Shortly after the passage of Prop 8 an exit poll showed support among African-American voters to be at 70%. I don’t remember the exact sample size, but I remember noticing at the time that the sample size was so small that the 70% figure was not going to be realistic. So now a gay rights group has sponsored a bigger study and found that support among African-Americans for Prop 8 was “only” 58% and concludes that the ethnic differences in votes were “more narrow” than previously reported and “do not merit the amount of attention that they received.” This is being reported by the Sac Bee as proof that support among African-American and Latino voters was not significantly different from other groups when adjusted for other factors such as frequency of church attendance and age. http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/capitolalertlatest/018318.html#discovery
Hmmm.
Numbers don’t lie, but sometimes people lie about numbers. The study shows that Prop 8 failed among White and Asian voters with 48-49% yes votes, but passed among African-American and Latino votes with 58-59% yes votes. That is still a huge difference. Frequent church attendance was a better predictor of Prop 8 voting (70% yes for weekly church attenders, less than 50% yes for every other group), but the ‘correction’ for this factor is only a confirmation that proportionately more Latino and African-American voters are weekly church attenders.
Where the researchers throw a bone to their gay-rights sponsors is in noticing the trend toward support of gay marriage by comparing 2008’s Prop 8 with 2000’s Prop 22 (a drop in opposition to gay marriage from 61% to 52%). This coincides with the age factor with Prop 8, where voters over 65 were 67% yes voters, and every age group under 65 were less than 50% yes voters. Taking the trends together makes it clear that gay marriage will be the law in this state in the near future, with or without the correct ruling from the State Supreme Court.
But the broader political ramifications of the split-ticket among minority voters (Obama vs. Prop 8) is still enormous. It means that minority voters have a stronger affinity with their churches than with their political party on social issues, and it points to a survival strategy for the GOP as the GOP base of protestant white suburban management types becomes an ever-shrinking minority in 21st Century California.
Obviously religious people didn’t look at this as a discrimination issue but as a religious issue.
I still propose that the solution then is to take the state out of this religious issue. Stop issuing marriage licenses – what good does that do anyway? Its a certificate that allows the government to tax you at a higher rate than single people living together. Stop the marriage tax penalty too.
Erase all the barriers in the law to unmarried people, all those that give any kind of discriminatory preference to people who have a marriage license. Remove the word marriage from the law books and add a clause to the civil rights act that allows religious people to refuse service to anyone for any reason.
Why do we continue to beat our heads against the wall on issue like this that divide Americans instead of uniting them? Oh I know – it wins elections.
Amazing how much time and money people are willing to spend over how the state uses a word.
But after the marriage issue is behind us there’s still the bigger picture of how the GOP expands into minority demographics. My preference would be to go to chamber of commerce meetings and find the business people and young people who agree that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and limited government leads to prosperity. But what do I know? Maybe somebody will now go to the churches and rant that Dems are pointy-headed elitists who hate the Lord. It worked in the South.
Anonyms-
Very intelligent argument, hats off to you for putting a little good sense out there.
Ron, you might want to go back to the GOP and get them to come out against greed and corruption in business. Minorities are not going to believe a word of what you say. After this past 8 years and the financial meltdown that you presided over.
Some in the minority community will go along to gain influence out of greed but nobody thinks that anyone in the GOP has America or its best interests at heart. All they are interested in is making money, manipulating the religious people, and screwing working men and women. So why should minorities believe in anything the GOP says?
Ron St. John sums it up perfectly:
“…….There’s still the bigger picture of how the GOP expands into minority demographics”
Karl Rove or Adolf Hitler could’nt have said it better, or with more truth!
The real reason No on 8 lost was poor political management. The supporters viewed it as a lifestyle issue while the oppositon attacked it politically, gathering the money machine religious groups behind it. It was well done, but poor intentioned.
Anon,
You’re on to something with respect to business abuses. Its important for the GOP to clean up its own act and implement some principled commitment to free markets as opposed to the cronyism and welfare for the rich that seems to have infected it lately.
You have me mistaken for someone else if you think I “presided” over anything over the last eight years. I was against Bush’s No Child Left Behind, energy subsidies, farm subsidies, lack of open bidding on Katrina projects, expansion of prescription drug benefits, the stimulus package — not much of what has happened lately looks like me presiding over anything.
I’m not sure I get 2xjohn’s reference to Rove or Hitler, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been insulted. Hitler was a socialist who suspended elections and tried to exterminate minorities. I’m a capitalist who is brainstorming about how the Republican Party can get more minority votes. I’m usually pretty well tuned in to irony and sarcasm, but I’m missing something on this one.