Easily Disgusted? Then You May Gross Out Over Marriage Equality

Don't blame me for the headline. Blame science. Or those with low disgust thresholds.

According to two recent studies, those who easily gross out, such as finding that they accidentally took a sip out of a stranger's drink or find an unflushed toilet, lean toward conservative ideologies on marriage equality and abortion. In one 181 participants of the study were asked how they would react to certain unpleasant situations and then asked about their political leanings.

Reports USA Today:

"The more sensitive to disgust you are, the more you might react intuitively negative to sexual or other bodily behaviors that might be seen as unusual or immoral," says Yoel Inbar of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Because disgust is a reaction to perceived impurity, he says, it might inform conservative values such as opposing homosexuality, gay marriage and abortion.

Wow. Just wow.

I don't really care to dig deep into the psychological reasons why these right wingers consciously or unconsciously equate the LGBT population with unflushed toilets, or to put it nicely like Yoel Inbar, "impurity", but it illuminates how they perceive the LGBT people and why we face such steep opposition.

The underlying factor here is their ignorance of the LGBT population, and unfortunately, much of the time it's self-enforced. They don't want to get to know us or change their perception of us. Which is why it's such hard work to change hearts and minds in favor of our rights. One conversation at a time.

Some minds we'll never change and I have accepted that. So maybe I'll just go to the National Organization for Marriage's bathroom and forget to flush.