Survey Says

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Yesterday evening, as I sat down to watch the news, I just had a feeling I'd regret it.

Sure enough, PBS brought me a story about a major survey that found support for LGBTQ rights has, for the first time, gone down in the U.S. 

Note to self:  must avoid the Sunday news if I don't want to start the week depressed. Or bitchy.

The Public Religion Research Institute interviewed over 22,000 adults in 2023, and found that support for same-sex marriage dropped two percentage points, and backing for non-discrimination protections dropped four points.

The CEO of the Institute said the downward tick surprised them. I can't say it surprised me, not with all the anti-LGBTQ legislation hovering about, but it was still hard to hear. I had to watch comedy for the rest of the evening to compensate.

The drop, said the CEO, was "largely driven by party polarization." She noted that her team "saw much deeper declines, for example, among Republicans in terms of their support for these issues, whereas Democrats tended to stay relatively stable."

This would be the moment to crack that Democrats are always more stable, but I won't.

She continued, "And I think what's happening is that you see many Republican leaders in red states, really trying to amp up the volume, so to speak on LGBTQ rights, and really trying to claw back some of those rights across the country."

And really being complete assholes.

The CEO finished, "And I think that's had a spillover effect nationally in terms of the attitudes of Republicans, especially on issues with respect to LGBT rights."

The red states have floated a cloud of bigotry across the country that other Republicans are getting high on. I never thought I'd write these words, but it's a shame Nancy Reagan isn't around to urge people to Just Say No.