Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.
The 2008 election introduced “low information voters” — people who don’t educate themselves about political issues until the waning days of a campaign. Now it appears that it was less educated people — not blacks and Latinos, as was originally suggested in early post-election analysis — that put Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment, over the top last month in California.
A survey released last week by Public Policy Institute of California (PPI) of voters found that the true determining factor in who voted for Prop 8 was not ethnicity. It was education level:
At the same time, a higher percentage of Latinos turned out to be in favor of restricting marriage rights: 61 percent, according to the new poll, which surveyed 2,003 California residents.
The overall numbers, as determined by the poll, show that 48 percent of Californians remain opposed to marriage equality for gays and lesbians, with 47 percent in favor of restoring marriage equality.
The most important single demographic difference between supporters of the amendment and advocates of marriage parity, however, is one of education and income, according to Mark Baldassare, the president of the Public Policy Institute of California.
The article cited Baldassare as saying that 57 percent of voters with a college degree opposed the amendment, while 69 percent of voters whose education had stopped after gradating high school cast their vote in favor of rescinding marriage equality.
Said Baldassare, “Both among whites and non-whites, among college graduates and among upper-income voters, Prop. 8 lost.”
Continued Baldassare, “Among both whites and non-whites, among non-college graduates and lower-income voters, Prop. 8 won.
“It seems to me that some of what we attributed to race and ethnic differences really had to do with a socioeconomic divide in regard to same-sex marriage.”
In July, a Field Poll showed that Prop 8 was losing 51 percent to 42 percent, but that was before the Yes on 8 campaign began barraging voters with misleading ads. One ad claimed that if the amendment failed, churches that refused to perform gay marriages would lose their tax exempt status. Another claimed that school children would be recruited in to homosexuality by being forced to learn about gay marriage.
Never mind that the rights of churches are broadly protected by the U.S. Constitution or that is silly to think that a gay couple would want to have their wedding at church filled with homophobes. And when the state superintendent of schools appeared in an ad stating that the claim that gay marriage would be taught in schools was false, Yes on 8 responded with an ad calling him a “liberal politician.
Based on the PPI poll, it appears that the operatives behind Prop 8 made a cynical calculation that they could fool half the people this time. Sadly, but not surprisingly, they were right.
I would be curious to see the education level of those who voted for Obama? Perhaps you could argue that the uneducated poor voted for Obama.
Is the author saying that only White elitest should vote?
I thought it was bigotry in the name of god that drove prop 8 to win. Religion is the source of homophobia.
Just yesterday in a forum I wrote about uneducated and poor people and their attitude toward prop 8.
The reason I came to my reasoning is my life experience, so here is a short resume:
Born 1948 in Brussels, Belgium and in one of the “bad areas”, my parents were poor, I went to school and at 13 started with “reform school”, at 14 I was a construction worker. I was some kind of a street fighter. At 16 some professor Higgins thought I was Eliza Doolittle and taught me English and it changed my life or what would have been my life without him and the English language.
So when you’re poor your language and accent is different than the other people, so they notice right away where you’re from and may eventually shun you, just like Blacks or Hispanics. As a street fighter the worst insult was calling someone a Fa***t and had I been one, no one would ever have known and I would have beaten the life out of this guy. In this area where poor people live there are gay people and they (still today) will never come out and the reason is simple come out and you’ll be shunned, laughed at, insulted to your face and don’t try a smart answer as this is your ticket to the hospital. What move out of the bad area? That near impossible because of the rent and the low paid job you have, a better paid job? you lack the education and your speech will give you away. So who is coming out of the closet?
To us poor, Black or Hispanics it’s those rich kids who can afford it. Do we like those rich bastards born with a silver spoon? They just land the best paid jobs because papa is helping, sure the liberal are helping but at the end of a demonstration they go back to their nice homes and we go back to our hovels, to an overworked wife, with kids they have no control on and the alternative is pray, pray God, go to church and hope for the best. Can anyone give me a good reason why the poor people should vote no on prop 8?, favor the oppressor?
Due to my “special” life I stayed in South side Chicago for 3 or 4 days with a black family my buddy and his wife took me to their local to watch a basket ball game and introduced me to the boss, I was the only white in there but I felt OK, as these were the real people, like me, hard working, with low pay (this happened in ’75). The next day I went back to the bar alone, the owner was acting nervous he bought me a beer, told me to sit at the corner of the bar, 10 minutes later my buddy was back, and I was told that as a white man I should never go alone in a bar in this area as this was playing with my life…
What of me? I am socially unadapted as I am rejected by my lower class environment as being the “intellectual”, and cannot have the kind of conversation I’d like to have with them, and still not really accepted by the old enemy but with whom I can converse with.
I never went back to school seeking a diploma, the reason is why should I lower myself in working hard to get a sheet of worthless paper showing that I have accepted the rule of the oppressor? I went and studied political science for a year in University I paid for it myself and could never receive a diploma, but I needed the knowledge. So as you can see old hatred die hard with the Black and the poor.
With the recession/depression coming, more and more poor and uneducated people are joining the military and that’s also no surprise to me as this is the reason why the government needs poor and uneducated people and needs the church to steer them in the “right” direction.
To John S quote
I would be curious to see the education level of those who voted for Obama? Perhaps you could argue that the uneducated poor voted for Obama.
Is the author saying that only White elitest should vote? unquote
I had hopes for Jesse Jackson…
and the author means that we should address the prop 8 differently, that true equality lies with the education of the lower classes and give them a real chance to prove themselves, it has nothing to do with elitism, there are idiots among the poor but also educated idiots and high tech idiots.
As for flex: religion is a tool used by the churches to steer their followers in the “right” direction, their direction, and could care less about homosexuality as is plain to see with the sentences for homosexual pedophilia and the millions of $ the Roman Catholic church had to pay.
The majority of Latinos and African Americans are not graduates of colleges or universities, but high school – so this makes sense, or confirms the data already known. But this is not surprising with the fact that students of colleges are influenced by progressive ideas, a curriculum structured to enhance state-school agenda. The vast majority of California professors are against Prop 8. This belief is in turn, in some degree or another, is taught within certain curriculum to the students. At least freedom to express and equal rights having higher value in society than the basic family unit of Heterosexual marriages. Much of the statistics were left out that showed significant demographic differences: Age, married/non-married (heterosexually marriage), single parents. Another fact that may shed light to this data is that non-college graduates are more likely to have more children than college graduates – and thus have a greater familiarity as to the value that marriage has.
A cat is a cat. A dog is a dog. Marriage is a union between one male and one female. It doesn’t take a poor person, a rich person, an educated person, or an uneducated person to figure that one out. It has nothing to do with bigotry or hate.
CA Prop 8 was NOT an anti anything nor did it purpose to remove anyone’s rights. NO ONE has a right to marry. That’s why people are required to get marriage licenses. Marriage has never been a right in this country. Prop 8 simply sought to specifically define marriage as it has been understood for thousands of years as between one man and one woman. It is only in the past few decades that a small minority has fought to undermine and bulldoze the rest of society to satisfy their own selfish interests. Marriage is for the sake of children;not adults. Marriage has been the bedrock of society providing the basic social unit upon which society depends. It is based upon natural law as well as moral law. If there was any lack of education on this subject it was clear that opponents of Prop 8 have no schooling on the phylisophical bases of law or social order, anthropology or simply the history of Western Civilization. A little theology wouldn’t hurt either.