Part of the national Republican strategy for the last few decades has been to scapegoat gays whenever given the chance. Outside of a few fairly tolerant Republicans, such as Northeastern governors George Pataki (NY) and Jody Rell (CT), the national Republican party, when threatened, pulls out the This-Person-Doesn't-Hate-Gays-and-therefore- Supports-Dog-on-Dog-Sex-and-Unbridled-Sin card.
What's particularly odd about this vocal odium is that many prominent anti-gay Republican politicians have staffs filled with gays--Senators Rich Santorum (PA) and George Allen (VA) come to mind, but there are countless others. These politicians trash gays not because they have any strength of conviction behind their hatred, but because their polling tells them it's a instrument to win votes.
As much as people complain that both parties only seem to believe in what their polling tell them to believe, you have to give hand to the Democrats on the gay issue. For the most part, they've been willing to support gay rights because it's the right thing to do, not because it's popular. Because at this point, for the most part, gay rights probably isn't the most popular issue going.
But how long will that last?
For instance, my twin god-daughters are twenty; they grew up in a solidly Republican household that revered Reagan above any other 20th century politician. Yet these girls completely and totally accept gays. Gay marriage to them is a given; they just don't understand why it's taking the rest of the country so long to accept it. It will happen, they both say, just as interracial marriage, once taboo, is now commonplace.
The girls aren't alone. According to a just-released Hamilton College poll of high school seniors (run in cooperation with Zogby International), 66 percent of this year's high school graduates favor legal recognition of gay marriages. This is double the percentage of adults who feel similarly.
And despite the daunting fact that only 54 percent of all American adults feel that sexual relationships between same sex should be legal, 71 percent of high school seniors do.
Interestingly, 80 percent of Catholic kids support legal recognition of gay marriages, despite official Church doctrine to the contrary. And the same number of all polled feel that gay men and lesbians should be "accepted by society," while only a slightly smaller number say that "gays contribute to society in unique and positive ways."
For the most part, the 20-30 percent of seniors who spoke against gays represent the most religious of Christians. Many of these kids will keep their biases, but a fair share will shed them once they leave home, meet gays for the first time, and realize they don't have tails and horns--meaning support for gays in this group will grow even higher over the coming years.
Homophobia remains strongest among the elderly. So what's going to happen to all this Republican homophobia once the youngest segment of the voting population grows into its largest segment, and the generation after that one starts voting as well--a generation that will be even more gay friendly? Will the Republicans continue their gay bashing? Or will they be the ones tracking the polls? Tune in for the answer in about fifteen years.
Advertisement