Political Prejudice

Gallup gives us the following chart of people's unwillingness to vote for Presidential candidates from various demographic groups:

Obviously what we see here is that something in the 5-10% range of Americans are just generally bigoted, unwilling to vote for people in such mainstream demographics as women, baptists (?), and Jews. But then there are three categories that make people who are not just prejudiced in principle get squirmy: Mormons, queers, and atheists. I'd bet that Muslims would manage to make even atheists look acceptable, and Gallup presumably didn't bother polling that question 'cause the result would be depressing.

Quite honestly, I understand what it is about Mormons or atheists that people object to. Hell, I'd be mildly uncomfortable voting for a Mormon, though if it was Harry Reid vs. Sarah Palin I'd do it in a heartbeat. Religion is a matter of individual belief, and the individual beliefs that constitute a religion or the lack thereof often intersect with matters of public policy. I don't honestly think it's totally unreasonable to prefer that your President have a non-wacky religious orientation. Now, I think it's a little depressing that people are much more okay with a Mormon (and Mormonism, lest we forget, is really, really wacky) than someone who is not religious, given how many perfectly decent people are not religious. But hey, this is America, and if I'm not used to the fact that people just hate atheists here, well, I should be. (And I am.)

But honestly, what the hell is wrong with the people who wouldn't vote for a gay person? Like, okay, I realize that a lot of people find gayness icky, but any given gay person will be gay whether or not they are President. You're not increasing Total Gayness in the world by electing one of them. Now, the 32% figure who are willing to say they wouldn't consider voting for a gay person is probably basically just the unreconstructed homophobes, who believe for religious reasons that gay people are Horrible Wicked Sinners who live to defy and mock god with their unnatural, icky lifestyle. And to some extent those are just crazy people, the equivalent of the people who fifty years ago were sufficiently unreconstructed racists that they would have admitted they wouldn't vote for a black guy for President. Probably in another fifty years this stat will have changed, just as the anti-black prejudice has diminished over time.

But honestly, there is no conceivable way in which being gay would change someone's approach to being U.S. President. It's just totally irrelevant. It's kind of ridiculous that we're still countenancing this kind of attitude in the year 2011.