In a new Insider/Morning Consult survey, Congress is perceived as being out of touch with many issues facing Americans today. In most survey respondents' opinions, legislators lack knowledge about higher education affordability, climate change, health care, social security benefits, economics, and LGBTQ+ issues. And, on those LGBTQ+ issues, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to oppose electing more LGBTQ+ legislators.
According to the poll, about one out of three Republicans believe having more LGBTQ+ people in Congress is wrong. And while this is a minority of Republicans, it is pretty significant.
The Biden administration fared slightly better on several issues than Congress regarding the in-touch and out-of-touch figures for the executive branch. However, the same data revealed that the Supreme Court fared slightly worse regarding LGBTQ+ rights and abortion access.
As an incidental statistic, 73 percent of atheists support including LGBTQ+ elected members of Congress. It is again evident that abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights are inseparable, as 73 percent of abortion supporters also believe it is good to have more LGBTQ+ members in Congress.
Four out of ten Republican men oppose LGBTQ representation in Congress, compared to about three out of ten Republican women, the survey found.
According to the survey, only about one out of ten Democrats said more LGBTQ+ representation in Congress would be bad. Moreover, among Democrats, women were less likely to oppose LGBTQ+ representation than atheists and students.
The survey suggests that almost one-in-five American adults think that more LGBTQ+ Americans in Congress is a bad thing.
Business Insider reports that the next session of Congress could see a record number of openly LGBTQ+ legislators, as a record number of LGBTQ+ people are running for Congress in 2022 than at any time in history, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, an organization devoted to electing openly LGBTQ+ people to government.
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