Why are LGBT people always liberal?

This is an interesting question and one that may have more to it than you might think. I large part of conservative bias relates to how an individual responds to fear. One of the things that researchers have been able to find is that conservatives have a larger area in the brain responsible for dealing with the fight or flight response. Another thing that has been found is that the more threatened people feel in general, the more conservative their views get generally. I don't necessarily think more LGBT people are left-leaning to start with, and I suspect that the answer may be that less conservative minded people feel more uncomfortable being open with their sexuality so you don't see them as much.

 

They aren't all liberal. But yeah, most are and that's because liberalism focus a lot on social issues and also tends to be more open to change. While conservatives are usually more traditional.

 

I'm pretty far to the left especially by US standards--I like to think I'm just to the right of Jesus--so take with whatever salt you must. First off we aren't all liberal, but yeah most of us are. I think there's something to the experience of being pushed out or marginalized, the experience of feeling like life's rules were either built without you in mind at all, or perhaps consciously to exclude you, that leads to a certain empathy for others who have been pushed out or left behind. To me that empathy is the hallmark of classical liberalism...

 

Though I have grandparents who have two gay sons. They are conservative but have no problem with gay people. So sometimes it's a mixed bag. I am liberal though.

 

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They are not always liberal. That's a stereotype. More often liberal? I think so yes. I am left-leaning.

 

LGBT people are a minority. Liberals tend to spend more effort on recruiting minorities to their side by telling them the majority wants to oppress them and joining the liberal side is the only way to not be oppressed. That false logic automatically leads most minority groups to liberalism. It's pretty effective.

There's also always been a link between everything relating to sexuality and liberalism too. Since conservatism is heavily linked to religion in most places, and religion heavily restricts sexual things, people who are interested in sex and the various forms of expressing sexuality have had to fall on the more liberal side throughout history just to participate in that lifestyle.

The historical figure that exemplifies that best is probably the Marquis De Sade during the French revolutionary era. He was a noble from a conservative family in a super conservative country, but he was bisexual, obsessed with sex, wrote romance novels, made porn, opened brothels and had prostitution rings of both men and women working for him. There was no way he could do any of that as a religious conservative so he changed to an extremely far left liberal instead. Fun fact, the word 'sadist' is named after him because he was basically the creator of bdsm and sexual sadism.

Not all of us are liberal though, I'm a conservative leaning moderate Republican and my boyfriend is too.

 

Probably because historically the right side of the political dichotomy has been either overtly or secretly homophobic.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by 'liberal viewpoints.' I've noticed people mean slightly different things when they say 'liberal' or 'conservative' as in one person's version of how those terms are defined (in their head) is slightly different to the next.

Essentially I don't think everyone agrees on what "right" and "left" mean, it's just a social convenience to use such terms.

 

We're not always liberal. Hell, a large number of trans women are communist and anarchist.

Anyway, we're not conservatives because we're not interested in morally repugnant political views.

It tends to be the case that queer folks have more reasons to vote against conservatives than just civil rights protection: we also need health care, better access to education, and financial assistance when faced with temporary hardship.

 

Hmm.. I consider myself quite a conservative. There’s just nothing about me that is liberal. I’m not particularly political either.

 

There are some more conservative LGBT people.

I'm more of a liberal, but there are issues where I align more with conservatives. I'd say I'm left-leaning, but I feel like we should stop trying to classify everything as left/right and just be open to good ideas as a whole.

 

I completely agree.

 

A long time ago there used to be communites on this site called livejournal and conservative gays or conservative lgbt groups were on there. I don't have a livejournal account so I don't know if they still exist. Also, a while back when I was trying dating sites I came across 3 women who were conservatives. So yeah they do exist. I grew up in a very conservative household, actually I'm the only liberal in my entire family. I actually was a conservative for several years of my life but around 9 years ago started becoming more liberal. I'm not an extreme left-wing liberal I'm more somewhere between the independent/moderate to liberal, but in the recent mid-term election I voted straight democrat.

 

Being a minority gives me a lot of empathy. I've heard lots of shit about gay people which is either hitler-esque or untrue (or both!), which as made me critically think about controversial topics and form my own opinion.

 

LGBT rights tend to be on the left side of the spectrum. It's natural that most queer people are liberal.

 

This is particularly acute in the United States, where political happenstance has brought together social liberalism and state-centric and more redistributionist politics. It's not universal, though. I'll go into some detail (hence the spoiler), with examples, about why some of these exceptions might exist, for good or bad.

Spoiler

It is less prominent in certain other countries - many of which have right wing parties, or factions of right-wing parties, defined by social liberalism and liberal (conservative in US political-speak) economics, such as Australia (the majority of the gay men in the Australian Parliament are members of the right-wing Liberal party). In France, quite a number of gay people vote for the economic-right En Marche or (quite controversially) the hard-right nationalist RN. The ruling, liberal-conservative Dutch VVP is distinctly pro-gay. These examples go on and on.

It is not really that incompatible in Australia for an LGBT person, with access to universal healthcare, long-standing anti-discrimination laws that aren't seriously threatened and same-sex marriage, to be quite keen on LGBT rights but also like lower marginal income tax rates. If anything, the fact that fewer LGBT people have children can increase the incentive to minimise the cost of the welfare state - which often goes to benefit children and families. The gayest electorate in Australia is an historically 'blue-ribbon' conservative seat that has produced a Liberal prime minister and countless conservative MPs, while also being the home of the Sydney Mardi Gras. The historical chauvinism and hyper-masculinity of trade unions in many countries, linked as they are with economic-left parties, has also meant that left-wing parties sometimes didn't gain a monopoly on LGBT support when those movements were nascent.

In France, a sizeable (but by no means dominant) number of gay men indicated their support for Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration message because of concerns, well-founded or not, of socially conservative migrants, notably Muslim and/or African migrants who often form the basis of fearmongering in French politics.

In a more general vein, there's also the fact that overbearing government has often been a rallying cry of moderate-right parties in a way that can draw people whose sexualities and sex-lives are overgoverned.

In the US, however, you have a practically insane Republican Party and such extreme polarisation a lot of LGBT people will be naturally drawn to the Democrats and who will then have significant exposure only to Democratic politics. When, in a two-party system, one party is so deeply recalcitrant about recognising you or granting you rights, it's not a very inviting atmosphere to give the rest of their politics a go. And while this does exist to some extent, where left-wing parties over the rich world have been generally quite good at gaining LGBT support, it's just not as universal as US political culture would lead you to believe.

 

That's actually a good point.

In Quebec, for example, there isn't any party, be it left, right or center, that wants to take away LGBT rights. On the contrary, they progress no matter who is in power. We DO have a conservative party, but it's as likely as the green party to get in power (neither of them have elected a single deputy). Even then, I haven't really checked their ideas, so they might now want to touch LGBT stuff either.

 

I'm a registered Democrat, and most of my political and social opinions lean that way. However, there are some topics where I hold a more conservative/Republican view, or at least lean that direction. It just depends on the topic/issue at hand.

So I'm mostly liberal/Democrat, but not fully.