Will the Homosexual Agenda become an important issue in 2012?

[TJ in Oregon]

Same-sex marriage and civil unions will be an important issue in 2012, but more in the same way that abortion is an important issue. Most people, outside of those whose ideology prevents them from being swing voters anyway, don't have strong opinions about it and probably really don't care that much. This will become more an issue like abortion that just polarizes people to particular parties than an issue that actually determines the outcome of elections. The 2012 election will be determined by economics provided the Republicans nominate a competent candidate (and I think we'll pick Romney in the end). Homosexuality will be a political sideshow, not the main event.

Homosexuality and the various proxy issues involved, such as gay marriage, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, etc. is something like abortion’s alter ego. On abortion, the majority of the nation is pro-choice but the pro-life side of the argument has a much stronger allegiance to the issue. Pro-choice support is largely soft-support based on people who mostly vote for other issues. Not to say the pro-choice side doesn’t have devoted activists, just that it has fewer of them. Gay marriage has been the opposite and the pro-gay marriage side has the smaller number of devoted activists while opposition has been based on soft support, ie. the people who think homosexuality is “icky” but don’t have a firm reason to oppose legal recognition.

Now, the soft opposition to gay marriage is collapsing. This would have been very hard for conservatives to stop because conservatives have been fighting to save a meta-stable political state that is contradictory. After the sexual revolution of the 1960s (and earlier growing support of contraceptives among mainline Protestant sects) it became socially acceptable to look at porn, or to have pre-marital sex, or to use a condom. Once we decided those things are okay, then why is homosexuality any different really? Over the last ten years we’ve seen plenty of polls where about 60% of Americans believe pre-marital sex is okay and closer to 70% believe divorce is okay. How on earth can anyone expect an electorate like that to keep gay marriage illegal? Yet, that is in practice what conservatives are trying to preserve. It’s an unwinnable war because most of the conservative support was based on feeble ideas like “gay sex is icky”.

Note: I use “you” as a blanket reference to all social conservatives
So where do we as social conservatives go from here? Other than abortion (abortion is the only social issue with stable views across all age groups for most surveys) we are going to lose these fights and continue losing them. I think we may be hitting the reality that changing our culture and its morals can’t start with politics. It may end up there, but it has to start with individual people. As Mother Theresa once said, “Be the change you wish to see in others”. Hold strong to your moral convictions through thick and thin and don’t give in to whatever concupiscence you experience in life. We may individually feel that God is dead to our world, but realize that God can’t be dead to the world as long as he lives in you. The other thing is, we can’t pretend like we’re either a) better than everyone else or b) some kind of tragic victim of society. Doing that is an attention gathering tactic and just annoys people. I’m not saying don’t vote (heck, I’ll vote no on gay marriage if we get a ballot initiative in Ohio), but if we really want to change our society’s ideas of right and wrong the place to do it is in our lives not at the ballot box.

[TJ in Oregon]

CJK:

The only reason we are "losing" is because a) the Homosexual Agenda dominates the media and b) we don't have an articulate person out there explaining the nature of the Agenda's threat or even that there is an Agenda at all.

I completely agree with you on (a) that the main political endgame here is recognition that homosexual relationships are morally equal to heterosexual relationships. But, it’s pretty obvious that this is the goal and revealing it doesn’t really help a whole lot (at least not in intellectual-ish circles like this).

Part (b) really is the crux of our political problem, coming up with an articulate explanation of how homosexuality is bad for society without bringing up morality and/or religion is rather hard. The reason why morality/religion are not satisfactory for an argument is that most people who think homosexuality is a sin either already oppose gay marriage or don’t believe that morality should be a consideration in making laws. In order to do this, we really need a powerful utilitarian argument about how homosexuality hurts society and it is in our best interests not to recognize same-sex marriages. To be honest, I’m still searching for a coherent argument that makes sense to people who don’t believe homosexual acts are morally wrong and would love to hear one.

I think the closest anyone on this board has come is Millhouse when he was posting about declining birth rates and the economic effects. It is completely correct that population changes can cause economic booms and busts. Look up “Contraceptives and the Celtic Tiger” if you want some proof of this. Our country does have a declining birth rate, now below the replacement rate and that probably will hurt us economically in 10-20 years if we aren’t saved from demographic doom by immigration. But this is a bit of a stretch to argue against gay marriage from. It’s really suited to argue for banning contraceptives, but that’s political suicide. I’m not sure this argument will convince anyone who doesn’t already oppose gay marriage.

We also need to find a way to talk with gay people without looking like @$$holes. We’ll have to find some way of respectfully saying no to all the LBGT(and sometimes Q) people in this country. As someone else already said beating up gay people won’t make them decided to go straight.

It would take an exceptionally skilled politician to pull all this off. I have never seen nor met such a person with this capability, though maybe he or she is out there somewhere…

We just have people muttering about "traditional marriage" without explaining why it is important.
 

This is a great point. I haven’t heard anyone on the Republican side ever really explain this. Maybe somewhere in here lies the elusive answer I can’t find

[TJ in Oregon]

Part of the problem with having a declining population is the economic effect known from the article that highlighted its occurance in Ireland called "Contraceptives and the Celtic Tiger". Its main point point is that there is an economic effect of what portion of the total population is working-age. As a society becomes industrialized, it first experiences a drop in the mortality rate causing a population boom. Once contraceptives become available (in Ireland's case through legalization) the society experiences a sudden drop in the fertility rate. This creates a "boom" generation, ie. those born after the mortality drop and before the fertility drop. Once this boom generation reaches working age, the fraction of the population that is working age becomes skewed and an economic boom is experienced. In Ireland, this boom occured in the 1990s, aided by very right-wing business policies, and is called the Celtic Tiger.

But, once the boom generation passes working age, (see the US in 20 years), the fraction of the population that is working age is going to drop off significantly since they have had fewer kids to replace them. Now, too few people are contributing to the economy and too many are being supported by others. This could lead to variety of problems and perhaps the legalization of euthenasia. It's not even so much the decline in population but more the sudden drop in fertility rate. If we could take a slower drop it would work better.

Yeah, as probably everyone can see this is a stretch to link to gay marriage but since this thread has deviated from that topic enough, well, what the heck? In this line of thinking, gay marriage is not the single most important event that is a harbinger of the destruction of western civilization, but rather just another brick in the wall.