Is Massachusetts not that liberal/progressive?

[memphis]

No state has a clear liberal majority. The perception of MA as some liberal graduate school utopia is a deliberate misconstruction by the right as part of their efforts to demonize certain parts of the country and tell working class white that they don't "belong" with the Dems. Metro Boston has a large, heavily-accented working class white, port city, old fashioned Dem base. Maybe not quite as important as 50 years ago, but still a major constituency for the Democrats. These folks are usually loyal Dems voters can cross over if the stars align for folks like Reagan or Scott Brown. This is true of New York, Philly, and Baltimore as well.

[memphis]

Where Massachusetts is one of the top 5 most liberal states in the country I also found it to be that lot of reactionary are thrown by Reagan Democrats who think Puerto Ricans are the scum of the Earth. My family is like this when I chat politics with them when I come down for a vist compare to my Vermont cousins who are very liberal. Basically the Scott Brown voters who think we should never question the scum-bag cops and that we should protect god in public events.

The current two term mayor of the largest city in Texas is an open lesbian.

As far as I can tell Houston is the largest city in the world with a lesbian mayor.

Municipalities are such a different ball of wax because people can really, really self-select. It happens with states to a much lesser degree, but if your job is in Atlanta, you're gonna be a resident of the State of Georgia. But you can pick from an endless number of towns. Given who routinely chooses to live in big cities all over America, there are few anchor cities in America where being a lesbian candidate for mayor would be that much of a hurdle.

[memphis]

The thing is, is that the mainline Christian religions (and I consider Catholics mainline for this purpose), are losing adherents in droves. That is why the Catholic percentage in the US is gradually drifting down despite the huge influx of Hispanics, and even though the Catholic figure is inflated somewhat because I suspect there is a particular high percentage of CINO's (Catholics in name only). So the mainline belts in the US have a particularly rapidly growing percentage of the "unchurched."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Excellent point. I don't have data, but even here in the Bible Belt, lots of non-Baptists are increasingly unchurched. For whatever reason, Baptists are supremely effective in getting their folks to remain strong believers, through and through, even if they don't ever go to church as adults. Catholics seem to have the opposite situation where a lot of folks go to church and then return home with more willingness to think critically. Probably because Catholics stress reasoning in their dogma ( even if I don't buy a lot of it), whereas fundies are all about faith. Perhaps this should be the Baptist anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3VTngm1F0&ob=av2e