On Fox, Gary Bauer Reverses Public's Support For Gay Marriage
During an interview on Fox & Friends, Gary Bauer, president of conservative group American Values, claimed that the "overwhelming majority of the American people think that marriage is between a man and a woman." In fact, multiple polls conducted in 2011 show that a majority of Americans favor legalizing gay marriage.
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Bauer Claims "Overwhelming Majority" Of Americans Oppose Same-Sex Marriage
Bauer: "The Overwhelming Majority Of The American People Think That Marriage Is Between A Man And A Woman." On the January 10 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson interviewed American Values President Gary Bauer about his support for GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum. After a clip of Santorum being booed during a forum at New England College was aired, Bauer said:
BAUER: I suspect, or at least I've read, that the booing was because -- shock of all shocks -- he thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman. That's what, of course, for several thousand years, marriage has been. The booers aren't offering much to the debate. Look, the overwhelming majority of the American people think that marriage is between a man and a woman. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/10/12]
But Bauer Is Wrong: Polls Show Majority Of Americans Support Gay Marriage
March 2011: Wash. Post-ABC Poll Finds 53 Percent Of Americans Support Gay Marriage And 44 Percent Oppose. From a March 18, 2011, Washington Post article:
A slim majority of Americans now support gay marriage, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The results underscore the nation's increasingly tolerant views about homosexuals, and parallel a string of recent legal and legislative victories for gay rights advocates.
Five years ago, at 36 percent, support for gay marriage barely topped a third of all Americans. Now, 53 percent say gay marriage should be legal, marking the first time in Post-ABC polling that a majority has said so. [The Washington Post, 3/18/11]
April 2011: CNN/Opinion Research Poll Finds 51 Percent Of Public Supports Gay Marriage And 47 Percent Oppose. An April 2011 poll conducted by CNN and Opinion Research found: "[M]ore than half of all Americans believe that marriages between gay or lesbian couples should be legally valid. With 51 percent of respondents saying that same-sex marriages should be legal, it is the first time that a CNN poll has found majority support for same-sex marriage." [CNN, Political Ticker, 4/19/11]
May 2011: Public Religion Research Institute Poll Finds 51 Percent Of Americans Support Gay Marriage And 43 Percent Oppose. A May 19, 2011, Public Religion Research Institute poll found that 51 percent of Americans favor "allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry, compared to 43% percent [sic] who are opposed." [Public Religion Research Institute, 5/19/11]
May 2011: Gallup Poll Shows 53 Percent Of Americans Support Gay Marriage And 45 Percent Oppose. In a May 20, 2011, report on one of its polls, Gallup wrote, "For the first time in Gallup's tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans (53%) believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages."
The report included this graph showing Gallup's findings on the question since 1996:
[Gallup, 5/20/11]
July 2011: Wash. Post-ABC Poll Finds 51 Percent Of Public Supports Gay Marriage And 45 Percent Oppose. A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted from July 14-17, 2011, found that 51 percent of respondents said it should be "legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married," while 45 percent said it should be "illegal." [The Washington Post, accessed 1/10/12]
This same thing happened with other cultural norms - the idea that women needed to stay at home, and couldn't do the same jobs as men, or the ideas that Chinese-Americans were inferior, or that Irishmen were to be shunned, or that African Americans were dirty and the men were always interested in raping white women.
They were all stupid, and fueled by bigotry, and they all needed to go away, just like prejudice against gays needs to go away.
The Civil Rights era happened at at time when most liberal whites didn't have black "friends." But the firehoses and hoods tipped the balance. The thinking that "homophobes will die off" only works if there's something stronger than love-your-friends as well (like revulsion at suicides caused by bullying or, to sound like a typical "librul," skepticism at the continuation of faith-based opposition in a time when agnosticism/atheism/non-observation is growing and when we need science to compete economically).
I'm not convinced that prejudice magically goes away without leadership and, frankly, regulations. Tough to buy into the authoritarian mindset that thinks things are bad because they're illegal, but I think that's part of how you empower tolerance.
And please explain to a religious radical how "gay people are no different than anyone else" when the word of God -- who exists in perpetuity throughout the universe, thank you very much says otherwise.
It's contra history to think that injustice irons itself out without the help of law.
Or... what are you on about again?
Age and Racial Discrimination Acts, Title IX: mid 1970s
ADA, FMLA: early 1990s
Lebetter Fair Pay Act: late 2000s
Yep, a trend toward federal anti-discrimination protections laws under Democratic administrations + congresses. That you don't know these protections have been necessary (and thus fought viciously by your wing) way past the 1960s isn't really surprising. Right-wingers started claiming we all were magically post-prejudice in 1965 in order to avoid more such defeats. Of course, loony libertarian Paul believes that the 1960s are very much on the table in 2012. Love to see another current presidential candidate whose objections to -- or even approval of -- the CRA of 1964 are a FAQ on his website! Can you get any more stuck than that?
Moral suasion and law aren't mutually exclusive. You like to think of yourself as a free moral thinker -- and that may indeed be true for you -- but authoritarians, who exist in great numbers here and everywhere, take their moral guidance in part from the law. If something is illegal it must be bad, and it's bad because it's illegal. You and I may be free from this circular reasoning, but some 20% of those opposed legalizing pot don't want it to be legal because it's an illegal drug! (For an even more twisted form of this, take Reagan AG Edwin Meese's "If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.") Luckily, it works the other way. If you can sway the law, you can sway authoritarians with it.
You need no other example of the deep interdependence of public morality and law than marriage equality itself. The vastly increased tolerance of the notion of gay marriage across the whole country is perfectly in sync with the number of states enacting anti-discrimination laws protecting gays, and a subset adopting/adapting marriage statutes as well. A crucial reason that people are more and more likely to know someone who's out is because there are more laws to protect you when you come out and more places you can live safely and news of this better world does penetrate to other states. And that in turn leads to people also living out in places where they're not directly protected by law, because some communities learn from external law and culture and tilt toward tolerance.
For a racial example, more white people in the South appreciate that minorities can be intelligent and accomplished because of legally mandated school integration. Better schools meant more upward mobility, and the number of successful people of color became visible and undeniable, allowing people to see the potential of people of color outside of the school realm.
When women won the vote, they became appreciated (and feared) as actors in the wider economic/political system. Since they were without direct workplace protections (the ERA is still waiting), being taken seriously as citizens was crucial to to be taken seriously as professionals.
And so on.
I've never heard it used in any other sense, except when specifically hurled against older, black political activists by the younger militant leaders of the 70s. Then it meant they sought passive, legal recourse instead of active, extralegal means.
How do you think "stuck in the 1960s" bears on the discussion of public opinion and the law?
Arguing that something is correct simply because it's existed for thousands of years is a really bad argument to make. Slavery existed for thousands of years. Does this mean Gary Bauer thinks slavery should still exist? Monarchies have existed for thousands of years. Does Gary Bauer think we should institute a monarchy in the US?
And to his comment that the "booers" weren't offering much to the debate, I'd add that, when one seeks to deny civil rights to any group of people, regardless of how long that prohibition has existed, it is up to the person wishing to deny those rights to prove that such a denial is commensurate with the ideals of a free society.
I'm waiting for the birthers to start hollering for Romney's birth certificate, too. Romney's father was born in Mexico of parents who had dual citizenship. Romney's father had dual citizenship and Romney could also have dual citizenship. Isn't that one of the big bugaboos of the Orly Taitz gang?
The word "marriage" used to be a word that affected the outcome of the polls, and the only polls that have shown majority opposition to legal recognition for years are those that don't offer "civil unions" as an option. Of the CBS polling, "legal marriage" has been favored, by respondents, over "civil unions" since May '08. As the article above makes plain, the wording thing hasn't been an issue in the polling for nearly a year, because a majority now tell every poll they favor "marriage."
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Left Hook!
http://lefthooktheblog.blogspot.com/
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IMHO
UTOPIA
This was part of Martin Luther King's genius, for e.g. He knew that he was right, but he knew that being right wasn't enough. It hadn't been, for hundreds of years. So he held and supported demonstrations, which showed the need for protection of the principle of equal treatment under the law.
Similarly, gay rights and gay marriage are expanding nationwide--largely due to expanding public support. This has a snowball effect: as more such protections are passed, more people come out--and more of the public knows an "out" gay. Since those who actually know an "out" gay are far more respectful of equal rights for gays, this naturally leads to expansion of rights. Which leads to more people knowing an "out" gay...etc.
Second, I think it has definitely helped that some states have legalized it, and all of the gnashing of teeth from the typical blowhards about how it would destroy those states hasn't come to pass.
It should be legal. Everywhere.
Nothing gives me the urge to projectile vomit more than these bigots hiding behind a warped version of "Christianity." These a55holes call themselves "American Values." Nothing is further from reality. They represent the opposite of everything American or Christian. It's an insult that these lunatics are given airtime on a cable news outlet to spew their intolerance, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, and sociopathic mindsets unchallenged.
He as been doing that for a very long time.
He subscribes to and is a proponent of Christian Dominionism/ Christian Reconstructionism.