sexual freedom started with margaret sanger… Fuck sully
chrome agnomen
i don’t have any particularly strong feelings about sully one way or the other, but he will always remain, for me, untrustworthy. i’m not tooting my own horn here, but i have been a strong liberal since i can remember, even in grade school, and i have an inherent distrust of anyone who comes to these feelings any time well after the point of supposed maturity.
Seanly
The younger Republicans might not be as doctrinaire about same sex marriage, but they are each still one of the following:
1) a god bothering cultural a$$hole
2) a libertarian douche nozzle
3) some dizzying combination of 1 & 2
BruceFromOhio
Tell that to Matthew Shepard. Or Britney Cosby. Or Crystal Jackson.
jomike
@schrodinger’s cat:
Essential to his brand, not to mention his Burkean self-image.
Jewish Steel
Young Republicans. Ew.
Someguy
So this is halfway good news about younger Rethuggs not being entirely on board with unremitted gay bashing but honestly, the time is now to step up hammering on the Republicans, particularly the young ones, as irredeemably hopeless homophobes. Failure to do so may give the younger wingtards a bit of breathing room to make inroads into an important Dem constituency. Isolate them, mock ’em, then marginalize ’em.
shortstop
@MikeJ: Right. And they’re not so good at empathizing: they may support LBGT rights in the abstract, because hey, everyone does, but if a lack of those rights doesn’t affect them personally (or they think it doesn’t), it’s just not important enough to yell — or vote — about. Walking in another’s shoes is something that gets easier as you get older, and exponentially easier at any age if you lean left rather than right.
Part of it could also be “It’s going to be fine; I don’t need to do anything about it” syndrome, which is really common with social issues. In the 1990s and early 2000s, young Democratic women were forever believing that Roe v. Wade was impervious to assault. It’s held so far in the aggregate, but I don’t think those women would have believed that the anti-choicers could have made as many inroads in the states as they have the last couple of years — even accounting for a lot of that being zapped by the judiciary.
Bill in Section 147
@BruceFromOhio: Well Civil Rights is just like the Holocaust and affordable health care is just like slavery so it follows that you openly expressing your opinion is just like being a bully.
Also today I heard there is a Christian nut complaining that Evangelicals have to hide in the closet. Somehow being a bigot cuts into a Christian’s right to make money and not be scorned. Why its just like being gay. I mean… just like being gay used to be back when Evangelists didn’t have to be in the closet. Well minus the brutality, the beatings, and stuff.
Ian
@Violet:
I though this thread needed moar of this
Thursday
Back when this argument was going on in Canada, George Strombopolis put it this way (paraphrased):
What the Conservatives don’t understand is that the argument is over. Whatever laws they try to enact now to stop gay people from getting married is going to get reversed a generation from now. We’ve changed; they lost.