According to this article people are generally OK with “gay men and lesbians“ serving openly in the military but are not as supportive of allowing “homosexuals” the same privilege.
Um, excuse me people. Gay men and lesbians = homosexuals. What the fuck is wrong with you that you can’t make the connection? What’s next, you support vegetarians but you don’t like people who don’t eat meat? Did you like Avatar but you hate all James Cameron films?
What really blew my mind was the greater discrepancy between how Republicans responded versus Democrats. Dems were all for gays and lesbians but far fewer supported homosexuals. Republicans didn’t have as wide a gap. Why the discrepancy per party? I won’t try to guess, it’s just weird.
Side note: The NY Times article mentions the difference between Republilcan and Democrat respondents but the CBS sitemakes no mention of it.
Why not? Liberal media afraid of embarrassing their base viewership? Kidding! I think they just haven’t updated the page yet.
It just shows that people will respond differently if a question is worded differently, even if the content is the same. I suppose gay sounds bright and cheery while homosexual sounds vaguely menacing. Also people have been exposed to the gay rights movement, not the homosexual rights movement.
Gay means your a man who likes a man. Homosexual means your a man who likes a man and is doing something about it.
OK seriously didn’t South Park do an episode about Fags, that was similar. The kids thought fags were lame and idiots, not gay. Cartman was saying you can be gay or you can be a fag or you can be a gay fag. To the kids fag meant riding around on a motorcycle making a lot of noise ruining people’s day.
Maybe they should have asked a few more questions:
Do you think fags and dykes should be allowed to serve openly in the military?
Do you think turd burglars and carpet munchers should be allowed to serve openly in the military?
No. Wording is important because people aren’t computers and have all kinds of subconscious processes that cause them to react differently to logically equivalent statements.
I am willing to bet that you believe you are immune to such silliness and that you are fully rational and aware of your biases. You would be wrong. The fact of the matter is that we are unaware of the vast majority of our heuristics and biases, a fact which is exploited by almost everyone who is in the business of getting people to do what they want, because it works on almost everyone, including you.
CBS poll of (a half-sample of) 1084 adults, conducted Feb 5-10, 2010:
Q: Do you favor or oppose permitting homosexuals to serve in the military? Do you favor/oppose that strongly or not so strongly?
Favor: 59% (34% “strongly”, 24% “somewhat”)
Oppose: 29% (19% “strongly”, 10% “somewhat”)
Q: What if they openly annonce their sexual orientation? In that case, would you favor or oppose permitting homosexuals to serve in the military?
Favor: 44%
Oppose: 42%
Washington Post poll of 1004 adults conducted Feb 4-8, 2010:
Q: Do you think homosexuals who do NOT publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?
Yes: 83%
No: 15%
Q: Do you think homosexuals who DO publicly disclose their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the military or not?
Yes: 75%
No: 24%
A substantial difference in answers to questions that mean the same thing, and which all use the word “homosexual.”
Interestingly, the CBS poll indicates that support for homosexuals serving in the military has dropped 8 points since January 2009. That should tell you all you need to know about the poll’s accuracy.
Not to say, of course, that support can’t drop, just that there’s no reason to believe it dropped or increased by such a huge factor in the span of a single year.
ARGH. Don’t you hate when someone else scoops you to the joke you were gonna make? Though I was trying to figure out a version that would work with ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ but not ‘homosexuals’. Ooh, I got it.
Peter likes gays and lesbians, but hates homosexuals
Peter likes transvestites, but hates cross-dressers
Peter likes Massachussetts but hates Boston
Peter likes The Player but hates Gosford Park
Kidding! I think they just haven’t updated the page yet.