
Secular ‘values voters’ are becoming an electoral force in the US – just look closely at 2020’s results
Phil Zuckerman, Pitzer CollegeThe voting patterns of religious groups in the U.S. have been scrutinized since the presidential election for evidence of shifting allegiances among the faithful. Many have wondered if a boost in Catholic support was behind Biden’s win or if a dip in support among evangelicals helped doom Trump.
But much less attention has been paid to one of the largest growing demographics among the U.S. electorate, one that has increased from around 5% of Americans to over 23% in the last 50 years: “Nones” – that is, the nonreligious.
I am a scholar of secularism in the U.S., and my focus is on the social and cultural presence of secular people – nonreligious people such as atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and those who simply don’t identify with any religion. They are an increasingly significant presence in American society, one which inevitably spills into the political arena.
In this last election, the emerging influence of secular voters was felt not only at the presidential level, but also on many down-ballot issues.
The new ‘values voters’
For years, both scholars and pundits have referred to the political impact of “values voters” in America. What that designation generally refers to are religious men and women whose scripturally based values coagulate around issues such as opposing marriage equality and women’s reproductive autonomy.
But dubbing such religious voters as “values voters” is a real semantic bamboozle. While it is true that many religious Americans maintain certain values that motivate their voting behavior, it is also very much the case that secular Americans also maintain their own strongly held values. My research suggests they vote on these values with just as much motivation as the religious.
Sex education
This played out in November in a number of ballot initiatives that have flown under the national media radar.
Voters in Washington state, for example, passed Referendum 90, which requires that students receive sex education in all public schools. This was the first time that such a measure was ever on a state ballot, and it passed with ease – thanks, in part, to the significant number of nonreligious voters in the Pacific Northwest.
The fact is, Washington is one of the least religious states in the union. Well over a third of all Washingtonians do not affiliate with any religion, more than a third never pray and almost 40% never attend religious services.
The referendum’s passing was helped by the fact that nonreligious adults tend to value comprehensive sex education. Numerous studies have found that secular Americans are significantly more likely to support comprehensive sex education in school. In his research, sociologist Mark Regnerus found that secular parents were generally much more comfortable – and more likely – to have open and frank conversations with their children about safe sex than religious parents.
Drugs policy
Meanwhile, voters in Oregon – another Pacific Northwestern state that contains one of the most secular populations in the country – passed Measure 110, the first ever statewide law to decriminalize the possession and personal use of drugs.
This aligns with research showing that nonreligious Americans are much more likely to support the decriminalization of drugs than their religious peers. For instance, a 2016 study from Christian polling firm Barna found that 66% of evangelicals believe that all drugs should be illegal as did 43% of other Christians, but only 17% of Americans with no religious faith held such a view.
Science at the ballot box
Secular people are generally more trusting of scientific empiricism, and various studies have shown that the nonreligious are more likely to accept the evidence behind human-generated climate change. This translates to support for politicians and policies that take climate change seriously.
It may also have factored in to the success of a November ballot measure in Denver, Colorado, to fund programs that eliminate greenhouse gases, fight air pollution and actively adapt to climate change. The ballot passed with over 62% of the vote – and it is of note that Denver is one of the most secular cities in the nation.
Meanwhile voters in California – another area of relative secularity – passed Proposition 14 supporting the funding of stem cell research, the state being one of only a handful that has a publicly funded program. Pew studies have repeatedly found that secular Americans are far more likely than religious Americans to support stem cell research.
Values versus values
On issues that the religious right has held some sway in recent years, there is evidence of a counterbalance among secular “value voters.”
For example, while the religious have been more likely to oppose same-sex marriage, secular Americans are more likely to support it, and by significant margins. A recent Pew study found that 79% of secular Americans are supportive, compared to 66% of white mainline Protestants, 61% of Catholics, 44% of Black Protestants and 29% of white evangelicals.
There are many additional values that are prominent among secular Americans. For example, the U.S. Secular Survey of 2020 – the largest survey of nonreligious Americans ever conducted, with nearly 34,000 participants – found strong support for safeguarding the separation of church and state.
Other studies have found that secular Americans strongly support women’s reproductive rights, women working in the paid labor force, the DACA program, death with dignity and opposition to the death penalty.
Secular surge
According to Eastern Illinois University professor Ryan Burge’s data analysis, around 80% of atheists and agnostics and 70% of those who described their religion as “nothing in particular” voted for Biden.
This may have been decisive. As Professor Burge argues, “it’s completely fair to say that these shifts generated a two percentage-point swing for Biden nationwide. There were five states where the gap between the candidates was less than two percentage points (Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina). Four of those five went for the Biden – and the nones were between 28% and 37% of the population in those key states.”
As this past election has shown, secular values are not only alive and well, but they are more pronounced than ever. It is also noteworthy that more openly nonreligious candidates were elected to public office than ever before. According to an analysis by the atheist author and activist Hemant Mehta, not only did every member of the secular Congressional Freethought Caucus win reelection, but 10 state senators who are openly secular – that is, they have made it publicly known that they are nonreligious – were voted into office, up from seven two years ago. There is now an all-time high of 45 openly secular state representatives nationwide, according to Mehta’s analysis. Every one of them is a Democrat.
Religious voters will certainly continue to vote their values – and for politicians that express similar views. But so, I argue, will secular voters.
Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies, Pitzer College
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Watch The Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin free until 8/30/20

PBS is making it’s documentary, The Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin free to watch through 8/30/20! Ursula K. Le Guin was a trailblazer writing about complex and interesting societies, her stories reflected the deepest questions that mainstream society has only recently begun to face in meaningful ways. The Left Hand of Darkness (winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards) in particular is a must read.
View it on the Open Culture web site before it goes away.

American Gothic Literature, a new kind of horror story
A Review of “American Gothic Literature”
Ruth Bienstock Anolik, 2019, McFarland & Company Inc. 306 pages
Like the genre it examines, this work is insightful, inspiring, exhilarating, and challenging. However, it is not for the faint of heart! A somewhat exhaustive look at the history and current state of American Gothic literature, Ruth Bienstock Anolik takes the reader on a tour of not just a uniquely American literature, but of the emergence of an American identity derived from its Old World beginnings.
Unlike many other mainstream works it has an emphasis on the marginalized and powerless peoples of America that is uncommon. While it does not attempt to allow these peoples to speak for themselves, as might expect of a work of a literary history, it does effectively revel many stories through an examination of academic works. While this might sound dry the author makes excellent use of broad overarching themes contrasted with small details that draw the readers’ attention. For example, the work effectively moves between examinations of 17th and 18th century European folk tales and modern American Gothic/Science Fiction novels to point out “hidden” themes of feminism, alienation, oppression and dispossession that might otherwise be lost to readers of both types of literature. In this way the author links such disparate works as Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” with Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto” and “He, She and It” by Marge Piercy to show how they inhabit a shared space and each contributes to American Literature in unexpected ways. Gothic tropes are examined, placed in context to their world and re-examined to show how they contribute to the understanding of our (modern American) world.
American Gothic’s central theme is that Gothic literature, although confined to it’s own tropes is also very flexible, further, America has produced it’s own version of Gothic literature. This version grew out of the English and American writers who have dealt with this situation since the birth of our country. “American writers are haunted by feelings of inadequacy, and of guilt, as American literature finds itself haunted by the looming ghost of its predecessor, English literature.”1 In spite of this, American Gothic has evolved to become a mature literature that is used to explore American issues. As Ms. Anolik points out, while examining an American classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
“in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the slave Cassy takes possession of herself by appropriating the Gothic narrative; in materializing Legreee’s fears, Cassy is able to make her escape and repossess her body from the bonds of chattel slavery. These examples illustrate the uses of the Gothic for the disposed and insecure American writer.”2
Ruth Anolik is not afraid of drawing conclusions from her source material, this is more of an essay meant to persuade us of a point of view than a history textbook. Her conclusions are logical and placed within the context of what she examines, and they are likely to surprise some people. They range from the subtle and somewhat obscure; for example, she points out the association of the feminine with the dybbuk and the masculine with the golem, to the more controversial association of Vampires and Zombies to the modern American aristocrat. Her language is for the most part value-free; she relies on the example she chooses and the writers examined words to help her make her points. Even though much attention is devoted to issues of marginalization and feminism social commentary is subtle and can be easily missed if the reader does not pay attention. All-in-all, this is a well-researched work with valuable insights. This work is highly recommended to those who are interested in American Literature or the Gothic in general.
1 P. 10
2 P. 272
The Good
Interesting thesis
Well researched
The Bad
Occasionally gets lost in the details
Sometimes difficult to follow
#ShutDownAcademia
Via #Shutdownstem On June 10, 2020, we will #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM, and #Strike4BlackLives. In the wake of the most recent murders of Black people in the US, it is clear that white and other non-Black people have to step up and do the work to eradicate...
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Dr. Neil Postman, a Short Book Review
Why should we care about 1970’s Television? Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is one of many works from the latter half of the 20th Century which bemoans what he calls the “Age of Show Business,” or what other people have called the culture of...
The origins of the Gothic
Professor John Mullan examines the origins of the Gothic, explaining how the genre became one of the most popular of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the subsequent integration of Gothic elements into mainstream Victorian fiction. Gothic fiction began...
We have the tools and technology to work less and live better
In 1930, a year into the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down to write about the economic possibilities of his grandchildren. Despite widespread gloom as the global economic order fell to its knees, the British economist remained upbeat, saying that the...
Why Liberals and Libertarians Both Have It Wrong — And Right
Liberals say that rising income inequality is hurting economic growth. Libertarians say that government regulation is to blame. Who’s right?Both, say Steven Teles and Brink Lindsey, who visited Stanford Graduate School of Business recently as part of its...
Job opportunity!
Human Rights Watch is seeking a Researcher and Advocate on Digital Rights to investigate, analyze, and advocate against human rights abuses related to online activities. The role of the Researcher and Advocate will include documenting and conveying the...
What Star Trek got Right and Wrong about Books
When you have to many booksLiving in a Silicon Valley cottage it became clear that something was going to have to go. Unfortunately for me that meant that my wife’s and my rather large collection of books was on the chopping block. So one weekend we took...
Will religiously unaffiliated Americans increase support for liberal policies, in 2018 and beyond?
Nearly one of every four people in the US is religiously unaffiliated. David Mislin, Temple University Last fall, the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute noted the growing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans: Nearly one of every four...
The Virtual Theme Park
Attribution: Science Friday
X-Files: The Deep State
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the X-Files(!) 21st Century Fox's game division FoxNext Games is about to release "The X-Files: Deep State". A role playing mystery/SF game that will transport you into the world of the FBI's paranormal investigators. ...
Koenig On Modern Star Trek
The original series’ Walter Koenig recently shared his opinion on modern Star Trek, including the three recent movies and Star Trek: Discovery.... Check it out: Koenig On Modern Star Trek
40 Years After ‘Star Wars’ Error, Newspaper Apologizes To Wookiee Community
In its 1977 review, The Dallas Morning News called Chewbacca a "Wookie." Now, on the film's 40th anniversary, the long national nightmare has ended. On that note: We, too, have something to confess. (Image credit: Elaine Thompson/AP) Source: 40 Years After 'Star Wars'...
Star Trek Discovery Trailer
https://youtu.be/4dxe_ugmIVM
Good news everybody!
Good news everybody, Matt Groening is giving us the first new Futurama content in years! Bad news, it will be a mobile game. Let's just hope it is better then the Simpson's games! Still, I'm sure it will be worth checking out when it is released (hopefully) later this...
Get me to Alpha Centauri!
I want my anti-matter! It’s hard to make, hard to store, expensive and volatile. But damn it, I want some! “If you had some,” you might ask, “what would you do with it?” Really? Do you have to ask? I would use it for fuel to get me to Alpha Centauri. Or perhaps...
The Raven-
It is often a fine line between SF and horror, finer still as we approach Halloween! In the spirit of the holiday here is a tidbit for your pleasure! https://youtu.be/BefliMlEzZ8
Science Fiction
Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
Franchises
Star Trek
Star Wars
Star Gate
Babylon 5
Authors
Politics and Political Science
Current Events
Key L=left R=Right M=moderate
S=Socialist Libe=libertarian
alternet (L)
BHL (libe)
crooks and liars (L)
Dissent (L)
The Economist (M)
FiveThirtyEight (M)
The Hill (R)
Institute for Humane Studies (M)
Jacobin (S)
Learn Liberty (Libe)
Liberty Explained (Libe)
Maclean’s (M)
Mother Jones (L)
Monthly Review (S)
The Nation (L)
The New American (R)
The New Republic (L)
People for the American Way (L)
Politics1 (M)
Politico (M)
ProPublica (M)
reason (Libe)
Tikkun (L)
The Washington Free Beacon (R)
The XX Committee (R)
Non-Partisan
Political Science
Brookins (L)
Cato Institute Libe
Political Theorists
General News
Academics
Economics
AEI (R)
Washington Center for Equitable Growth (L)
History
House Divided (Civil War Research Engine)
Philosophy
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Society
Research
Religion
Humanities
Literature and Media
Physical Science and Technology