Election night

Ett annat inlägg från min sons blogg.

Dear nation as a whole, congratulations.
Dear Kansas,
Dear California, Florida, and Arizona, what the fuck? Congratulations on re-entering the ranks of the states who have discrimination written into their state constitutions.
Dear(although this word is highly inaccurate) anybody I know who voted yes on any measure to ban gay marriage, consider our friendship over. You over-believe in your holy scripture, and have violated the secularity of our society, or are highly irrational. Most likely some combination of the three, and I’m ashamed to know you.
Dear Michigan, congratulations on allowing stem cell research.
Dear Racists, this is just one more step.
Dear Homophobes, you’re next.
Dear fundamentalists…your way is coming to an end.
Dear atheists, our time will come, when no longer the shackles of a religious society will be weighed as a crux upon all of our heads, labeling us as second-class citizens, tying us down with ridiculous dogma, and hampering the scientific and social advancement of the human race. Only when we are a secular nation, free to practice religion, but not to impose it, can we truly be free.

Long has our society been divided, by race, by class, by religion, and by other arbitrary conditions. Even American government, for a long time, barred non-whites, non-land owners, and non-Christians from holding office. I do not say that the election of Barack Obama was a groundbreaking thing, in that there is nothing inherently special about having a black president. What I shall call groundbreaking is the existence of a culture that has little enough problem with such an event to bring it about.

In 2007, a Gallup poll revealed that 95% of Americans would vote for a Catholic president. This came as little surprise, as one of the more popular presidents in recent history, JFK, was himself Catholic. However, the next number struck me as shocking. 94% of Americans would vote for a black president. Despite the results of the election, I’m not quite sure I believe that, and I shall expound upon this shortly. 92% would have voted for a Jew, 88% for a woman, Hispanic: 87%, Mormon: 72%, married thrice: 67%, 72 years of age: 57%, gay: 55%, and an atheist: 45%. I am especially cynical of the numbers for black, 72, gay, and atheist.

For one, the election between Obama and McCain was relatively close, despite the huge electoral difference. 46% of Americans voted for McCain. Unless we are to believe that most of the Americans who would vote for an old president did, it seems odd that only 57% would support an old candidate.

Congress contains 130 Catholics and 30 Jews in the House and an additional 25 and 13 in Senate, compared with 3 and 0 in our initial Congress. This progress, we should think, would also apply to gays and atheists. But by my count, there is one openly atheistic representative(Pete Stark), and one openly gay(Barney Frank). If we are to accept claims that position atheists and gays at approximately 10% of the population, and near 50% would vote for either(and, forgive my assumption, but I put most of these people on the liberal half of the spectrum, probably in the libertarian quadrant), one should expect at least…1% representation? half a percent? A few in the more liberal parts of America?

A Zogby poll in January of this year had numbers I find far more likely. 50% of people would not vote for an atheistic president, 20% would, and 30% were unsure. This retains similar numbers to the Gallup poll, while splitting potential voters into two groups. Those who would not care about a candidate’s religion, and those who would POSSIBLY vote for such a candidate, under very specific circumstances, and don’t want to rule it out entirely, so as not to feel entirely bigoted. (The stereotypical ‘I’m not a racist/homophobe/anti-atheist, I have lots of black/gay/atheist friends’)

Two conclusions come to mind at this data. One, the elderly are more likely to vote, while youth are less likely to see such race/religion differences as important. Thus, while the poll was about all Americans, it fails to reflect voting inequity. So while 45% of Americans might vote for an atheist, of those 45%, 60% are in the younger half, and thus are less likely to vote. This would similarly apply to blacks and gays, and apply in a reversed fashion for age. Another possibility is the lack of a neutral option. Given a choice between a yes and a no, people who were not entirely supportive of atheists, gays or blacks might in theory accept the idea, and thus say yes. But given the amount of rhetoric given to claims of scripture, godliness, and divine will in political speeches, I very much doubt that America, at the moment, would support an atheist or homosexual for president.

In polls where the ‘maybe’ option is added, such as the Zogby poll, atheists poll much more as I’d expect them to. Even using the data from the Gallup poll, however, atheists remain the one group of people in society against whom discrimination seems both ordinary, ubiquitous, and unprotested.

Effectively, in terms of political advancement, atheists are in place of blacks or Jews in 1789, but unlike most other groups, there has been no upward trend with time. I wonder what it can say about our nation…