Adam Nagourney from the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — It was only five years ago that opposition to gay marriage was so strong that Republicans explicitly turned to the issue as a way to energize conservative voters. Yet today, as the party contemplates the task of rebuilding itself, some Republicans say the issue of gay marriage may be turning into more of a hindrance than a help.Read the entire article HERE.
The fact that a run of states have legalized gay marriage in recent months — either by court decision or by legislative action — with little backlash is only one indication of how public attitudes about this subject appear to be changing.
More significant is evidence in polls of a widening divide on the issue by age, suggesting to many Republicans that the potency of the gay-marriage question is on the decline. It simply does not appear to have the resonance with younger voters that it does with older ones.
Consider this: In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, released on Monday, 31 percent of respondents over the age of 40 said they supported gay marriage. By contrast, 57 percent under age 40 said they supported it, a 26-point difference. Among the older respondents, 35 percent said they opposed any legal recognition of same-sex couples, be it marriage or civil unions. Among the younger crowd, just 19 percent held that view.
Steve Schmidt, who was the senior strategist to Senator John McCain of Arizona during his presidential campaign, said in a speech and an interview that Republicans were in danger of losing these younger voters unless the party comes to appreciate how issues like gay marriage resonate, or do not resonate, with them.
“Republicans should re-examine the extent to which we are being defined by positions on issues that I don’t believe are among our core values, and that put us at odds with what I expect will become, over time, if not a consensus view, then the view of a substantial majority of voters,” he said in a speech.
Steve Schmidt demonstrates one of the key deficiencies with political strategy - the message must change with the whims of popular sentiment. For a people shaped by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the reality is precisely the opposite. At the risk of being labeled a cynic, my days as a voter may be very limited.
9 comments:
Let's be honest, is the gene-pool really going to miss those 2 guys reproducing? ;)
Perhaps this is a little natural selection?
Along the lines of "natural selection", and we may have addressed this before, I have always been confused by those who support gay marriage because they also seem to be ones who are evolutionists. In an evolutionary world, the inability to reproduce means the end of that trait - right.
Exactly.
I've always been confused by the fact that so many liberals are eveolutionists since evolution values the strong over the weak.
On a more serious note, it'd be great to have a Sunday School class or something like it addressing what it means to live as a Christian in a country where the Elect of God are no longer electable to political office. Too many of us have seen the sea-change going on in the world around and have had no idea how to re-act to it.
Timothy,
Like you I am wondering if a truly evangelical Christian can hope to win election on a national level.
Mike Huckaby had to put his years of sermon manuscripts under wraps because he knew the content of those messages would truly render him unelectable.
Politicians talk about God and even lift quotes from Jesus. But if they believe and proclaim what Jesus said about himself then their chances for winning a national election are nill.
Just to clarify (I'm not endorsing one view or the other), being an evolutionist does not mean that a person "likes" evolution or thinks that it should be a model for modern human societies; it simply means that a person believes that it happened. I am in support of the belief that it was stinking hot two days ago, but that is not the same thing as saying that I support the actual notion of ninety-some-degree temperatures (I emphatically do not).
Thus, while gay marriage and evolution might both be debatable issues, they are not contradictory, as belief in evolution as an explanation of the past is not the same as belief in evolution as a means for future human progress. You will find the latter notion (however unintentionally expressed) in third-world ghettos, not in universities and research laboratories.
--Dave
@Dave,
What you say is technically true. Belief in evolution as an explanation for the past (and I believe we're talking macro evolution here - not micro evolution which has been proven true) as a substitution for God typically destroys one's basis for morality outside of the natural order of things. There ceases to be issues of morality for the only source of morality is either God's law or something culturally defined which of course would have evolved with us and is therefore subject to further evolution.
One can certainly be a logical evolutionist and still have a "live and let live" attitude about homosexuals. But if the only logical purpose of being is to ensure your genes get passed on to the next generation? Those who wish to not pass those genes on must either be considered illogical or a genetic fluke (not necessarily immoral for what is morality anyway?). Anyway, more homosexuals simply means more potential mates for the logical evolutionists.
But who cares anyway? The logical evolutionist should also be painfully aware that life has no meaning anyway since death and time eventually obliterate everything you've ever done and will do. Cheers!
Timothy (and all),
As somebody who's currently in the Not Enough Information camp of the evolution debate, I am interested in your take on "creative evolution", whereby evolution occured, but only by God's direction, his intervention making possible some of the biologically questionable 'macro' events that are part of evolutionary theory.
--Dave
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