How Sex Rocks (The Vote)

[Philostopher]

How Sex Rocks the Vote

(Ann Geske, Utne reader intern)
September/October 2003 Utne Reader

For 70 years, divisions in American politics broke along economic lines. Generally speaking, blue-collar workers voted Democrat; white-collar workers voted Republican. But today there is a more reliable predictor of people's political allegiances than their pocketbooks: where they stand on sexual issues.

Dick Morris and Mark Penn, advisers to Bill Clinton during the 1996 election campaign, came up with a polling technique that produced consistent results: The more liberal a person was on sexual attitudes, the more likely the person was to vote Democrat. Conversely, the likelihood a person would vote Republican rose in direct proportion to how conservative his or her attitudes were toward sex.

A map showing percentages of adult movies in the home-video market by state "bore an eerie resemblance" to the 2000 election results, remarked former Delaware governor Pete du Pont in a recent Wall Street Journal Web site column ...

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http://www.utne.com/pub/2003_119/promo/10799-1.html

An article that appears in the September/October Utne Reader, written by an Utne intern. Very interesting -- and it answers the question many DUers ask about people like Dick Santorum: "Why now?" This is why, and why now -- because it's been shown that being nasty to people who don't 'follow the script' appeases, or even galvanizes, conservative voters. It's a knee-jerk reaction -- it's why there's so much homophobia spewing out of their mouths, and why so many of them you know damned well don't believe it sounds so prim and prissy about things like adultery and infidelity. It's probably why they went to such extremes to tag Bill Clinton with some kind of sex scandal. Because it pleases wingnuts, especially the fundie ones.

[bloom]

1. I don't think it's a sex thing as much as morality in general

For instance - I am open to people believing in whatever religion thy want or none. I was shocked to hear the principal of the high school in the small town we used to live in say something like "Hindus were on the same side as the devil" or some such rot.


"they now pit voters who believe in a fixed and universal morality against those who see moral issues, especially sexual ones, as elastic and subject to personal choice."

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