Once the "deluge" of gay marriage comes, will evangelicals leave politics?

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/30/the-coming-gop-evangelical-divorce.html

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[Lief 🗽]

Nah, they still need to pass laws telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies.

[Dave from Michigan]

I think some will leave politics but others will vote on other issues if both parties are the same to them on social issues. Most will stay republican the pro life/ pro abortion divide is still strong. If the evangelicals do leave it could be interesting to see what kind of political shift or even realignment happens.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Nope. They'll never "walk out". However I'm somewhat hopeful that they will eventually fade out of fashion, so to speak.

[Brittain33]

What's going to kill them is the number of Americans with no religion rising from the single digits in the 1990s to 20% and climbing. It's only starting to be reported, but it's a dramatic change that's going to make society look very different over the next 20 years, more like Britain than what the U.S. is now.

This is part of the Democrats' success in recent years, even if no one has an interest in acknowledging it. It's also one of the reasons acceptance of same-sex marriage is rising. The religious right is part-author of this situation, because they've identified religion with cultural issues and caused some people to leave their religions and throw the baby out with the bathwater, so it were.

[TDAS04]

They will certainly lose influence, but they will always find a new Satan to fight.  Whether or not they'll try to use the political system to fight that Satan (whatever that will be) remains to be seen.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

They'll be there, and they'll be politically active. Just like the religious communities in states like Massachusetts. But like in MA, their effectiveness will wane and they'll become just another strategic part of the GOP coalition — just not one with any influence with regard to calling the shots.

They'll probably only wind up getting involved with campaigns that inspire them — those with no chance of winning.

[memphis]

Of course not. Large blocks of Americans don't just monolithically choose not to vote. The GOP will continue to rail against gay marriage, though perhaps more quietly than in years past, and the evangelicals will still turn out to vote for them because that's what Jesus would have wanted.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Of course not. Large blocks of Americans don't just monolithically choose not to vote. The GOP will continue to rail against gay marriage, though perhaps more quietly than in years past, and the evangelicals will still turn out to vote for them because that's what Jesus would have wanted.

Leaving politics =/= Not voting

I don't mean evangelicals will literally stay home on election day. I mean the political infrastructure they have built up since the 1970s will decay, they will not hold as much sway with the Republican Party, and when they do vote, they will be driven by issues other than "Judeo-Christian values." I'm sure many of them will still vote Republican, but they won't be primarily motivated by "protecting life" or "defending traditional marriage." They will be motivated by conservative issues that are not religious in nature, like gun laws and "states' rights" and taxes.

The ones most likely to disengage altogether will be the downscale evangelicals. Many of them were Jimmy Carter Democrats at one time. As the Democrats moved to the left on social issues, and to the right on issues like free trade and globalization, those voters felt like that party had nothing for them, so they moved to the Republicans, who at least shared their views on social issues. If the Republicans won't even give them that, they'll stay home. If there were more of them, they might be able to start a George Wallace-style conservative-populist party to force one of the major parties to adopt some of their positions; but there aren't.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The ones most likely to disengage altogether will be the downscale evangelicals. Many of them were Jimmy Carter Democrats at one time. As the Democrats moved to the left on social issues, and to the right on issues like free trade and globalization, those voters felt like that party had nothing for them, so they moved to the Republicans, who at least shared their views on social issues. If the Republicans won't even give them that, they'll stay home. If there were more of them, they might be able to start a George Wallace-style conservative-populist party to force one of the major parties to adopt some of their positions; but there aren't.

Downscale evangelicals already don't participate at the same rate as their more upscale evangelical counterparts (which is true for pretty much every demographic in contemporary American politics). And they aren't as uniformly Republican either, especially at the state and local levels.  

[nclib]

I doubt it, but hopefully they could potentially decline in influence, at least in terms of a litmus test.

Evangelicals are pretty much the worst people, among those accepted into American politics, IMO.

[TNF]

They won't go away, they'll just recede. Evangelical Christianity as a political force has it's up periods in American history (1920s, 1950s, 1970s, 2000s) and will likely have another at some point. Just not right now. Whenever people start challenging the 'sanctity of marriage' (by then redefined as two people) and the 'sanctity of life' (by then including abortion, but not designer babies), then we'll see another wave of it manifest itself.

[DC Al Fine]

Not over SSM. Young evangelicals are somewhat okay with it, so long term that won't push them out.

[MaxQue]

Not over SSM. Young evangelicals are somewhat okay with it, so long term that won't push them out.

Well, it's quite hard to argue about sanctity of marriage or defending traditionnal marriage, when gay marriage was legalized 10 years ago.

Here, in Canada, the next generation won't remember the time it wasn't. And the sanctity of marriage didn't collapsed since then. Anyways, the religious right in Canada is totally mute about that since a couple of years. They focus on abortion (and are failing, since Conservative leadership knows than getting in that debate would ensure their defeat at the next election, by causing them a collapse in suburbs).

So, I assume than in the US, they will probably get over that defeat and focus on abortion, which isn't a defeat yet (youngs aren't fans of it, most of them I know in socially liberal Quebec are pro-choice, but they are bothered by abortion and would very much prefer than alternatives (adoption, cheaper or free contraception) would be offered, to reduce the number of them.)

[DC Al Fine]

Not over SSM. Young evangelicals are somewhat okay with it, so long term that won't push them out.

Here, in Canada, the next generation won't remember the time it wasn't. And the sanctity of marriage didn't collapsed since then. Anyways, the religious right in Canada is totally mute about that since a couple of years. They focus on abortion (and are failing, since Conservative leadership knows than getting in that debate would ensure their defeat at the next election, by causing them a collapse in suburbs).

Two points

1) That was/is a stupid argument against SSM. Marriage was going down the toilet long before gays started trying to get married. I have no idea why socons keep using it.

2) The best pro-lifers can do in Canada is screwing the Tories royally for going too pro choice by staying home/vote splitting