Gallup Poll Shows Greater Acceptance of Gay/Lesbian Relations

In 2004 one of the reasons that George Bush narrowly won reelection was by increasing turn out on the right by using ballot initiatives outlawing gay marriage. It worked for the Republicans in 2004 but they subsequently lost badly in 2006 and 2008. While the fundamentals of this year’s off-year election favor the party out of power, any victories by the Republican Party might just be a dead cat bounce as long term trends continue to work against the views of the authoritarian right.

Another example that Americans are gradually rejecting the views of the American Taliban comes in a new Gallup poll showing greater acceptance of gay relationships:

2001-2010 Trend: Perceived Moral Acceptability of Gay/Lesbian  Relations

Americans’ support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations crossed the symbolic 50% threshold in 2010. At the same time, the percentage calling these relations “morally wrong” dropped to 43%, the lowest in Gallup’s decade-long trend.

Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, conducted each May, documents a gradual increase in public acceptance of gay relations since about 2006. However, the change is seen almost exclusively among men, and particularly men younger than 50.

Additionally, Gallup finds greater movement toward acceptance among independents and Democrats than among Republicans, and a big jump in acceptance among moderates. Liberals were already widely accepting of gay relations in 2006, and have remained that way, while conservatives’ acceptance continues to run low.

Notably, there has been a 16-point jump in acceptance among Catholics, nearly three times the increase seen among Protestants. Acceptance among Americans with no religious identity has expanded as well…

There is a gradual cultural shift under way in Americans’ views toward gay individuals and gay rights. While public attitudes haven’t moved consistently in gays’ and lesbians’ favor every year, the general trend is clearly in that direction. This year, the shift is apparent in a record-high level of the public seeing gay and lesbian relations as morally acceptable. Meanwhile, support for legalizing gay marriage, and for the legality of gay and lesbian relations more generally, is near record highs.

I think that sometime in the future we will reach a tipping point where intolerance of gays becomes as unacceptable as racism. Some on the right will hold on to their homophobia, as some have continued to embrace racism. This will further alienate right wing views from the mainstream, especially among younger voters (who unfortunately will not turn out in high numbers in 2010 if historical trends continue).

Jay Leno Sees Oil Spill As Consequence of Tea Party Views

Many right wingers have liked Jay Leno in the past primarily because he is not David Letterman. Leno might have reduced his standing on the right while Rand Paul has had a couple of days of really bad television coverage. It was bad enough when, after being only the third person in history to cancel an invitation to be on Meet the Press, David Gregory spent the first ten minutes of the show looking back at all of Paul’s gaffes. David Gregory then appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno Again. Leno got a couple attacks in on the Tea Parties:

Meanwhile Jay Leno wanted to know how come the Tea Partiers are showing up now and not back when the Bush administration was stomping all over the nation’s civil rights? Gregory thinks it’s simply because they’re more organized. But Leno persisted: “BP is the perfect example. BP seems to have done this on their own, they don’t pay attention, they essentially make their own rules, they pay off everybody…that’s what the Tea Party wants. That’s unregulated and look what happened.”

Happy Towel Day

Happy Towel Day, a holiday to celebrate the works of Douglas Adams. As The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy explains:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.