I think your post comes from the general American misunderstanding of the term “liberal”.

I refer you back to my earlier post:
http://www.bitheway.co.uk/2008/10/18/gay-politics-vs-bisexual-politics/#comment-1148

There is also always confusion around the term “fiscally liberal”.

A liberal economic policy is essentially a laissez-faire approach, which you would probably today associate more with the Republican Party. Lower taxes, less regulation, free trade etc.

However, the American Right has smeared the word liberal so badly that they have essentially inverted the terms so that “fiscal conservative” means classic liberal economics and “fiscal liberal” means leftist economics. Honestly I feel like smacking you guys sometimes… Why did you have to take the name of a perfectly sound and well thought out political philosophy and use it to refer to Socialists?

Actually I know the answer: The Christian Right saw an opening to associate progressive though with leftist economic policy and exploit America’s fear of communism. This is why in the US the word liberal remains a borderline insult.

Sidenote:
It bothers me that a group advocating acceptance tends to be so closed minded regarding politics. While it hasn’t occurred on this forum, so often individuals in the gay community assume everyone who is gay is left on the political spectrum, or that everyone who is not is ignorant and closed minded. I mean, not all of us are fiscally liberal.

An often unsung hero of this is the publication Bi Community News. Which trys to cover many important issues to bisexuals, unfortunetly it is thus far only a paper publication as it depends primarily on donations to keep going. As there is still much confusion in mainstream politics as to just what bi issues are specifically and why they can’t just be lumped under gay issues, it has yet to be able to access the funding it deserves. I deeply wish i could see it in glossy glory alongside ‘Attitude’ or ‘Diva’ or with the distribution of ‘the Pink Paper’ but it feel we are a ways of from that yet.

I believe many issues arise from parties scewing the point slightly. Take Liberal Democrat’s ‘Homophobia is Gay’ button badge campaign launched last year.

On the face of it, it would appear to be a humourous and effective way of combating homophobia in our schools.
However, i would point out that while the intension is good, it is still allowing ‘gay’ to be used in a negative context and this is what needs to be addressed. I remember when i was at school and it was acceptable at the time to call someone you thought was stupid a ‘spastic’ a term which is not tolerated any more and is greeted with disgust if it is.

Anyway, those are my thoughts i apolagise for straying from the central point.

If I could remember the source I would gladly share it, I really should have noted it down in the article. I probably read it on-line, so the information would be linkable. I’ll certainly look try to it up, though I wouldn’t be surprised if my source turns out to be several years out of date.

If you have access to more recent figures, please share them and I’ll amend the article.

For the record the reasoning is almost certainly based on raw numbers and not proportion of membership, in the context it wouldn’t be meaningful to talk in terms of which party had the largest proportion of gay members, as the focus of the article was where do gay vs bisexual people tend to align themselves on the political spectrum. Though we must be careful not to assume that people always vote for the party that offers the best support for their sexuality. Often other issues and policies draw LGBT people towards a political party, we are not single issue voters.

That said this was not the purpose of the article to link sexuality with a political party, but more to explore my theory of a link between sexuality and political ideology. I have along the way linked political parties to political ideologies, but don’t think that just because I’ve done that, I’m saying Gay is Labour, Bisexual is Liberal Democrat. That would be simplistic and would be inferring too much.

The commonality of voting liberal and being out as bi – picking a third option twice as it were – does show up strongly in eg surveys of people who go to BiCon. But then BiCon does attract a disproportionately well-educated demographic, which also is the demographic most likely to vote gold rather than red or blue. There may be a lot of chicken-or-the-egg there!

Communist> Democratic Socialist > Social Democrat > Social Liberal> Liberal > Libertarian > Anarchist

In the US the Democractic Party includes Social Democrats and Social Liberals. Yet u tag them all as “liberals” and when you use the word in the US you mean “far-left wing”.

A genuine liberal however, will have a fairly moderate view of economic issues, wealthfare etc. Being equally sceptical of state controlled monopolies as much as a corporate monsters. American’s don’t tend to forget such people exist because there are no parties in your county representing them. Though they do make up a significant proportion of what you call “independent voters”.

But for the record…

This article was an observation on the politics associated with the gay community and gay activism. It is not intended to be a judgement or presumption of individual political persuasions.

Conservatism isn’t a political ideology or movement, that’s not what its about. Conservatism is about holding the popular line and maintaining mass appeal. When popular opinion shifts so do ‘conservative’ policies. Conservatism just represents opposition to whatever progressive idea on the table today. Its a protest against change.

The only time conservatism radically changed the world was when both Thatcher and Reagan simultaneously embraced a 150 year old liberal concept known as Free Trade. However, their failure to apply the liberal harm principal to economic policy meant they created behemoth corporate monopolies, who in turn thanked for making them so rich by funding their campaigns, and thus conservatism became tied to big business.

jm

Actually your point is probably the result of the American mislabelling of “social democrats” as “liberals”.

A “liberal” is somewhere in between a social democrat and a libertarian.

Here’s a span of political ideologies across the political spectrum:

Communist> Democratic Socialist > Social Democrat > Social Liberal> Liberal > Libertarian > Anarchist.

Note the absence of Conservatives? That’s because they don’t fit on this axis of the political spectrum. In fact as conservatism isn’t an ideological political movement, its difficult to plot them anywhere (I can explain separately if you are interested.)

Unlike social democracy, liberalism supports equality of opportunity, and not equality of outcome, preferring a meritocracy instead. Liberalism also has a distrust of monopolies, both public and private, which puts it at odds with libertarianism who believe in a wholly unregulated economy and with social democrats who might be inclined to nationalise industries.

best,

jm