New survey suggests decline has strong correlation between Christian nationalism and opposition to inclusive policies
Public support for same-sex marriage and nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans has fallen, even as the overall share remains high, according to new findings by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute.
Broad majorities of Americans, regardless of political party or faith, continue to support LGBTQ+ rights and protections, the analysis found. But after years of rising public support, the decline is notable, said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the PRRI.
The survey analyzed Americans’ attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights across three policies: same-sex marriage, nondiscrimination protections and religion-based service refusals. It found support for all three measures had softened for the first time since the PRRI began tracking views of the issues nearly a decade ago.
While the “vast majority of Americans continue to endorse protections for LGBTQ Americans”, Deckman said the results may serve as a “warning sign” for those working to safeguard the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans amid a conservative legislative and legal effort to erode them.
Maybe overall, maybe, but there are a quiet number of us who went from “ah, they’re okay” to “don’t you fuck with these beautiful people,” and I know this because I’m one of them, and not the only one.
When LGBTQIA+ visibility and rights were on the rise and growing, I thought it was great, but I also believed it had nothing to do with me because I’m cis/het.
But I’m also a student of history, so when certain right wingers got emboldened to be openly hateful – and bizarrely so, like JK Rowling and her nonsensical TERF shit: “you, but NOT you” wtf? – and then the right wing started going after anyone not explicitly cis/het with ANYTHING they could find, finally getting to the point of criminalization of trans people’s actual existence in places like Florida, I had zero doubt about where we were headed, and I WILL NOT PARTICIPATE.
I’ve known the destination all along, and so has anyone who tracked the process of pre-WWII Germany into authoritarianism, as well as anyone who ever had a burning need to know how a country could go from a truly laissez-faire democracy to concentration camps. Germany was where the first successful trans operations were done in the 20s, and the first place trans people were thrown into concentration camps a decade or so later. It’s not a secret.
But this is not who I am, it is not what I stand for, and I will NOT be a part of that. So now I am fiercely PRO LGBTQIA+, and the right wing has itself to thank for that. I want you to live, and to prosper, and to enjoy the same rights as anyone else, and to know that at least some of us recognize that your lives are worth as much as our own.
When Team Ovens shows up for a rematch with Team Humanity, if one of us is not safe, none of us are safe. And we’re there. It’s happening.
“Moderate” conservatives don’t give a shit. If their neighbors are anti-LGBTQ, then they think it must not be that bad to be anti-LGBT. They would rather not support LGBTQ, especially when it doesn’t affect their lives directly, than be considered not Republican.
The moderate/centrist position between “kill the gays” and “don’t permit the killing of gays” is “kill some of the gays.”
That’s all there is to it. If you are a moderate on this issue, you’re a violent bigot.
The moderate/centrist position
Soooooo tired of people incorrectly simplifying what a centrist would believe by taking the extreme ends and picking the exact middle stance. That’s almost never how you get to a centrist view and it’s a great way to ostracize them.
A centrist on gay rights likely sees that marriage is legal, culturally it’s acceptable, so why should they fight for more rights, they’re already equal?
I don’t agree with this stance, but you’ll notice it’s not a “violent bigot” stance, just an ignorant one.
Which is true, but the apparent centrists give oxygen to the extremist position, which in turns gives that extremist view false legitimacy.
The very existence of centrism on this topic implies that there’s some kind of queer supremacy movement that has anything like the traction in popular culture that homophobia and transphobia have, which isn’t the case. There’s no centrist position, here, there’s a humanist position, and then there’s a pack of retrograde bigots and the grifters that are weaponizing them, and as soon as centrists recognize that and start outright condemning these people and their views, the better.
That’s the fallacy of the excluded middle.
The centrist position is something like “lgbt people should not be discriminated against, but trans people can’t demand to be included into women’s sports”
Let’s not pretend that everything is simple and there’s no nuance and complications in life
The changes were largely driven by a shift in conservative attitudes toward LGBTQ+ protections.
Slightly fewer Republicans said they favored laws protecting LGBTQ+ Americans from discrimination in 2023 than did in 2015, despite rising support in the intervening years. The decline was especially notable between 2022, when two in three Republicans backed such protections, and 2023, when the share dropped to roughly six in 10.
So despite the combined statistic, this is really just the right-wing doubling down on extremism. Those that had moderated social views seem to be following the toxic leaders who have made abusing LGTBQ+ people as their pet “two minutes of hate” project.
Centrist gonna centrist, even when it comes to blindly deciding how much to hate someone for no fucking good reason.
Centrist position is not hating on lgbt, that’s just misrepresentation
The centrist position might now currently have shifted to not hating LGBTQ people, but it is also a misrepresentation to say that positive change came from a realization, capacity for intellectual agency, or evolution within the ideology of centrism rather than just a shifting calculus for where the perceived middle is on a particular issue.
In other words, centrists don’t actually give af, they just realize it is probably not a good idea to be perceived as hating on the LGBTQ people so they just let go of their hate and adjust their position no problem. Yes, most of them no longer hate LGTBQ people in their hearts, but do I really give a fuck if they would as soon hate LGTBQ too if that better fit the calculus of the center?
If you want proof of this, just look to the colossal sea of centrist celebrities and media figures who appear to be utterly mystified by the seemingly arbitrary new rules that are always being made about what is offensive and what they can’t say… and the even more colossal sea of normal people who triangulate their own opinions and views off of those figures. The popularization of the concept of “identity politics” is in a large way a forging of this nebulous, diffuse confusion over the reasons behind why culture is changing into a singular named entity that can be pointed at, blamed and thus minimized to comfort and give space to centrists struggling to keep up with memorizing the new scripts of respectability culture without any understanding of their meaning (that would render a memorization of the details unnecessary).
That’s not the case for a lot of people. When I was in middle school, I had the centrist position that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, as was the law at the time, but gays should have the right to form civil unions.
But because I’m not a literal child anymore, I realized it’s not going to work because conservatives will fight every right at every step so civil unions can’t be equal.
The non-voting public and celebrities are not centrist because they don’t even know what that means. They might randomly have opinions that are an average of what their friends think, but that’s not the same as forming your own opinion with nuance after thinking about the issue
That’s not the case for a lot of people. When I was in middle school, I had the centrist position that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, as was the law at the time, but gays should have the right to form civil unions.
But because I’m not a literal child anymore, I realized it’s not going to work because conservatives will fight every right at every step so civil unions can’t be equal.
Honestly, high five, you just proved my point better than I could, I am just going to stop talking and let you keep talking!
It’s the constant, incessant, and deranged attacks on trans people and drag queens. The sociopaths in charge of the Republican party have figured out that attacking them is a good way to keep their supporters frothing - and keep the money coming in.
Yeah, but how do you go from “queer people deserve the same rights as I do” to “no they don’t?”
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Please name a prominent person who craves this protected class status. Or is this just random people on the internet?
Because your random person who hates Pride is meaningless.
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Can you actually present evidence of them saying what you claim? Because my Googling sure doesn’t show it. It does show a lot of right-wing hatred for this Lindy West person… and Wikipedia doesn’t even talk about them writing about queer issues, so I’m not sure where you’re even getting this from.
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So your evidence is a comedy show?
You do know what comedy means, right?
Note: I’m a staunch proponent of equality before the law and unhindered access to opportunity for everyone
Those sound like weasel words. All people, rich or poor, are banned from sleeping under bridges and stealing food is “equality before the law.” Removal of programs that give minorities a step up is “unhindered access to opportunity.”
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I disagree, not sure why you wrote we when you don’t speak for me.
Those terms have pretty clear connotations. Your words, on the other hand, seem like dogwhistles, and your lack of clarification seems to cement that.
