The Tea Party Says No to Gay Marriage

by Michael Jones · 2010-04-15 15:46:00 UTC
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Tea PartyWe know the Tea Party hates taxes, health care reform, and immigrants. Turns out you can add gay marriage to the list as well. Survey says ...

According to the New York Times and CBS, only about 16 percent of Tea Party activists support same-sex marriage, with a whopping 40 percent saying gays and lesbians should not have the right to marry. That number would certainly match the sentiment of many Tea Party rallies earlier this year.

That also gels well with an article on the Michigan Messenger this week that documented "Straight Pride" T-shirts at a Lansing, Michigan Tea Party rally. Get your Glenn Beck buttons. Get your Sarah Palin merchandise. And apparently, get your homophobic apparel, too.

The Tea Party poll by the New York Times and CBS is also indicative of some other patterns within the Tea Party movement. Most (52 percent) think that the problems of people of color get too much attention. Most (59 percent) think that Glenn Beck is a pretty righteous dude. And a whopping majority (73 percent) say that they are self-identified conservatives.

The Tea Party is not a monolithic movement by any means, and there are definitely Tea Party activists who are not only down with gay rights, but openly and proudly support equal rights. The problem is that these voices continue to get drowned out by voices like this (Yes, that really is Barack Obama performing oral sex on a Saudi Arabian prince. Just warning you.)

"Straight Pride" T-shirts. Offensive signs. Speakers who call the Obama administration "gangster government." That doesn't sound like a revolutionary movement. Instead, it just sounds like an extension of the same partisan politics and religious right-tinged politics that have been around since the dawn of time. Or at least since the dawn of Pat Robertson.

Photo credit: DavityDave

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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