Gay Voters' Support For Republicans Doubled From 2008

[LostInAnomie]

WASHINGTON -- Republicans made significant inroads among gay and lesbian voters in the midterm elections, with national exit polls for the House races showing that the GOP captured 31 percent of the vote of this group this year, compared to 19 percent in 2008.

The change from the last midterm elections in 2006 was not quite as large but an increase nevertheless. In 2006, 24 percent supported Republicans. Democrats' share of the gay vote rose from 75 percent in 2006 to 80 percent in 2008 and then dropped to 68 percent in 2010. Each year, approximately 3 percent of voters identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

More conservatives have been speaking out in favor of gay rights as the issue becomes more mainstream amongst the general public, and Republicans perhaps sense some vulnerability and dissatisfaction with Democrats.

The Log Cabin Republicans have also been taking on a more visible role, bringing the suit arguing that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is unconstitutional. R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, is proud of the fact that 12 of the 17 candidates the group endorsed went on to win their races. He said he believes that the reason Republicans performed better with the gay community in this election is because of the focus on the economy rather than social issues.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/05/gay-voters-republicans-doubled-2008_n_779111.html

Good thinking. I'm sure they'll get what they're looking for from the teabaggers and other nutjobs they just helped elect.

[RZM]

1. Interesting

I agree with the argument that the backing off on social issues played a role. People will campaign on what benefits them most. This year, that was the economy and jobs. Social issues weren't needed so they weren't used much. Also, it's important to remember that one's sexuality isn't the sum total of their identity and issues regarding that aren't the only things they care about. Certainly some people think that way, but not everybody. People of all political stripes often forget that LGBT folk are regular people too.

[Leopolds Ghost]

65. People also forget many LGBT folk in the inner city are quite hostile to, e.g. Black electorate.

And the poor. And issues of social justice.

Really, many people (gay and straight) got involved in the Democratic Party because of bedroom rights issues, period. They will be budding Reaganites on many other issues, the next time a Reagan rolls around because they have no love for the poor or people not like them. That's why it's so hard to strike up a conversation about social justice on your average "urban progressive" blog.

They are pocketbook voters who want less crime, higher property values, and fewer minorities in their district, JUST LIKE the wealthy DINK couple next door.

Don't believe me? Look at the DC mayor's race this year... or support for Gavin Newsom.

[RZM]

85. Oh I absolutely believe you

Entire policy packages are often not palatable to people as a whole, including the progressive one. People like to pick and choose and depending on the relative weight they put on each issue, they vote accordingly.

[Ninga]

2. Just add in the votes for "others", the stay-at-homes, all of which could have been

the difference in close races.

Robert Parry wrote that "protest" votes are destructive and never work.

My problem is that I care too much. I have a hard time moving on and living with Tuesday's results. The voting turn out of this country is pathetic.

It took the Dem's 10 years to rebuild after the 1994 election. It took 6 years to recover from the stunning robbery of 2000 and finally in 2006 and 2008 we started to gain, and now, we are back to the beginning.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. Anybody can, at times, vote against their own interests.

Or maybe they were just sending a message.

[DURHAM D]

4. We don't expect to get much from anyone.

After all, we haven't gotten much for 40 years of FUNDING and voting for the Democrats.

[emulatorloo]

6. In Iowa the Republicans are trying to get rid of Gay Marriage. The Democratic Leader of the Senate

has said "NO WAY".

While we lost the House. we still have the Senate, and he will not allow ANY anti-gay marriage legislation to come to the floor.

[Pisces]

12. The 3 judges that helped pass gay marriage were voted out. This

does not bode well for gay rights.

[emulatorloo]

53. The "Recall Campaign" was a >Republican< effort, funded with outside Republican Money

It was not a Democratic effort.

Once again, the Democratic Senate leader has vowed that no Republlican anti-gay marriage will come up for a vote.

[Orsino]

90. We might not have the courage to be pro-marriage...

...but we sure can bring the anti-anti-marriage outrage.

[VMI Dem]

5. Democratic disdain for the GLBT community doubled in the past 2 months.

Example: this thread.

[emulatorloo]

7. See my post #6

[VMI Dem]

9. Commendable. See the appeal of the DADT ruling.

[DURHAM D]

13. Apparently some members of the LGBT community are trying to break out of -

the battered housewife syndrome.

[LostInAnomie]

37. Is the cure for battered housewife syndrome running directly to a wife punching machine?

[DURHAM D]

40. No - its getting away from the perp. nt

[LostInAnomie]

42. Yeah, using your analogy...

... it's running from the perp to a housewife punching machine, or maybe another abusive husband with a black belt.

Either way, it's not very smart.

[DURHAM D]

43. Wrong - its going to a safe/neutral place.

Withdrawing support is a smart strategy.

I am really sick and tired of people like you telling people like us what "is good for us".

[LostInAnomie]

46. So the Republican Party is a safe neutral place?

The party that wants a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage? The party that thinks homosexuality is a lifestyle choice? The party that wants to keep homosexuals from teaching in public schools? The party whose base thinks homosexuals are deservingly going to Hell?

That's the safe and neutral place? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[DURHAM D]

61. You are a colossal ass. nt

[Duncan Grant]

73. That argument doesn't get any traction anymore.

You aren't the least bit familiar with LGBT social and economic justice issues. You offer nothing substantive and put nothing on the line in the name of equality.

And in return, there are plenty of LGBT people who feel they owe you nothing. If you play your cards right, you can join us down here in the blood and the mud -- just keep mocking us.

If, on the other hand, you care to pursue a strategy of cooperation and reciprocity, just say so.

[Bluebear]

91. God forbid we ask the party to satisfy one of their constituencies. Instead, blame "the homosexuals"

[Duncan Grant]

76. That argument doesn't get any traction anymore.

You aren't the least bit familiar with LGBT social and economic justice issues. You offer nothing substantive and put nothing on the line in the name of equality.

And in return, there are plenty of LGBT people who feel they owe you nothing. If you play your cards right, you can join us down here in the blood and the mud -- just keep mocking us.

If, on the other hand, you care to pursue a strategy of cooperation and reciprocity, just say so.

[Duncan Grant]

77. That argument doesn't get any traction anymore.

You aren't the least bit familiar with LGBT social and economic justice issues. You offer nothing substantive and put nothing on the line in the name of equality.

And in return, there are plenty of LGBT people who feel they owe you nothing. If you play your cards right, you can join us down here in the blood and the mud -- just keep mocking us.

If, on the other hand, you care to pursue a strategy of cooperation and reciprocity, just say so.

[Aramchek]

10. do you deny the statistics? why would gays vote for their enemy?

[VMI Dem]

14. Why would a constitutional scholar oppose gay marriage?

:shrug:

Mysteries of the universe.

[Aramchek]

29. His religion. He doesn't oppose equal legal rights, just calling it 'marriage'

So at least his stance has some explanation. Even though I don't agree with it.

You gave me no reason why gays would vote for a party that absolutely hates them.
A Party that would like to see them vanish.

[VMI Dem]

30. Maybe they are just saying they did that. To get votes.

[Aramchek]

38. are you saying Repukes are faking their hatred of homosexuals just to get votes??

[Leopolds Ghost]

69. The whole marriage argument was considered silly by 60s left, was considered silly 15 yrs ago

Naturally you will disagree and assert the gov't needs to define a good citizen's obligation to get married just like it needs to define a citizen's obligation to purchase a house with a yard and two cars (electric) and purchase health insurance from a private provider, all of which will only further demolish the traditional Democratic argument about bringing together people of various classes, but...

Anyone asserting the "right to marriage" is asserting the "right to engage in a cultural/religious ceremony". People who do not believe in a religion that endorses marriage have no business claiming a "right to engage in it" any more than I can claim a right to be bar-mitzvahed. The government needs to get out of marriage, period. Ever heard of "common law marriage"? That's right.

Civil Unions ARE an acceptable solution, ESPECIALLY if you believe the gov't has no business defining marriage. Marriage, like personal property and civil rights, is a cultural/religious concept that the government does not get to define or redefine. If someone is gay and wants to get married, that's what common-law partnership is for. Or they can join a church that recognizes such unions as marriage.

Funny how a lot of folks feel there is a "universal right to have one's marriage recognized by gov't, and by the church" but do not feel there is a universal right to food and housing, or to fair treatment of lower income consumers, or to freedom from coercion by private business interests such as insurance companies, or to public housing and public hospitals, or other social justice issues. It's called voting for one's own interests parimarily and only secondarily caring about anyone else's.

The fact that only 68% of LGBT's voted Dem is a positive sign since it means the country is getting away from lumping right-wingers who happen to be gay in with the "progressive wing of the Democratic Party" just like we are finally getting away from lumping right-wing politicians who happen to be Democrats in with the Democratic Party.

Is Pelosi and her affluent voting base progressive? Don't forget she ran AGAINST the left to get elected. See this is the problem with why people don't understand the real reason people like Pelosi are a lightning rod... they represent the idea that liberalism is an ideology of the upper class.

[Warren DeMontague]

72. No one is arguing for a "universal right to have one's marriage recognized by the church". That's a

deliberate conflation.

The fact is, like it or not, Marriage IS a civil, governmental institution. You want to take the word "marriage" out of the licenses issued by city hall- good fucking luck. Sorry, no. You don't convince millions of heterosexuals to support equality by telling them you're going to take something away from them.

And we are already perfectly capable of holding the two, entirely separate concepts in our heads- legal marriage and religious marriage- when it comes to heterosexuals. For instance, Atheist heterosexuals (such as myself) are fully capable of getting legally "married".. That doesn't mean I have a "universal right to have my marriage recognized" by, say, The Catholic Church. I don't give a shit, and I'm sure they feel the same way about me. Similarly, Catholics aren't supposed to get divorced; divorced people can't get "married" by the Catholic Church, but they can get legally married.

Conversely, many religions (or maybe they're not ...."real"... religions? :rofl:) already marry GLBT people. Yet those marriages are not recognized by the state.

See what I mean? The two concepts are already separate, and arguing "let's just drop the marriage word entirely" is both a sop to the bigots, and also a loser of an argument, because no one is every going to be able to sell "rather than letting the gays get married, we'll just say you can't, also" as a political point.

[Leopolds Ghost]

74. dp n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

75. dp n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

78. The gov't has no business "licensing" marriage either way. Marriage is a cultural ceremony.

A license exists for three purposes: to encourage or discourage certain behavior, to keep track of the citizenry, or to tax the citizenry. Usually all three at once.

Insisting on the "right to marriage" from an atheist standpoint suggests you believe the government should regulate our private lives, since one has no cultural or religious reason for believing in the concept of marriage. A rational person would note that humans are, for all intents and purposes, just like every other mammal that is mostly, albeit temporarily, monogamous. I happen to be religious but I have no problem with religions that endorse gay marriage. There are religions that endorse burying people above ground, and religions with various definitions of marriage itself, none of which the gov't has any right to declare correct (although some concepts are obviously barbaric, such as marriage without consent and can be ruled out on those grounds, but that is a case of exclusion, not definition.) I do not see the fucking point of endorsing marriage if one has no CULTURAL reason to do so (i.e. "I am Greek, so I got married in a Greek ceremony; I am Catholic so I believe in the rite of marriage") otherwise it is just people putting on airs. I DO have a problem with progressives who claim a civil ceremony is not real until it is endorsed by the fucking STATE. The government is a tool of the people, not the other way round. If someone owns a hat, that is a personal posession. They own it even if the government collapses. (the reason I am left-libertarian is precisely because more elaborate property rights are not native, and are artificial constructions of the state, not of the society or culture or personal religious belief). Same thing with marriage as a "civil institution". It is civil only insofar as it is common-law and therefore should not be legislated. I have a common-law right to walk down the street unmolested, yet in jurisdictions that do not believe in common-law, the legislature claims the right to tweak that right, like California just did with their vagrancy laws. Marriage is the same way. If a person gets married on the high seas, that is a common law marriage.

If it were possible to redefine marriage by legislative fiat, then it would be possible for RWers to do the same, I might add. And they would.

Hell, there are some "progressives" who will claim HCR as a precedent for asserting that the "right to financial security" means citizens should be penalized for not purchasing certain goods and services, such as privatized health insurance, privatized social security accounts, etc.

[Leopolds Ghost]

80. To refine my point: A common-law marriage ought to mean you can prove in court a ceremony was held

And that you are still living together, consentually.

It could be a religious or secular ceremony. None of which requires monitoring, tracking, defining what a citizen can and can't do, making value judgements about what is and is not marriage, a cultural institution that people feel very zealous about in their own respective cultures.

The gov't wants to license EVERYTHING in our LIVES.

Were it not for the 1st Amendment we'd be like Europe, where they license minarets and women wearing veils in an effort to "enforce secularism" (hmm yeah...)

[Warren DeMontague]

84. Why should you need to prove that a ceremony was held?

Actually, for a legal marriage license in many states, you don't. You just need to go to the county clerk and fill out some forms.

I'm not sure where the paranoia is coming from about government wanting to LICENSE everything in our LIVES but I'm sure the cost and difficulty of, say, going fishing isn't going to change measurably just because gays and lesbians can get that same marriage license from the county clerk.

[Warren DeMontague]

83. You're not listening.

"one has no cultural or religious reason for believing in the concept of marriage." - says you.

I don't know why you're digressing into a biology lecture about mammals. You are just as much a mammal as any atheist, and as such, just as subject to the vagaries of whatever aspects of our sexual or personal proclivities may be hard-wired. It's not relevant to the argument, and you certainly don't get to issue edicts or fatwas that it has to be relevant to me because I am an athiest.

Let me put it simply, again: Marriage is a civil, legal institution. Wholly separate from religious marriage, although there is often overlap. A little Korzybyski might do you some good, you seem awfully hung up on being totally unable to distinguish Marriage(1) from Marriage(2), and so on...

You are issuing a lot of lectures to me about what I am supposed to think, or believe, or how I am "putting on airs" for being married, of all fucking things. :rofl:

"I DO have a problem with progressives who claim a civil ceremony is not real until it is endorsed by the fucking STATE." -okay, what the fuck are you talking about? "Real"? What's "Real"? If the ceremony happens, it's "real". If someone claims to be the head of the church of flibbersnatz and declares themselves "really" Pope, it's "real". Who is saying whose marriage isn't real? I'm sorry, I don't get what you're upset about, here. Gays and Lesbians have as much right to the civil, legal institution of marriage as any of us. So do we Atheists. Who is saying something isn't "real", though?

Other people here have made in a more cogent fashion the same argument that government should get out of the marriage business, and perhaps there is some merit to it- maybe we should treat all property, inheritance, tax relationships as interchangeable, or voluntary, or.. fuck. But here in the real world, not only are we not about to enter a world where either 1) no one can leave property to their spouse without it being taxed as a business transaction or 2) Everyone can exchange property with everyone else, under any circumstances, entirely free of tax ramifications, because to do so differently would amount to government "favoring certain types of relationships" i.e. families..

Like I said, here in the real world, Marriage IS a civil, legal institution, and the fair and right thing to do is extend it -with the dreaded "M" word- to our GLBT citizens.

As for your last paragraph, you sure like those quotes. Bottom line is, in a civilized, non-anarchic society (and I consider myself a left-libertarian, too), there are responsibilities that go along with being a member of the civic body. You seem fixated on the mandate in the HCR bill, so let's have at that one. I, like many others here, support a SPHC system as the ideal. But that, too, contains a "mandate", everyone buys into the system via taxes. To be fixated upon the mandate at this point in the game is just fucking goofy. Since we didn't get rid of the Insurance Industry, there HAS TO be a mandate. It wouldn't work without one. We should have had a public option, hell, we should have had a debate on Single Payer, but you're still not going to have the basic, long-overdue reforms like ending denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions WITHOUT a mandate.

[emulatorloo]

54. Has Obama actively campaigned against states that have gay marriage? No

There are many states now that have equal marriage rights.

[LostInAnomie]

26. Sorry you can't handle stats.

But, if people are voting in a way that deserves disdain, it should be pointed out.

[VMI Dem]

27. Maybe they are just saying that to get votes?

:rofl:

[Catherina]

8. Getting nothing from the Democrats and nothing from the Republicans

makes that campaign issue a wash. What is it you can't understand?

[VMI Dem]

11. Just wanted to say gays will get what they deserve.

Just puttin' that out there it seems.

[Catherina]

16. I don't quite understand?

My post was to the OP but I still don't understand what you just wrote. The Gays or the Dems? I could be too tired to understand right now.

[VMI Dem]

17. The OP was just trying to get that message out there.

The gays are going to get what they deserve.

[Catherina]

20. Yes. It's seems to be the message du jour. Popping up all over in various forms.

Where's Dsc's thread that this would happen where usual suspects crawled out pretending no such thing was in the works?

[QC]

25. Yes, popping up all over the place. But it's purely coincidental. n/t

[dsc]

87. yeah and not one apology yet

I was called a delusional liar by half of the people who posted in that thread.

[LostInAnomie]

34. Bullshit

Sorry a few people on here can't handle facts and statistics, but if 1/3 of gay voters are voting for a party to actively seeks out opportunities to undermine them or viscerally hates them it is worth noting.

I guess Huffington Post was trying to get out an anti-gay message too, huh?

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[VMI Dem]

22. See appeal of DADT ruling.

Whose interest was that in?

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[VMI Dem]

32. Whoa. You are really angry at teh gays.

:scared:

[Egnever]

35. Hide behind that all you want

Its typical. I am mad at idiots who think the parties are somehow equal on gay rights.

Do you fit into that category?

[ampad]

39. Sad

That you could not even answer the question. Just revert to accusing the poster of being mad at gay people. What next? You gonna call him/her homophobic?

[Ignis]

50. Sad that the poster didn't respond to a Deleted Message?

Well...OK.

:freak:

[LostInAnomie]

56. It was up for quite awhile and was a pretty "iffy" delete.

[Bluebear]

62. WOW

[LostInAnomie]

28. What can't I understand? How some gays can vote for a party that thinks...

... their sexuality is a "lifestyle choice" or that all they need is re-education to become straight.

Feel free to play apologist for them though.

[Catherina]

58. Talking about Valerie Jarrett, Obama's Sr Advisor and second brain are you?

The one who slipped up and revealed just what the Administration thinks? I totally agree. Thanks for making my point so well.

You have no idea how silly you sound. Feel free to whatever it is you're trying to do.

[Bluebear]

92. You said it.

[joeybee12]

15. Just what we need...ANOTHER thread on this...nt

[Catherina]

18. Kind of hard to have a scapegoat if they don't advertise who it is n/t

[DURHAM D]

24. Exactly -

women were blamed for the Black Plague and it is obviously still working.

[OregonBlue]

19. I'm sure that's gonna work out well for them in the long run.

[NJmaverick]

23. This is terrible

[Unvanguard]

33. Support for the Democrats has fallen among every group.

In and of itself, this is not necessarily particularly telling.

[LeftinOH]

36. Consider the choices:

Vote Republican: A party which (apart from a few 'outsider' politicians) has NO interest in supporting the LGBT community, and whose leaders are openly hostile to said community. In addition, there is not the slightest chance that the party on a national level will roll out the welcome mat.

Vote Democratic: A party which has varying degrees of interest (depending on the region and the politician), and from which there exists a glimmer of hope for change (depending on the election year).

Those are the choices at the moment, so I'll still vote Democratic.

[ampad]

41. Stats sitting right there for all to see

Funny because after the prop 8 mess in California many here on DU could not wait to point out the demographics......

[FreeState]

48. And both stats are statistically meaningless - 3% MOE in the exit poll

3% were gay in the poll. The poll has a margin of error of 3% any data drawn from it has such a high margin of error its meaningless - still wont stop the press and people here from posting it over an over again (just like with the Prop 8 exit poll that had too small a sample to gather anything from it.)

[Name removed]

60. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Plantaganet]

44. To Summarize -

a. Obama spending the past two years attempting to work with and build consensus with Republicans - brilliant.

b. Gays who hold essentially conservative viewpoints trying to make inroads into the Republican party - stupid.

You can't have it both ways, folks.

[Bluenorthwest]

45. The majority of heterosexual white people are Republican

Why are your people like that? What's wrong with you? If the straight community could manage to vote for Democrats at the rate the gay community did on Tuesday, we'd have nothing but wins across the nation. If these dubious polls are correct, the GLBT Democratic voting rate was still around 68%. What was the percentage in the straight community? How about the straight white males?

[LostInAnomie]

47. Gee, that's something to think about while I enjoy my equal rights...

... ability to marry who I choose, and serve in the military if I choose.

I wonder how soon the 1/3 of homosexuals that voted for the Repukes will get all that if they keep voting for Repukes.

[VMI Dem]

51. They would be able to serve in the military if the President had not appealed.

Blows big old holes in that reasoning.

[LostInAnomie]

55. Nope, I'll still have all my rights, and no party is actively campaigning on keeping them from me.

Can gays say the same?

[VMI Dem]

57. No. They can say that both are. Congrats on your rights.

Like to twist that one in, don't you?

[Bluebear]

63. !

[LostInAnomie]

67. Have you not been paying attention at all for the past 10 years?

Dems aren't the ones wanting an amendment banning gay marriage. They aren't the ones wanting to ban gay teachers from public schools. They aren't the ones claiming homosexuals are in need of reeducation or need to be cured. The Republicans are guilty of all that and more.

Only a hyperbolic fool would try to equate the two.

[Bluenorthwest]

52. It is not something I support, but the fact is the straight community

votes more heavily Republican by far, treating an individual as if they were a facet of themselves or a reflection of others is foul to me, and the fact is that the ability to marry whom I wish to marry is opposed by most Democrats, including the President, rather vocally, the Vice President, Chairman Kaine, and on and on and on. When you have to include on our list of goodies that which is not really there, you know you are reaching for something, but what?
While there is very little written history on the subject, the fact of the matter is that the Democratic Party used to be even less tolerant than the GOP. Back in the bad old days, the Republicans would wink and nod as they did with other things that needed to be sub rosa, while the Democratic Party actively refused and purged gay people. Sorry about these facts, but they are true. Liberal gay people simply ignored politics for ages on the Party level. Some who had need of political influence had no choice but to be Republicans. The history of the Democratic Party in support of GLBT issues is not even as long as my lifetime. It started kicking in when I was a teen. To pretend that Bill Clinton was not the first Democratic nominee to mention the GLBT community in any way is to deny the reality. The roots are not as deep as we would like to think. Historically, local and state governments were just as vicious under Democrats as under Republicans, if not worse. So this pedestal upon which you place our Party is not really deserved. What progress has been made inside the Party has to be credited to the GLBT Democrats who worked so hard for that progress. But the Party will not be forgotten for stepping up a bit, at long last and under great moral duress, in the very recent 80's. Hence the staggeringly high 68% Democratic support.
As Democrats, our first objective should be to regain and retain the lost voters. That should be job one. Same goes for the even higher percentage of straight people who switched back. We need them to vote Democratic again. To do that, we need to understand what is going on with voters in general.

[kenny blankenship]

88. They can expect to get them at the same rate they are getting them from Democrats.

Who knows? Maybe it's much better strategy for gays to shop around for a political party, since allegiance to one seems to mean they are taken for granted and ignored. DADT was halted by a lawsuit brought by a gay Republican group. A Democratic Administration is appealing the decision and has successfully reinstated DADT. You can't argue that Democrats are the only hope for gays anymore.

What YOU should be learning from all this is when you fail to deliver on years of promises of assistance, you WILL lose support. People will lose interest and some people will say if you aren't doing anything for me, after all these years, maybe I should just vote my own narrow economic interest? Don't think you can just command people to vote for you because in your mind you represent all that is just and right. You aren't entitled to a vote from anyone.

THIS WILL NOT BE LIMITED TO GAYS. It has already happened with working class voters who feel the Democrats don't really care about them, so some of them just vote for the side that promises to lower their taxes. They face an economic regime where people of their class are doomed to no growth in income, a paralysis which Democrats seem to endorse as a dictated outcome of global free market-ism just as blithely as Republicans. It's no wonder then that many workers respond to a message that lowering taxes is their only hope for a better tomorrow. Neither party offers a better tomorrow with higher income, but one promises to take less money away from them. And other groups will wander off as well, if taken for granted. Fail to intervene and help them, when you have the power to help, and you can kiss 'em all goodbye, one by one.

[ecstatic]

49. More whites voted republican

so it follows that the larger number includes white gays.

[Leopolds Ghost]

71. Look at the DC mayor's race. Where are all the avid LGBT communities?

Lily-white districts. Where are the attempts at bridge building? At saying "no" to playing patsy to the right wing business interests in the urban Democratic party?

What did the white district candidates endorse? Neoliberal right-wing policies to disenfranchise the black underclass.

I'm semi-active in the local community and sadly I don't get a whiff of anything but disdain for populist movements to side with working-class folks in the DC area among local progressives aka white liberal community.

I told a couple friends we need a "tea party" on the left and they said "working class populism is what's WRONG with the country" and "you're obviously more conservative than I" because they felt educated people would always come out on top so uneducated people are the problem, apparently. Of course, this means the more people get educated and well-off, the worse they will treat the remaining underclass who are still acceptable targets for discrimination.

It's not like it used to be: the LGBT community used to be quite hostile to those same neoliberal politicians. Now a lot of those folks are more concerned about property values.

I'm sure it pisses people off to say this. But I am getting sick and tired of hearing how this or that single-issue voter got tossed aside by a regime (D/R) that has NO respect for social-justice, period, and many of those single-issue voters have not displayed any interest in the big picture, have been willing to throw OTHER issues under the bus for years in hopes of getting that one or two issues.

[Bluebear]

59. Yeah. "they" just aren't good thinkers.

:silly:

[LostInAnomie]

64. Doesn't appear "they" are.

"They" meaning the 1/3 of homosexuals dumb enough to vote for Republicans.

[Bluebear]

66. Of course, homosexuals. Sorry for not being clinical.

[LostInAnomie]

68. Meh...

I'm not the one hung up on words.

[Ted_White]

70. This is not surprising. The Democrats have been a huge let down for the GLBT community.

[paulflorez]

79. We did get the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act

Kinda felt like peanuts, but at the same time considering the torturing of gay teens and adult in NYC and the bullying I'm glad that we at least have that.

But the big three things we were hoping for were a repeal of DADT, ENDA, and a repeal of DOMA. I think just getting one of those done in the roughly 2 years before the election would have been enough. It didn't even have to be DOMA, the most difficult, it could have been repealing DADT which was overwhelmingly popular, or ENDA which was also popular without requiring a "study" before passing.

Why didn't the Dems put a straight up or down vote on DADT, instead of lumping it together and making the whole thing a poison pill that would never pass? My guess is to get Latinos energized (DREAM Act) and LGBT people angry at the GOP for filibustering it. It may have energized Latinos, although I think all the anti-Latino Republican/Tea Party hate did a good job of that, and Latinos did appear to save Harry Reid and every California Democratic state candidate's skin. But, it really upset me. Here we have an overwhelmingly popular issue that could have been passed because Collins supported it, repealing DADT, and the Dems played politics with it instead.

I guarantee you that if Dems passed a repeal of DADT that LGBT voters would have been energized and swayed their way. Maybe that's not enough for the Dems though, since LGBT is such a small group and concentrated in states that Dems had good chances of keeping anyways.

I'm in California so it was easy for me to vote a straight Dem ticket because Boxer is a supporter of LGBT equal rights, Brown did not defend Prop 8 and Harris will also refuse to defend it. Screw Whitman, Fiorina and Cooley.

But Schwarzenegger did not defend Prop 8 either, my Republican mayor came out against Prop 8 in support of his daughter who is a lesbian to the ire of the national Republican party, and it's the Log Cabin Republicans who are actually fighting DADT.

But National Republicans are still unpalatable. Had I lived in Nevada I would have voted for Reid just to keep Angle out, but I would have had to clothespin my nose shut to do so. Really disappointed that he just didn't up or down vote DADT.

[Name removed]

81. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Duncan Grant]

82. Dup.

[dsc]

86. 19 times 2 is 38, your headline is off by a factor of 1.5

[LostInAnomie]

89. Blame Huffington Post

I just reposted it.

[PurityOfEssence]

93. There's a tendency among the left to credit minorities and the downtrodden with moral superiority

It shouldn't be a surprise that selfishness is an equal opportunity affliction.

[Bluebear]

94. A post laden with essence, none of it pure