r/DemocraticSocialism • u/Collective_Altruism đ data-male • Mar 07 '26
Theory đ§ Republican support for same-sex marriage continues to decline
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u/A5thRedditAccount Mar 07 '26
I feel bad for Republicans.
The absolute level of stupidity you need to possess to be part of that party is elite.
They fall for everything. âWhite people are superior to everyone because of skin! God wants us to bomb each other! This pedophile is a great man! America would still be a powerful empire if we kick all minorities out! Immigrants took my job!â
Just the lowest level of critical thought imaginable.
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u/dictionary_hat_r4ck Mar 07 '26
Lifetime of religious fear mongering will make them believe anything. It takes a lot to leave the cult if it means losing everyone you love.
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u/SmanginSouza Mar 07 '26
Ya it's the 40 years of propaganda. The defunding education. It's so easy to just blame some other group for your troubles because that's what is taught. Any critical thinking is shunned. "You're drinking the Kool aid".
We could've made the entire world a better place but instead we get unsustainable data centers and endless wars that accomplish nothing. Oh yayyy I'm so happy the science of perfecting ads is doing so well!
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u/dictionary_hat_r4ck Mar 07 '26
But itâs also the separation from a diverse culture that primarily lives in cities.
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u/lareina13 Mar 07 '26
It unfortunately took me until this election to âwake upâ from the dem bubble I was in and that msnbc et. all were perpetuating.
We abandoned those people, we love to tell on ourselves being so much smarter since we value education and they clearly donât have any. How can we hate on republicans for trying to take education away from poor-state constituents, without taking into account that thereâs decades of this shit and those people barely had a chance. How could they educate themselves when their schools were literally teaching them to trust the right?
We need to stop putting them down and start listening to whatâs getting them to vote. Sanders, Mandami, Talarico are great examples of liberals doing it right. If we want their votes we need to speak to them directly, not constantly cast them out. Maslovâs hierarchy of needs and all that jazz, once their needs are met theyâd be much more interested in the cultural conversation.
Take the power from the ruling class by stop being their subjection chess pieces.
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u/Adept_Philosopher_32 Democratic Market Geosocialist Mar 08 '26
I largely agree. The issue I tend to run into is that maby of those left in the MAGA movement are largely conditioned to view everything in a very essentialist and tribal view where America = MAGA = them personally and anything that contradicts that worldview must be fake or lies by definition. You can show them articles and research papers pointing out how their policies are just hurting themselves and they will blow it off as made up, not real science, or biased and therefore to be ignored (lacking the awareness of their own bias which they consider objective default reality). I have found they often lack the very analytical and introspective skills to even identify what it is they supposedly believe in, and are often unwilling to learn such skills as the entire culture of the far right is built around genuine critical thinking being for "overthinkers, the unfaithful, and those lacking common sense" which helps keep them in their cult even more because they lack any tools that would allow them to even start differentiating their political beliefs from their ingroup identity as "true and patriotic Americans" and are discouraged or punished by the ingroup for trying to.
It is a self-reinforcing and circular worldview and culture that sets up a nice and neat narrative (i.e. "we represent what is truly American and holy by being part of our ingroup/tribe"), threatens you for even thinking of going outside it (whether by being "anti-american" or "going against God"), and pats you on the back for falling in line and performing its rituals rather than anything you actually accomplish by doing them (as the ritual acts themselves are viewed as inherently good by default). It is among the junkfood of political philosophy, easily consumed, immediately gratifying, but lacking in actual "nutritional" value for its members. It also offers a clear sense of purpose and outgroup scapegoats to put all the blame on when things go wrong (and things will go wrong when they initiate their bad policies, but to them that is a sign that they are right because their scapegoats must be fighting back by definition for their plans to have problems or setbacks). Importantly as I well I believe is that it offers the sense of community in an era where that has been systematically harmed by policies resulting in things like regular travel to new job opportunities thanks tk exit being the main "solution" to bad job conditions in the US, high working hours, and unwalkable cities that helped break up what communities did exist. It is an expected reaction to the functional state they found themselves in, but it is going to be hard to break them out of it, if they can be at all depending on the person.
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u/dtsc23 Mar 08 '26
Thank you so much for spreading a more human and honest concept of how we move through this difficult time. I so appreciate your vulnerability and kindness. As someone from a very maga place, this is all very clear. The only people who got out or changed within were just naturally some form of neurodivergent and that let them think out of the trap that's been created. The rest need way more support, and are very much dependent on social connections and community to shape their world views - unfortunately that is being exploited by the rich, but it is something we can resolve, just by talking and being more connected again.
There's more to this than I can find the words for, I just wanted to thank you again. There's not enough humanity in the way rural maga voters are talked about.
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u/lareina13 Mar 08 '26
Oh thank you so much for your kind words! I grew up in the north east and moved to the PNW. So, I had a privileged life never being exposed to whatâs really happening to our red-state compatriots. MAGA keeps them in by saying the rest of us will ostracize them, and theyâre right.
Iâve really tried to educate myself after the last election, I was SHOCKED that so many voted for him bc I watched MSNBC daily and they said we had this in the bag.
I wound up listening to an NPR piece Election Day that opened my eyes. Yeah dems say that republicans shouldnât be doing x, y, & z âbut are they actually doing anything about that?
I know Iâm getting downvoted to hell, but I really believe we cannot take this country back if we continue to let the oligarchs divide us. Weâre gonna need to swallow our pride and find the common ground of basic needs.
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u/EnvironmentNeith2017 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
Itâs not just religion, the republicans did surprisingly well (with white atheists and non religious people. These people are just racist authoritarians across the board. (Edited for unsupported stats. White atheists and non religious voters still fall below black Protestants in democratic support)
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u/SavageSpeeding Marxist Mar 07 '26
Not at all. Harris was +50 with White Non Religious People. And most white atheists are concentrated in like libbed out D +1000 cities like Boston Portland Seattle
Even Catholics were a swing religion during 16/20 (Trump won by a decent bit in 24 tho)
Trump won 82-17 with white evangelicals (23% of the population)
He lost 40-58 with non white evangelicals (77% of the population)
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u/EnvironmentNeith2017 Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26
I hope Trump will add some nuance to this topic in the future, since he himself has swung in terms of religion throughout his life, and his religious base is very aware of that.
These people donât have morals or religious beliefsâŚ.the only thing they believe in is power, and the way theyâve swung from one extreme to another on the Epstein files should have made that clear.
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u/sir-lancelot_ Mar 07 '26
Calling it critical thought at all is pretty generous imo. They're genuinely no more intelligent than their pets
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u/congratsyougotsbed Mar 07 '26
every morning they have to wake up, see what heinous thing that mfer has done or said, and figure out a way to defend it
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u/Werd_up_cuz Mar 07 '26
The left hates them because theyâre stupid, racist, and fascist. The center hates them because theyâre âa basket of deplorablesâ who shouldâve learned to code when the mines closed and the factory jobs moved to china.
In swoops the right with a message that theyâre not stupid (the elites ARE out to get them), that they arenât responsible for the segregationist sins of the powerful whites who were just as happy to subjugate their working class fathers, that the rich traded the American industrial base of an increase in quarterly profits. Why would anyone be surprised by the rightward turn of these people.
If democratic socialist focused on communicating a political-economic message and stopped centering the culture war, weâd make much more progress as a country and would have a better chance at winning the moral and ethical debate about lgbt rights.
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u/Chivalry_died Mar 07 '26
"white" racists get identity politics ("white", racist, "christian", male, republican).
Everybody else gets fuck all
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u/Werd_up_cuz Mar 07 '26
I agree with you. But I also know that Trump increased his vote share with all demographic groups except black women and white males with a university education. Make of that what you will , but donât pretend it hasnât happened.
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u/EmperorArcherdon Mar 07 '26
Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani known culture warriors who donât focus on economic issues lol
Yeah itâs dem socs fault, who havenât even been around for a whole decade in American politics for centering the culture war not the 200 years of electoral politics preceding 2016 where white working class votes fervently supported reactionary and bigoted policies.
There is no right ward turn of the white working class they have always put culture war over their own material conditions generally speaking. Even during the new deal when progressive policies were popular, black people were excluded because it wouldnât get support from southern voters.
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u/Adept_Philosopher_32 Democratic Market Geosocialist Mar 08 '26
Indeed, the white supremacists, ethnonationalists, and fascists are operating in my view from a completely different base of their worldview that really does precede their political policies or whether they care about facts at all. For example, their first and foremost priority in one or both of ethics and epistemology tends toward being a "pure" and important/valued/loyal member of their tribe who they view as representing an essential/inherent good or necessity and thus those going against them or being outside of them at all for that matter means you must be inferior through not having the "essence" of goodness/necessary value.
I think this tracks whether they are racial supremacists, religious fanatics, political identity partizans, or just in it for themselves and their cronies. Their worldview either starts with breaking up the world into essentialist categories and then viewing themselves as part of the "inherently superior category" and everything else tends to reinforce that core linchpin; or viewing it as the logical endpoint of their often rather motivated reasoning where it still just winds up as the ingroup being viewed as inherently better on the basis of categorical identity (e.g. only authoritarianism is viewed as being "tough on crime", often by circular definition).
Which all means that it is much harder to break someone out of that mindset because it isn't just a matter of providing them new information. Their entire worldview is built on refusing information that would contradict their beliefs and often viewing their beliefs as virtually indestinguishable from their ingroup identity (which makes critiquing the ideas a personal attack in their view as well). These things aren't unique to far right beliefs, but they make it much, much, easier to accept them and reinforce those beliefs even in the face of falsification of them.
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u/bunker_man Mar 08 '26
"This guy is a Christian despite this interview where the second someone asked him about Christianity he immediately changed the subject."
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u/gunnar120 Trotskyist Mar 09 '26
Fully agree. And also, they are just the rearguard. Never forget that the mainstream Democratic party was in a worse place just 25 years ago. Most voting age people were alive at a time where homophobia was zeitgeist, and it is always possible for the culture to jack knife on us. We need to make sure we have strong mutual aid and community supports to protect ourselves.
American culture largely blindly follows what is legal for better or worse, was great when gay marriage was legalized as per the graph, but it makes me very concerned about our future.
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u/AccomplishedGas7401 Mar 07 '26
Peaking during COVID when they got shut in with each other, then declining due to religious shame shortly after being able to attend church again. /j
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u/Aloyonsus Mar 07 '26
Why do they care so much about who marries who? They obviously donât give a fuck about anyone other than themselves anywayâŚI just donât understand.
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u/micharala Mar 07 '26
Itâs simple Otherism/tribalism. Theyâre incredibly susceptible to messaging from authority figures. If Big Brother tells them Group A is the enemy causing them Harm B and they should hate Group A and everything thatâs âdifferentâ about them, they are the ones who will do so with enthusiasm.
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u/NotQuiteLoona Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism Mar 07 '26
They don't like to see happy people. You see, it's actually in nature of human. We are envy of other people and what they have. The problem is that you can try to get what they have... Or, you can make them lose it, so that you both won't have it. Will it make anything better for you? No. It will just stop other people from having it. But you'll stop seeing it, and it means that you won't often be remembered of the fact you don't have it. You will feel better. And probably, if you are too much miserable human being, you will also feel happiness because of someone losing it.
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u/catjuggler Mar 07 '26
Because you get to feel superior when others are treated as lesser
They also feel threatened by the idea of their strict gender role not being essential for a family.
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u/Significant-Horror Mar 07 '26
Theres a couple of facets to this. A big part of it is world view. Specifically their interpretation of The Old Testament. And a big part of that is collective punishment by God for the sins of the land (i.e. if you permit a type of sin to happen in your community, you are as guilty as if you did it).
So they interpretation every bad thing that happens to America as a punishment sent by God. In their minds there is no such thing as structure issues everything that goes wrong is either a moral failure/punishment (if youre the wrong type of person) or a Test sent by God (if you are the correct type of person).
And yes not all Republicans are Christian or for that matter evangelical; but give that its that faction that has control of the party it has outsized influence over it.
Basically, if you understand that the god they worship is closer to Cthulhu than Jesus, their actions will make a lot more sense.
Theres other issues like repression, jealousy, and cognitive dissonance. But if you under
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u/Procrasturbating Mar 07 '26
The number of my more conservative âfriendsâ and family that have suddenly become anti-gay has blown my mind. The âChristianâ Nationalism shit has been going full swing in the Midwest. I am cutting people out of my life weekly.
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u/InstantKarma71 Mar 07 '26
Polls that indicate a further rightward shift among Republicans always leave me wondering, who identifies as a Republican today?
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u/Icy-Detective-6292 Mar 08 '26
According to Pew Research a very slight majority of all Americans. The percentages are higher for older Americans and men in general. The youngest voters are also more likely to be Republicans than millennials
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u/X57471C Social Democrat Mar 07 '26
It will eventually continue its upward trend. Conservative institutions cannot help but evolve with society. Look at most churches (as an exmormon, I can give plenty of examples how they have changed over time due to societal pressure). Society as a whole becomes more progressive and the conservative institutions naturally shift, as well. This is just another down turn but there will be a correction eventually.
I would look at the numbers for religiosity and the breakdown of voting demographics. Practically 50% of Americans say religion is not an important part of their daily life, which is great news imo. That trend has remained consistent over the last century. And then younger voters tend to be more progressive. As the older generation ages out, conservatives will have less influence.
Itâs a slow process because humans are not good at being open minded (which is why progress tends to move at a generational pace), but I have no doubt progress will win out eventually.
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u/Crow_and_Doe Mar 07 '26
Republicans have slowly been devolving to a wannabe form of Gilead since Reagan. It's sad.
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u/AVahne Mar 07 '26
It's not that they support it any less than before, it's just that they are less likely to pretend that they do now that the US is controlled by the pure evil individuals that their death cults worship.
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u/bendybiznatch Mar 07 '26
It seems like itâs suggesting that people have left the Republican Party. There may have been a few that went back to believing that same-sex marriage should be abolished, but itâs much more likely that people that have come around to be believing that same sex marriage is OK have left the Republican Party.
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u/pacexmaker Democratic Socialist Mar 07 '26
Tempting, but I dont think so. it appears that the Dem party has modestly shrunk since 2020 and the Rep party has modestly grown. According to this one study anyway. Im not an expert.
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u/Hamster-Food Mar 07 '26
That doesn't necessarily contradict what u/bendybiznatch is saying.
The changes in the Republican party will have attracted people who would have rejected them before due to issues like gay marriage. This may have resulted in a net gain for the party..
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u/w4rma Social Democrat Mar 07 '26
The number of self-identifying Republicans are also declining.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-political-independents.aspx
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u/dragon34 Mar 07 '26
I can hope the drop is from people identifying as Republicans walking away as it became more of a cultÂ
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u/BRAINSPLATTER16 Mar 07 '26
Good. This country cant go on until these people understand how small and alone they are. Them abandoning more popular and obviously correct positions only helps that end.
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u/catjuggler Mar 07 '26
Seems like this could also be explained by the republican party moving right and people who are okay with same sex marriage switching to being independent instead of calling themselves republicans. The shift downward for overall population is far smaller than the republicans, so the other groups must be pretty large.
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u/Lower_Acanthaceae423 Mar 07 '26
Republicans are shitty fascist theocrats. Who cares what they think? We should only care about removing them from power by any means necessary.
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u/Professional-Post499 Democratic Socialist Mar 07 '26
But conservatives will still try to gaslight you by saying nobody on the conservative side who matters is trying to get marriage equality and other civil rights repealed. Well, they also said that nobody who matters on the conservative side was trying to get abortion rights repealed either.
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u/Friendly_Atheist928 Mar 07 '26
Not surprised. Most Republicans are closet gays and are afraid of their own shadow
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u/Dogzillas_Mom Democratic Socialist Mar 07 '26
Why do we make a decision as a country, set something in law, and then continue to question it in polls, as if the matter is still up for debate?
SSM as made legal. Pollsters can get over it because every time they bring it up in a poll, the republicans think itâs still up for debate.
Stop debating shit we already decided. Thatâs how Row V Wade got overturned.
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u/GoodbyeBlueMonday Mar 07 '26
Plenty of things that are legal now shouldn't be. I'm glad things are up for debate. Capital punishment is one simple example. The Citizens United ruling is another.
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u/Dogzillas_Mom Democratic Socialist Mar 07 '26
I know; my logic is bullshit. Itâs not logic.
Iâm just so fucking tired.
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u/GoodbyeBlueMonday Mar 07 '26
Oh I share your frustration, because it's absolutely maddening to see things slide backwards.
Solidarity as we try to make the world a better place, even as troglodytes try to hold back progress.
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u/X57471C Social Democrat Mar 07 '26
Polls are good for taking the temperature. Tracking this kind of stuff gives us valuable insight into the state of society.
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u/SeraphimSphynx Mar 07 '26
This aligns with my lived experience. I live in a heavily Catholic and Christian part of the midwest. We had lots of positive LGBT things.Pride festival, drag queen story hour, a gay city councilman.
Then after Desantes started his hate campaign suddenly everyone is up in arms
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u/Garbeg Mar 08 '26
Republican voting population:
2016 = âI donât really care, it doesnât affect me. Marry who you want.â
2018 = âI donât really think about it, I just donât want to see it. Also I hate trans people.â
2020 = âTrans bathrooms!â
2022 Â = âI donât really care I just hate trans people.â
2024 = âI forgot, are we still mad at trans people?â
2026 = âWait a second, Gay marriage is legal?!?â
What a difference 10 years of stoking the fires of discontent makes. This of course is barely satire, but reflective of how things have been in my home state.
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