Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/23/the-last-americans-holding-out.html
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Huh. Good news generally, but I thought there were still huge swaths of U.S.-Americans who attend church weekly.
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My parents have attended church weekly for decades (my mom’s the sort who listens to a church service on the radio and makes extra tithes out of guilt if she has to miss a week) and volunteer for church functions all the time. But they also were recently telling me about the beautiful wedding they’d gone to for my mother’s workmate and her girlfriend. So the venn diagram doesn’t necessarily always work out perfectly.
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Oh sure, I too know regular churchgoers who have no trouble at all with gay marriage.
Im just surprised to see “weekly church attendees” listed (if I’m reading it right) as a small U.S. demographic.
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If flat-earthers teach us anything, it’s that stupid will never die.
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Tell them that it also legalizes same-sex divorce.
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You mean to tell me that Mississippi and Alabama may be populated with less than progressive people?
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Similarly, my sister and her family have attended (and volunteered) at their church regularly for decades, and my sister even has a couple friends from college who are out now. She still loves her gay friends, and has no problem supporting politicians who are against gay marriage on her religious grounds. To take matters further, she doesn’t think that her gay friend should get mad at her for doing so.
I’m not religious, and IME cognitive dissonance is a learned tolerance as part of most organized religion (i.e. the problem of evil, etc.). Unfortunately I think a lot of religious folks apply that tolerance to their politics as well.
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Also, wouldn’t an attendee be attended by a church? You don’t suppose they meant to say weekly church attenders?
Also also, who cares about “moral disapproval?” I morally disapprove of gambling, that doesn’t make casinos go away, does it?
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#notallchurchgoers
Snark aside, there are progressive people in all demographics. Well, except the baseball perverts…they are inhuman monsters…it’s like watching paint dry!
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Alabama & Mississippi? Oh say it ain’t so!
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What, a post about awful American states with no hating on Florida? No Bugs sawing the state off? Anyone notice that Florida’s bluer than most states here?
Really tired of that meme when there’s far worse places in the nation.
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It’s not that small a demographic. Based on the polls linked from the wikipedia page that @beschizza is linking to in the post, it’s as low as 35% or as high as 42%. They are only against same sex marriage 58-36 or 56-39 in the different polls. But people who never go to church (less than 25% of people) skew 80% in favour of same sex marriage, so they push the average more even though they are a smaller group.
Yeah, it would be very wrong to read “weekly churchgoers are against same sex marriage” as “I can reliably predict you are against same sex marriage if you are a weekly churchgoer.” 56-39 is not a very safe bet.
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I had an experience recently. My parents are both right leaning, but my siblings and I are all broadly left leaning centrists. One of my brothers has a husband, which was tough for my parents to deal with, but they’re over it.
My niece’s birthday party a couple weekends back, I was chatting with some longtime friends of my parents who are also right-leaning gun nuts. This lady asked about what my little brother (the one with the husband) was up to with some interest, since he is a Navy veteran. My mother standing behind her literally mouthed the words, “DON’T TALK TO HER ABOUT YOUR BROTHER”.
These friends are rather older and in poor health–I think my parents are literally hoping they die off before they have to cop to having a gay son to them and rock the boat with their friends. My mother is doing something similar with her sisters.
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That’s a sophisticated way to view statistics. I don’t think most people understand how to turn a poll result into a worldview as well as you do.
That would be an interesting scene in a play.
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All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.
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Let’s stop trying to change the laws in places like Alabama. They obviously like what they do there, and how their nearly dead last in every social amenity.
As a nation, the USA should just pass a law that gives anyone that lives in these shitholes some sort of one-time “Run away” assistance. Anyone that hates were they live and is 18 gets a bus ticket and a month’s rent somewhere else to start new. Just a one time deal, you can’t use it again. This would be cheaper than trying to fight these backwards places. Let them rot from the inside.
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Out of curiosity I just did a Google search using only the terms “Alabama” and “marriage” just to see what results came up.
Unsurprisingly one of the first results was “is it legal to marry you cousin in Alabama?”
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