ALBUQUERQUE — President Barack Obama’s shift to support gay marriage is energizing young Hispanic voters who have been working side-by-side with gay activists in their push for immigration reform. The alliance has been growing nationwide and helping dispel what many say is an outdated notion that Hispanics are less tolerant of gays than the general public.
“My members are telling me that we need to learn from the gay community,” said Dee Dee Garcia Blase, founder of the Phoenix-based Somos Republicans. She is now head of the Tequila Party, which she formed last year with the goal of registering young Hispanics to vote for immigration-friendly candidates such as Obama.
“We need to take a lesson from the (gay) community with regard to being that loud, squeaky wheel that gets fixed,” Blase said.
Both major parties are focused heavily on winning the Hispanic vote, not just because it holds the key to battleground states but because Latinos make up the fastest-growing minority group. About 600,000 young Hispanics born in the U.S. turn 18 years old each year, entering a widening pool of more than 21 million Hispanic voters.
Conservative Hispanics see the president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage as an opportunity to draw Latinos to the GOP. According to a 2007 survey of U.S. Latinos by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, two-thirds of Hispanics said their religious beliefs are an important influence on their political thinking.
But a poll released in April 2011 by the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, and a public opinion research firm indicated that while 66 percent of those surveyed identified as Roman Catholic, 49 percent favored allowing same-sex marriage and that number climbed to 59 percent in favor of giving gay and lesbian couples the same legal rights as married couples.
A surprising 69 percent favored allowing gay or lesbian couples to marry in their church or religious institution and 52 percent did not view homosexuality as a sin, compared to 38 percent who did.
Juan Rodriguez, an immigrant active in the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said the gay-rights and immigrant-rights movements are “very aligned and becoming moreso.”
But some Hispanics and political watchers don’t expect Obama’s shift to have much impact.
“No, no, no, no, no. It’s not going to affect my vote,” said Sister “Molly” Maria Luisa Munoz, a Roman Catholic nun in Denver who works with immigrants and the gay and lesbian community.
