Just to give you some context: I’m Black, my family is Black, and my uncle was the pastor of a church. It was an evangelical Presbyterian church that was very racially diverse. We had White people, Black people, Asian people, interracial couples, and so on. So, on the surface, it seemed fairly liberal, right?
The church had a lot of Trump supporters, but it also had a lot of Black members, including my uncle, who hated Donald Trump and still do. They didn’t like Trump, didn’t like the Republican Party, and generally voted Democrat.
To be specific, our youth group was small—only eight teenagers, four of whom were brothers. We were all people of color. One of the church members, however, was a hardcore Republican and MAGA supporter. He invited me and some of the other kids to come paint his fence one day, but my aunt told my mom she didn’t want me going over there because of his politics. There was even some friction within the church because some members supported Trump, while the anti-Trump members strongly disliked those who voted for him.
However, here’s what confuses me: almost every single one of the anti-Trump members—outside of me and maybe two other people—was extremely homophobic and transphobic. They were also all strongly pro-life. They hated abortion and viewed it as “murder.” One kid in the church literally said, “Gay people deserve to be hurt.”
So they held very socially conservative views, yet they didn’t support the Republican Party and hated Trump. Why is that? Why would someone hate MAGA while basically agreeing with many of the same social positions? Why would they call themselves liberals or Democrats? My uncle literally said he was a liberal who votes Democrat, yet he’s extremely pro-life. How can that be?
I’ll ask the same question about the other side. Look at Brad Polumbo—he’s gay, supports LGBTQ+ rights, and has spoken out against racism and homophobia, yet he’s still right-wing and supports the Republican Party. The same goes for Arielle Scarcella, who’s a lesbian, and Blair White, who’s a trans woman and probably the most famous example. I don’t think Blair is necessarily transphobic, but she supports Trump and identifies as Republican.
So why does this happen? Why do some people identify with a political party even when they disagree with that party on major issues? And why do some people reject a party despite agreeing with many of its core positions?
Well the first issue here is that your characterisation of both the left and the right is off from the actual values they represent. For instance the Republican party is actually surprisingly progressive when it comes to the gays (One of Trump and Vance’s biggest funders is Peter Theil a gay man) see Charlie Kirk.
The democratic party has only recently changed its position on gay marriage open borders etc. See Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
Historically many black people have voted Democrat because that is just what they have done and Obama played into this and secured this trend for a while longer.
Black people in america have always been quite homophobic as a demographic. This is why /pol made the Swastika black and brown when they redesigned the pride flag. They thought it would be funny to associate black people with gay people on the new flag.
Given all this people have opinions for various things and they value each of these things differently. They will thus logically vote for whoever best aligned with what they believe putting more weight towards those that support things they believe strongly. Their is of course some tribalism factor of I’ve always voted x thus I will continue voting x but logic will supersede this for a majority of people given their tribe becomes extreme enough.
This is why free speech in the philosophical sense is so important. It allows people to discuss their ideas and allows the best one to win in the marketplace of ideas.