| The Republican Autopsy report, while fun, completely lacks substance in the solutions arena. One of the areas they didn't even mention in their outreach program was LGBT Americans. They mentioned Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women. I wonder if it ever struck them that some Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women could simultaneously be gay. There are cases in front of SCOTUS. Tmess has insight on one of the cases here. More and more states are making gay marriage a reality. Public polling indicates support across the board: meaning there are even rank and file Republicans who are in favour. Including some very prominent ones, most recently Rob Portman. I read somewhere (and then forgot to save the link so you'll have to take my word for it) that the GOP will have a huge problem updating their computer systems, including the microtargeting and outreach programs, because the places that one goes to recruit workers in these fields include places like Silicon Valley. It's unlikely that the young people who make up the majority of the workers will want to work for the GOP. They'll have trouble recruiting in their current demographic as people who oppose math and science generally don't have the skills for high tech. Face it, if you live in a high tech area and have friends, you don't want to go out for a beer and admit you work for the GOP - it's a given that amoung your friends will be Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women - and seriously some of them are gay....who wants to work for the party that wants to destroy their friends and families? About the time the Massachusetts was gearing up to legalize gay marriage, I had a volunteer gig as the editor of the Mensa magazine for the local area. This was before Goodridge vs the Department of Public Health, and the discussion amoung liberals was civil unions vs gay marriage. I wanted to have several opinion pieces: one from a support of gay marriage, one against any gay unions, and one on civil unions. This was a print publication, and the deal was that all articles were attributed to someone's real name. It was easy to find people to write about gay marriage and civil unions, but I couldn't find a single person willing to sign a column against gay marriage. Why? The typical answer was along the lines of "I know gay people, and I don't want them to think I don't like them." Really. People who railed about how gay marriage would ruin the world wouldn't own up to it in public if their names were associated with it. And that's about where the Republican Party is now. While you can see their racism, misogyny, and other forms of hatred, they don't even mention the "gay thing". I suspect it's that the hoi polloi of the party know they know gay people (in Portman's case, his son, meaning THERE ARE OTHER REPUBLICAN PARENTS OF GAY OFFSPRING!!!!) and they don't want them to think they don't like them. As we all know, being gay is not something that you know when you look at someone. Gay people look like "everybody else". Most Republicans wouldn't tell a black joke to a black person - but they might accidentally say something anti-gay and offend a gay person because they were clueless about who was standing in the group. So they must stay silent. More than anything else, the Republican Party's aversion to gays will destroy the party from the inside out. Much more so than their efforts against everyone else. Why? Because all of us who are decent, intelligent, normal people know that gays are born gay just as Hispanics, African-Americans, Asian-Americans are born, respectively, Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American. And we decent, intelligent, normal people don't see any difference between gays and straights. (And to be clear, I mean "gay" to include the rest of LGBT.) People date who they date, they love who they love, and within the next several years, they'll be able to marry who they want, because the wave will not be stopped. Slowed? Perhaps. But not stopped. As it should be. That leaves the GOP not just on the wrong side of history, but destroying itself. And that's sad. It used to be a respectable party. Did we disagree with them? Sure. But they stood FOR things, not AGAINST PEOPLE. They negotiated to a common outcome. Hatred begets hatred. And hate destroys. The only thing left to discuss is whether the GOP will become a marginalized third party, or disappear completely. |
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