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God, guns and gays
The phrase God, guns and gays describes the focus on social issues as political priorities for a significant number of right wing voters in the United States. The term is also used by analysts who argue that in the voting booth, socially conservative concerns allegedly displace economic concerns, and that White working-class voters are moving to the right when their economic concerns are ignored.[1] Indirectly, the term refers to the Republican Party's perceived core voters: Christian fundamentalists, gun nuts, and homophobes.[note 1]
Support for religious policy, or opposition to secularising forces, opposition to gun control, and opposition to same-sex marriage or other LGBT civil rights concerns have formed useful "wedge issues" in the past, though this is no longer the case: since 2010, a growing majority of people polled have supported same-sex marriage.[2] The moral panic over same-sex marriage would seem to have been replaced by transphobia.[3]
The phrase originated as part of Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe's 1994 campaign.[4]
References[edit]
- ↑ Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas is probably the best-known instance of this argument.
- ↑ Attitudes on Same-Sex Marriage (May 14, 2019) Pew Research Center.
- ↑ The Republican Party Finds a New Group to Demonize by Adam Serwer (April 13, 2021) The Atlantic.
- ↑ Freshmen: What Happened to the Republican Revolution?. Linda Killian. 1999.
Notes[edit]
- ↑ These often turn out to be the same people.