I didn't get around to doing this post earlier in the week...I guess I'm not going to go back and link to everything, but I will link to yesterday's post on the old, old, Senate.
Today at Plum Line I talked about Richard Mourdock's idea of bipartisanship, and said that it matters precisely because he doesn't appear to be a flake.
And over at Post Partisan, I did a quick reaction to Barack Obama's new position on marriage. Short version: historic, but won't matter in 2012.
But that does raise a question. Regardless of what happens in 2012, what will the future of gay and lesbian political attachment look like? Will the LGBT community wind up like African Americans, Jews, and Mormons? Each of those groups, it seems to me, has remained politically identified through their ethnicity (in the first and perhaps second case) or their religion (in the third and perhaps second case), and therefore has stayed bound to one party. Or will they be like, I don't know, the Irish -- moving away from their current political identity to other identities, and therefore identifying with parties for other reasons?
IMO, as long as there is a solid rump of voters belonging to one party who despise the group in question, the group will belong to the other party, if they'll have them.
ReplyDeleteIf the Republican base were to stop being so anti-gay, I'm sure there would be more gay Republicans. Similarly, I'm sure that if the Republican base were to become more accepting of African Americans and their priorities, there would be more black Republicans.
Well, short term, the LGBT community's political goals will be in protecting LGBT rights- so hard to see how their political identity becomes dislodged from their sexuality.
ReplyDeleteBut, it's not hard to envision a time when those rights are secure. Then, the LGBT community would probably be a less coherent political movement, and individuals would, as you say, begin identifying with parties for other reasons.
Of course, one could argue that that never happened with African Americans- though I think one could argue that African American rights have only been "secure" for a very short period of time, and even in that period, most political issues are strong proxies for racial issues.
A story in the Times about the Russian Jews in NYC, who don't follow the partisan leanings of the bigger Jewish community, so one must be careful in specifying the relevant community. I can remember when the Italians and the Irish were reliable Democratic votes, but that seems to have ended. That example suggests it's not only the attitude of the party which matters but the socio-economic evolution of the group.
ReplyDeleteGiven the strong opposition of the African-American community in MD to the gay marriage legislation, one wonders how they will react to this.
According to the polling I've seen, gay voters are generally very liberal on cultural issues. In particular, they tend to be much less religious than the American population as a whole. Even if gay rights was to vanish as a partisan issue (which shouldn't happen for another decade or so), this secular bent should keep LGBT Americans voting Democratic.
ReplyDeleteThe "LBGT community" is not the same kind of thing as an ethnic or religious community, and the metaphorical use of community to describe it just obscures the issue.
ReplyDeleteI think that over the next couple of decades the gay vote will remain unified, as at the moment they are at the top of the political correctness caste system (gay > black > woman). But in the long run who knows.
Nice PostPartisan post. These last two days on the SSM issue have been a textbook distillation of the difference between the two parties: the GOP actually mobilizes and passes state constitutional amendments solidifying the playing field as much as possible. Democrats and associated activists, on the other hand, choose to focus on the personal opinion of the president, someone with no direct power over the issue. Why don't Democrats make the biggest issue where federal and state senators and representatives stand on this?
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult question. I doubt that there's going to be the kind of huge backlash against LGBT rights that there was against racial equality. The fight over African-American rights has been as bitter and protracted as it is partly because the injuries done to that group were so enormous that nothing short of massive effort was going to get everyone up to the same starting line, as LBJ put it. Turned out that such efforts cost money and disrupt existing residential patterns, which means they became and have remained partisan issues. Fully integrating the LGBT community won't require anything comparable to Great Society programs, fair housing laws, court-ordered school busing and the like; lesbians and gays were denied very important rights for a very long time, but they weren't herded into ghettos and left in generationally self-perpetuating poverty. (Basically, they were forced to "pass" -- an option that a few African-Americans had but that most didn't.)
ReplyDeleteAbsent such a backlash, one hopes the GOP will just give up this fight -- in which case, LGBT folks could start dividing between the parties (based on other issues, like economics) fairly soon, maybe within one generation. Then again, I would expect this community to behave somewhat like the American Jewish community, another group whose traditions have produced an unusually high proportion of liberal-mindedness, an unusually low proportion of know-nothing idiocy, and some enduring sense of why it's important to be on the side of minorities and the oppressed. Those qualities could keep LGBTs voting Democratic for an additional generation or two. Further out than that (beyond about 50 years) there's no way to predict, because we don't know what the parties will stand for then or what the other issues of that time will be.
Regarding the "what's the matter with Kansas" meme and Jewish voters: why the Democratic party? Jews are the most 1%-y ethnic group by far. Blacks are the poorest people in any society and gays have every reason to dislike Christians (so those make sense) but Jews?
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.jta.org/philanthropy/article/2009/10/05/1008323/at-least-139-of-the-forbes-400-are-jewish
This will affect young voters more than any other group I think. Economics are complicated. Foreign policy is complicated. Taxes, social security and health care are complicated. Gay marriage on the other hand isn't complicated. Young people massively support gay marriage and they will during this election and probably the next one or two see Democrats defend the simple, straight-forward moral issue that is gay marriage while they will see Republicans argue against LGBT issues. Young people will be nudged towards the Democratic party and as research shows: early partisanship sticks.
ReplyDeleteLot of very thoughtful comments here, not sure I have much to add. I'm certainly no expert on LGBT issues, but my impression is: as integration has progressed, the Andrew-Sullivan, "mainstream" view (let's have a party to celebrate the end of the movement once SSM goes national) has gradually replaced the Stonewall-era broad diversity of the community. This change apparently has something to do with the increased acceptance of open homosexuality on Main Street USA.
ReplyDeleteAs such, I think Jeff is right: if the GOP gives up the fight, there will be no further hindrance to living fully open lives. As Jeff noted, that may cause LGBT status to no longer be a unifying electoral force. Will they still be Democrats? I've also read what Richard Skinner said about liberal attitudes, though I suspect many (non-evangelical) Republicans also share those liberal social attitudes, and it seems there are many things about the LGBT demographic that would fit well with Republicans. Interesting question.
I vote most similar to the Jews as well. I suspect that it will go from something like 95% Dem to 70% or 80% Dem once their rights are really secure. Who knows though, the gay rights issue is so huge that who knows how they will react once it is not there warping their politics.
ReplyDeleteRepublican gays already exist despite the enmity of the party they chose. Once the Republicans give up the fight for real it will free up lots of gays to "come out" as conservative based on economics or foreign policy or whatever.
I suspect that more gays will remain Dems than go over for a mixture of reasons. Historical loyalty is one of course, but I suspect that the whole process of having to come to terms with their own sexuality and the coming out process will tend to make them more questioning overall. That itself I think will lead them towards being more liberal than conservative.
Perhaps one day we will see a gay version of Clarence Thomas.
The only good thing about a "gay version of Clarence Thomas" is knowing that a gay president won't lag too long after that. Maybe we'll skip the gay Clarence Thomas and just have the gay or lesbian prez.
Delete@backyardfoundry -
ReplyDeleteJews still mostly vote for Democrats because of social issues irrelevant to their wealth. Jews are much more secular in their attitudes towards abortion, gay rights, church-state and the like than the average voter. The assumption that Jews "should" vote Republican is flawed for the same reason Frank's theory is - voters don't only take economic issues into consideration when voting.
TapirBoy1,
DeleteThose three things are basically one: an aversion to Christians, which is understandable. But why should that aversion be the overriding factor? Besides high Jewish wealth, there is the Republican resistance to open immigration and to class war. Class war seems worth fearing when you consider that Jews are a pretty visible minority that's so much wealthier and more culturally dominant. Few cons or repubs assume that the rich became so through stealing from the little guy (a dem and lib trope). Additionally, we're seeing that free immigration of Muslims is going quite badly for Jews in a lot of western countries.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/7278532/Jews-leave-Swedish-city-after-sharp-rise-in-anti-Semitic-hate-crimes.html
Which party is inclined to restrict that flow? So I think that this issue is probably more interesting than you're saying.
@backyard, I don't think you have any idea who stood up for Jews when they were discriminated against in this country. Hint: it wasn't the country club Republicans. The distrust of the good ole boy network runs deep especially when equality of access isn't a high priority for the GOP.
DeleteYou aren't Jewish, are you? Yours is a glib argument with no deep understanding of the tribulations of Jews.
The reason most Jews vote Democrat (and, more broadly, identify with the left) isn't because they perceive Republicans as hostile to them per se. Frankly, I don't think that ever was the reason. I think it's much more rooted in culture and religion than in their particular social status or success at any one time. In some ways, this is even more true about economic issues than social issues.
Deletebackyard, I can't speak for Jewish voters, but I would think that if you're part of a minority group that's been culturally and relgiously persecuted for centuries, you might be a bit hesitant to sign on with the party that's currently whipping up fear and anger toward another cultural and religious minority. A politics of liberal tolerance and inclusion might seem the better bet.
DeleteAnd conversely: If a party wants to attract Jewish voters, I would humbly suggest that it not keep giving victories in its presidential primaries to the likes of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, or putting the likes of Sarah Palin on its national ticket. Just a thought.
Another interesting conversation; not Jewish, but I agree somewhat with Jeff above (though a less harsh version): for all its merits, noblesse oblige Republicanism may not be your best political bet if your tribe feels a particular historic need to stick together.
DeleteDoes the comparison hold with the LGBT community? Gays have certainly been persecuted for millions of years; however, if you're gay the odds are pretty good that your parents weren't. Thus, the crossgenerational awareness of community persecution should be weaker among gays than for Jews.
An alternate model for the LGBT community might be China. A generation ago, Chinese educated youth Occupied Tiananmen Street in protest of the repressive, old-style communist policies of the CCP. The communists learned, they opened the economy to private investment, economic growth followed, and today's educated urban youth in China, while hopeful that voting comes soon, feel very little anti-establishment urgency. There's too much money to be made!
In an imperfect comparison, I could see the LGBT community losing its sense of urgency too, and thus scattering to the political winds with full integration.
@backyard,
DeleteAs Jeff says, Jews are a minority that have been persecuted for centuries (millennia, actually), so a few decades of tolerance don't change the wariness built up in that time. (Examples: thrown out of England, thrown out of Spain, ghettoized in Italy and elsewhere, pogroms in Russia, and the industrial killing programs of the Nazis, of course.)
We are wary of the tide turning and being the objects of discrimination again, so we vote for people who are genuinely open and tolerant, not Johnny-come-latelies. (Speaking in generalities here, which aren't true for all American Jews.)
Thanks for your interest, which seems genuine, and for dropping your lame arguments. Maybe Kylopod can expand on his comment "rooted in culture and religion."
Just to clarify, it was ModeratePoli who referred to country-club Republicanism. That is no doubt one source of Jewish distaste for the GOP; another, to which I referred, is the ostentatious evangelical Christianism. Prattling on about "wars on Christmas" and how awful things are for Christians in this country is not exactly a program of Jewish outreach.
DeleteAnd while I agree with the point about full integration -- I could see that happening too -- I'd be cautious about citing China as an example. IIRC, the opening to private investment had already occurred before 1989. Because parties can't form, there are no free elections and dissidents are thrown in jail, we don't actually know what sorts of political tensions have been building up since the Tiannamen crackdown. Maybe the anti-establishment energies have dissipated, or maybe the whole place is just gonna blow to pieces one of these days. What the LGBT experience in the West is currently demonstrating is the total impossibility of keeping the lid on forever. When regimes try to elect peoples instead of vice-versa, they eventually fail.
It seems like it's important to historicize and contextualize this however and speak specifically. You go from talking about Jews everywhere and throughout all history to then addressing American Jews, implicitly contemporary ones from the past couple generations. Most arguments here speak best to the particular political culture of contemporary American Jews. But there's nothing particularly inherently liberal about Jews. Their political center of gravity varies throughout different European countries, and let's even consider what sorts of politics different groups of Jews adopt in contemporary Israel. Likewise, Jews who immigrated to America throughout the early 20th-century were not necessarily liberal. Some were quite conservative and traditionalist; others were full-on anti-liberal Communists.
DeleteModeratePoli,
Delete"We are wary of the tide turning and being the objects of discrimination again, so we vote for people who are genuinely open and tolerant, not Johnny-come-latelies. (Speaking in generalities here, which aren't true for all American Jews.)"
It seems that the way that liberals express tolerance for small groups is to scorn large groups. Does it make sense to (as a fearful, visible minority) align with people who purposefully scorn the majority?
http://www.thenation.com/blog/rich-old-white-men-still-problem
@PF: you're right that it's much more specific. My understanding has always been that Jews fell as hard for Roosevelt as anyone else and harder -- what with, you know, his prominent role in defeating the people who were murdering their (the American Jews') cousins. I think a lot of Jews stayed Democratic through the sixties realignments in part just because of being so heavily concentrated outside the South and Interior West in the first place. I would not be surprised if the data suggested also that the strong attachment of mainstream Jewish leadership to people and groups advocating for African-Americans' civil rights kept a lot of Jews in the Democratic Party. Of course the increasing distance between the very Orthodox and the modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, &c., identified but unaffiliated, and marginally identified Jews (whew!) has surely played a part. At the Jewish day school I attended, partisan leanings seemed to be about half and half among the families, heavily Republican among the teachers of Jewish subjects, and heavily Democratic amongst the other teachers and the staff. And every year at the Seder some member of my mother's family is guarantees to joke: "why is this night different from all other nights? because on this night, we lean left!"
DeleteMore generally, the Democratic Party -- going back to Jefferson and Jackson -- has historically been the political vehicle of upwardly mobile groups, immigrants, and the not-yet-assimilated. For the most part, anyone who was either (a) lower or working class or (b) not White Anglo-Saxon Protestant was more likely, for most of American history, to align with Democrats than with Republicans. (The big but temporary exception was African-Americans; there, it was Republicans -- as defenders of northern manufacturing and "free labor" -- who led the war against the Slave Power, which put African-Americans in their camp for about a century. This was an anomaly which, in a sense, the 1960s realignment corrected.)
Deletebackyard, really, you can't do better than a Nation article from nearly four years ago? Look, nothing in that article "scorns the majority" -- it's an analysis of polling data -- and anyway, The Nation is not an organ of the Democratic Party: It's a vehicle for the left critique OF the Democratic Party. Seriously, do you think a political party that actually "scorned the majority" would ever win any elections? How would that even work?
Deletethe classicist,
DeleteThe FDR answer seems better than any of the alternatives... at least as a beginning. And because political values are mostly just downloaded from one's community, momentum could account for most of the rest.
Considering how much Jews shape the broader community, it's too bad that US public schools don't focus more of their teaching time on them instead of on Rosa Parks, et al. Most non-Jews are completely clueless about disparate Jewish contribution to US culture.
Jeff,
Delete"has historically been the political vehicle of upwardly mobile groups, immigrants, and the not-yet-assimilated."
This no longer applies to Jews, who are more powerful culturally, economically, and politically (relative to population) than any other group.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3592566,00.html
backyard, the issue is how assimilated they are. To the extent that any group still thinks of itself as that group, it hasn't entirely assimilated. Clearly lots of American Jews still self-identify as such -- in a way that, for instance, you would rarely hear people of British or German ancestry (my people) identify themselves as anything other than "American," or maybe "white" when they check a box on a census form.
DeleteJeff,
DeleteConcerning majority bashing: I'm referring to things like Dem response to the Tea Party and who the Tea Party are viewed as, lib media (90% Dem) coverage of the Tea Party, the policy prescriptions of libs and Dems especially as regards disparate impact lawsuits and how those tend to be aimed at white males, etc. Because Bernstein links to some of the worst lib/dem offenders, I can point to lots of the stuff later.
On assimilation: it sounds dreadful. Do non-Jewish whites have to adapt completely to minority norms before Jews feel (broadly) assimilated enough to vote Rep? Is there some element of diaspora culture that makes this impossible regardless of how much adaptation occurs?
backyard, the Tea Party is hardly a "majority." It's a group that politically criticizes others and is subject to being politically criticized in turn. That's life in a free country.
DeleteAgain, I'm not Jewish, and I don't know about diaspora culture in general (it probably depends on the diaspora in question, what caused it and how long ago it was, etc.), but I would think that if what you want is to make Jewish voters more comfortable voting Republican, it would be helpful if Republicans and those aligned with them -- Fox News, etc. -- gave some of the Christianist victimology and self-righteousness a rest.
@backyard, You really should be more specific about what you mean by "scorn the majority." The end of segregation scorned the majority in the states where segregation was practiced. Many Jews lauded that scorn of majority opinion in order to support the human rights of an oppressed minority.
DeleteOne thing to know about Jews: Every Passover, we say "We were slaves in Eqypt." That awareness of oppression at the hands of a powerful group remains palpable to many Jews, maybe even a large majority of American Jews. As I said before, a few good decades isn't going to wipe out that feeling. This is an important point that you seem to ignore or forget.
That awareness of oppression at the hands of a powerful group remains palpable to many Jews, maybe even a large majority of American Jews.
DeleteIt should be noted that Jewish conservatives often invoke this sense of oppression in justifying their right-wing beliefs. But that only goes to show that Jewish conservatism typically incorporates elements of left-wing thinking--which goes a long way in explaining neo-conservatism.
ModeratePoli, the Fox News crowd -- I don't know if that includes backyard or not -- has been told throughout the Obama years, if not longer, that they're the majority, the "real America" and so forth, and also that they're a horribly oppressed and victimized group. This awful oppression takes the form of right-wing views not being instantly embraced as the biblically revealed truths they so obviously are. The right is somehow supposed to be immune from criticism, which it has tried to redefine as "intolerance" because it got tired of the left seeming to monopolize that concept.
DeleteThus, if you criticize a group or proposal on the right, you are refusing to tolerate them, "scorning" those who should be recognized as speaking for the majority. Democratic presidents are therefore the most intolerant people around. Recall Rick Santorum's reinterpretation of JFK as having declared Christian beliefs politically off-limits. What Kennedy had said, of course, was that they shouldn't automatically prevail, that as president he wouldn't be taking marching orders from the Vatican. Santorum recast this as the idea that "only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case," in his words. If you don't automatically sign on to the Christian Right's agenda, you are trying to force Christianity itself into the closet, or maybe drive it into the sea. Likewise, calling for a return to Clinton-era tax rates isn't just refusing to accept millionaires' interests as everyone's interests, it's "attacking the wealthy" and so forth. Kind of a silly argumentative tactic that I don't think ultimately works very well, but perhaps it makes Fox News programming easier because it gives their hosts something new to get indignant about every day.
@Jeff, Your guess about what @backyard meant when he wrote "scorn the majority" is your plausible guess, but I really wanted to hear what he meant, not someone else. I still hope to hear from @backyard.
DeleteContrast Mourdock's position with what Richard Lugar said in his concession speech:
ReplyDelete"If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.
"This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise...
"Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc..."
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/may/08/text-sen-richard-lugars-two-primary-election-state/
Of course, those attitudes are partly why Lugar lost.
I think the loyalty of the LGBTQ community to the DEmocratic party is entirely dependent upon how long the Republican party insists on demonizing them, and how long it takes for full equality. Its still going to take a long push to get gay marriage accepted as legal nationwide, whether state-by-state or at the federal level. Up until then, the GOP will still be the party of the religious right, and the Democrats are now committed to a path of fully supporting marriage equality across the country. Even here in red Oklahoma, the Democratic party has an enthusiastic base of LGBTQ supporters. This is a long term Democratic constituency, thanks to the brave move by this President.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts on the politics of glbt folk, but I think the gay allegiance to the dems is overstated. In 2010, it seems 30% voted republican, and that has been trending that way for a while.
ReplyDeletehttp://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/blogs/upshot/exit-poll-nearly-third-gays-voted-gop.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us
I have a feeling the percentage will be even higher this year, unless romney picks someone like santorum or bachmann for vp.
Gay republicans are very very common in the glbt community. Please don't discount them. You can question why they even exist (like I do), but they're still there and growing in number.
My intuition is that among LGBTQ subgroups, gay men are by percentage more likely to vote and support Republicans, while LTQ are relatively less so. No idea about B's. (Does anyone know if there's data/research on this?)
DeleteI wonder if this is solely an artifact of the parties' larger differences on male vs female support, of if other considerations play into it. As you can see, I'm largely ignorant on the detailed history of LGBTQ political culture. I'm basically asking about what role internal divides within the LGBTQ community still play, and whether any of those divides reach the level of making one want to question whether we can assume LGBTQ is and will be a single Democratic/liberal bloc.
Relatedly: what to use? -- GLBT? LGBT? Include a Q? Is this pure convention or aesthetic preference? Is there an implicit politics to the different acronyms?
DeleteYes I think you are right about that... Of all the gay republicans I've met, none were woman. Besides being gay men, they're like any other white christian republican. That being said, there's still a stigma to being a gay republican in the lgbt community. Walk by an lcr or goproud booth at a gay event, and you'll probably hear a political argument or insults being thrown around.
DeletePart of it is because a group like the log cabin republicans has become a joke in recent years (goproud has always been a joke). They used to work to get lgbt-friendly republicans elected, but now they've become very partisan and only seem to get in the news when they release a statement critical of any pro-lgbt policies or laws enacted by democrats. It's the refusal to aknowledge the dems' successes and the willingness to ignore the republicans' hostility towards civil rights that has givin them a bad reputation in some gay communities.
But their numbers keep growing, probably because some people would rather vote for a fiscal conservative over someone who might support their rights. Some gay men just don't care about marriage or adoption rights, so they don't mind if the person they vote for doesn't care either.
As for the acronym conundrum, I don't even keep up with that anymore. I usually use lgbt or just say gay folk. I stopped paying attention to the politics of it after people started using QUILTBAG, which is the most ridiculous acronym ever invented.
Be very skeptical of polls which show a significant number of gay voters going for GOP candidates. In some of those races in the South, BOTH SIDES were just as bad. In other cases, the Dem candidate was doomed anyway (again, mostly in the South).
DeleteAny gay person who does not remember three decades, no, four, of GOP opposition and votes for them is, well, a stupid gay person.
Interesting thoughts on the politics of glbt folk, but I think the gay allegiance to the dems is overstated. In 2010, it seems 30% voted republican, and that has been trending that way for a while.
ReplyDeletehttp://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/blogs/upshot/exit-poll-nearly-third-gays-voted-gop.html?orig_host_hdr=news.yahoo.com&.intl=us&.lang=en-us
I have a feeling the percentage will be even higher this year, unless romney picks someone like santorum or bachmann for vp.
Gay republicans are very very common in the glbt community. Please don't discount them. You can question why they even exist (like I do), but they're still there and growing in number.
Good stuff from Andrew Sullivan this morning on gay Republicans' reaction to Obama:
ReplyDeletehttp://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/log-cabin-and-goproud-wtf.html
Yes, they do seem a bit "lost," as he delicately puts it.
It all depends on what children get from their parents, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteAfrican Americans, Jews and GLBT are all primarily urban and/or coastal. Mormans, in general, tend to be more suburban or rural - Utah. As long as gays tend to be urban they'll continue to vote Democrat, since Democratic policies tend to cater to what urban and/or coastal voters want.
ReplyDelete