A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on January 8th, 2009 in US News

I really don’t understand why liberals continue to try and remake reality. For example: Don’t blame blacks. Blame Mormons? Or you can look at Nate Silver’s semi-statistical analysis. Or you can read the spin from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

An in-depth analysis of the Proposition 8 vote released today shows that party affiliation, political ideology, frequency of attending worship services and age were the driving forces behind the measure’s passage on Nov. 4. The study finds that after taking into account the effect of religious service attendance, support for Proposition 8 among African Americans and Latinos was not significantly different than other groups. Through a precinct-by-precinct analysis and review of multiple other sources of data, the study also puts African-American support for Proposition 8 at no more than 59 percent, nowhere close to the 70 percent reported the night of the election. Finally, the study shows how support for marriage equality has grown substantially across almost all California demographic groups — except Republicans.

About the only true thing here is that the study uses 59% support for Prop 8 among blacks rather than the 70% reported earlier. The rest is unsubstantiated by the report (which you can read here).

Let’s break this down. Party affiliation simply cannot account for the passage of Prop. 8. Any statistical method that says it did can be considered faulty. Look at the big picture. Overall, Democrats account for about 44% of California’s electorate, with just over seven million Democrats. Another three million are unaffiliated. If my algebra works rightly, then there are about 16 million voters in California, meaning the remaining roughly six million are Republican. If party ID predicted vote on Prop. 8, then it would have been defeated. Independents would have had to break two-to-one to the Republican cause to break even.

According to the California Secretary of State, just over thirteen million Californians cast votes for President. Over eight million went to Barack Obama, the Democrat, and just under five million went to John McCain, the Republican. I’d say that this is a pretty strong indication of Party ID. Obviously, independent voters were not affiliating with the Republican Party.

Prop 8 also had just over thirteen million votes cast. 6.8 million were affirmative votes while 6.2 million were against. So 1.8 million people – approximately – voted for Barack Obama and also for Prop. 8. To say that party affiliation can predict both of these votes is simply idiotic. If Party ID predicted Prop. 8, then it can’t have predicted the Presidential vote. That means that, somehow, a very large number of Republicans voted for Barack Obama while an equally large number of Democrats voted against their candidate. See what I mean? It makes no sense.

There was never any doubt that political ideology would match with votes on Prop. 8. Last time I checked, one of the political stances that makes a person conservative is opposition to same-sex marriage. If you look closely at the comparison, what they are actually saying is that someone who says they are liberal is about twenty percent more likely to vote against Prop. 8 than someone who says they are moderate. Someone who says they are conservative is about twenty percent more likely to vote for Prop. 8 than someone who says they are moderate.

Hey, who knew? A test that proves that moderates are somewhere between the extremes. Wow. I’m impressed.

Now for the real meat of the study: “The study finds that after taking into account the effect of religious service attendance, support for Proposition 8 among African Americans and Latinos was not significantly different than other groups.”
Yes, if we take out a significant sub-cultural factor that separates blacks, latinos, and whites, we find there are fewer differences. Well, what did you expect?

According to the study itself, 57% of blacks attend religious services weekly. 47% of Latinos, 42% of whites, and 40% of asians also attend weekly. Yeah, if we pretend that 15% more blacks attend church service every week, I’m sure we’ll negate a whole lot of differences.

Look, no one ever argued that black people voted for Prop. 8 because they are black. They argued that black people voted for Prop. 8 because they have very strong ties to fundamentalist religions. Whatever outreach there was for Prop. 8, it didn’t include publicly bringing on clergy or people of faith to talk about how faith should not be used to deny civil rights. But, hey, if we pretend that it isn’t needed, then it isn’t a problem, right?

And looking at the breakdown of support for Prop 8 by race, it’s not difficult to note that only two racial cohorts are over 50% – blacks and latinos. Meanwhile, whites and asians were just under the 50% mark in their support of Prop. 8. So who pushed it over the top? I don’t care how big a majority you are in the state, if you support something 48%, it still won’t pass. But if the majority is fairly evenly split and a sizeable majority has lopsided support, it determines the outcome.

Finally, while it is true that support for anti-gay measures has dropped in the last eight years, it has to be noted that the groups in which it has dropped the least are blacks and latinos. In fact, the weakening for support of anti-gay measures among whites is more than twice what is is among blacks, and it is nearly three times as large among asians, who make up a similar segment of the electorate.

Again, it isn’t because they are black and latino, but being black or latino is a better predictor of religious observance than it is among whites. To put it another way, if you pick a white, a black, and a latino at random off of the street, you are more likely to get a weekly church attender from the latino group than the white group and an even bigger chance among the black group.

Pretending that difference doesn’t exist won’t do anything to advance civil rights. It just makes people look stupid.

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