Yes, as it turns out, the Tea Party hates gay people the most. In a just-released Washington Post poll, members of the Tea Party came in as the lowest supporters of same-sex marriage by a huge margin. The poll overall finds that 53% of all adults (and 52% of registered voters) believe same-sex marriage should be “legal,” while 42% feel it should be “illegal,” maintaining the consistent response rate found by almost every major poll over the past few years, which find that the majority of Americans support extending civil marriage to same-sex couples.
The poll, conducted by the Washington Post in conjunction with the Kaiser Family Foundation, broke the results down into political party affiliation, and even further, into 13 sub-groups, one of which is the Tea Party.
While Democrats came in with 68% support for same-sex marriage, Independents with 57%, and Republicans with only 30%, a mere 6% of Tea Party members said they support same-sex marriage. No other group was close to that low support level. Even Republican religious values voters (along with pro-government conservatives)Â came in at 11%, almost twice the rate of Tea Party Republicans.
Perhaps what many might find most-shocking is that the Tea Party, since its inception, has claimed their only concerns are smaller government and lower taxes, despite all evidence to the contrary.
This certainly refocuses that claim.
For those struggling with “not supporting same-sex marriage” equating “hate gay people,” it’s really quite simple: If you don’t support marriage equality, you are saying you believe gay people just aren’t as good as you are, they are “less-than,” and they don’t deserve the exact same rights that you do, merely because of who they are, who they were born as. What does that sound like?
Ironically, the Tea Party’s favorite symbol, the Gadsden flag (image, top,) reads, “Don’t tread on me.” Apparently, that works only one way.
Image, top, by Lexicon, Vikrum
Poll images via Washington Post