A particularly good example was the election of 2004 when John Kerry was the Democratic candidate for President. Gays picked this election to press their cause and that the Democratic party was not doing enough for them. This cost the Democrats to lose Ohio and the election. A second example is the election of 2016 when Hillary Clinton was the Democratic candidate for president. In this case there was some rebellion among most of the groups the Democrats supported. Women, African Americans, and Hispanics did not vote for Clinton in sufficient numbers to put Clinton over the top.
Although at one time the Republican Party was socially fairly liberal and supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, you can't imagine the Republican Party doing such a thing today. I think that the desire to feel that we are superior to someone else is programmed into us in a basic way, perhaps hard wired into our brains. It can only be sometimes overcome by education. But we still have the present Republican Party trying to find legal ways to prevent African Americans, in particular, from voting and the thought of Gays getting married drives them wild.
There are even Evangelical ministers who claim there are at least two passages in the Bible allowing or saying we should kill Gays.* One of these has said yes we should kill them, but not yet. First they should be given a chance to repent. This reminds me of when I visited Natchez, MS, many years ago. My late wife wanted to go into Antebellum houses. In one of these in a glass case, I saw a book titled, "The Biblical Case For Slavery." Thus it is common to find reasons in the Bible to discriminate against someone.
Furthermore, the Republican Party has become a religious party. I don't know of a single Republican Senator or Representative who isn't against abortion, even going back before pregnancy begins where some contraception methods prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb wall. Many are opposed to these sorts of contrceptives. The excuse for this is again based on religious grounds. The result is that many otherwise Republicans feel they cannot run for office because they disagree with the antiabortion strictures of the Republican Party (examples are Michael Bloomberg and Condoleezza Rice).
The result is that the long tradition of the Separation Of Church And State in America** is breaking down. Currently the degradation of this tradition involves the case of companies being able to pick and choose a part of a law, like the health care ACA, that they don't want to obey on religious grounds (the Hobby Lobby case), thus allowing religion to trump U.S. law. The result does not mean employees of the company can't get abortions, but, since it is part of the law, ultimately the U.S. government must pay for the abortions.
Thus there is a very basic separation between the Democratic and Republican Parties.
* http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/christian_pastor_says_gays_worthy_of_death_at_conference_with_3_gop_presidential_candidates
** Jefferson wrote,
| "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." ....................................................... However, the Court has not always interpreted the constitutional principle as absolute, and the proper extent of separation between government and religion in the U.S. remains an ongoing subject of impassioned debate" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state_in_the_United_States) |
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