The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
In a speech on election night, the Republican candidate for governor, Loren Culp, didn’t seem all that surprised he was losing handily to the Democrat, Jay Inslee.
But that sex ed in the schools? Unthinkable.
“Sixty percent of the population of this state wants the comprehensive sex ed bill, really?” Culp asked the crowd, which booed. “I’ve not met anyone who wants that. Yet they’re telling us it’s passed? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
This seemed to be a widely shared reaction across the political right.
Referendum 90, to mandate sex education in the schools, had seemed in the spring to be one of those issues where leftists had just meddled too far into the affairs of parents and families. Opponents swiftly gathered twice the signatures needed to repeal the Legislature’s bill, and the Republican Party put money in and ran with the repeal movement as a can’t-miss rallying cry against overbearing government.
So it seemed to stun everyone how easily such a formerly hot-button topic could sail through. Sex ed won by about 16 percentage points and carried 14 counties, including two in Eastern Washington.
Why? In my view it was because of Washington’s most profound political development in recent years — the religion gap.
We talk all the time about the gender gap in voting, the education gap and the urban-rural divide. But in our state an even bigger influence on local politics is religion. Or rather, lack of religion.
In surveys of state voters released for the 2020 election, the group answering “none” to the question of “what is your religion?” easily forms the largest religious group in this state. The “Nones” made up 34 percent of the state electorate this year.
That’s far higher than evangelical and born-again Christians at 19 percent, or Catholics at 14 percent. It’s quite different here than nationally, where both Protestants and Catholics outnumber the Nones.
Also 45 percent of Washington voters answered “never” when asked how often they go to church.
The campaign to repeal the sex ed law was energized by churches and anti-abortion groups, and backed by the Washington State Catholic Conference.
“It’s not for nothing that two-thirds of the signatures on the Parents For Safe Schools petition came from church sites,” the conservative magazine National Review noted. “Christianity has its own theology of sexuality and the body that has been thought-through and developed over the course of two thousand years.”
Twenty years ago, this argument and this church-led coalition might have won (as it periodically did on gay rights and other social issues). But now in this state, the Nones rule local politics. The Nones tend to be strongly pro-science and against anything that smacks of morality-policing.
In the voter survey, Protestants voted for Culp (and also Donald Trump) by about 15 percentage points, 57 percent to 42 percent. But the Nones backed Inslee (who signed the sex ed bill) by an overwhelming 55 points, 77 percent to 22 percent.
The campaign in favor of sex ed got a slew of endorsements from liberal church leaders, so religion did weigh in on both sides. But the issue with the Nones isn’t that religion is bad; it’s that it needs to be kept out of secular government policymaking. And science needs to be in.
As I wrote two years ago about this fastest-growing religious group in the state: “Whatever you call them, in statewide elections or in the Seattle suburbs, either appeal to the Nones or forget it.”
Clallam shows the way
How ’bout that Clallam County? The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the Olympic peninsula home of Port Angeles, Forks and the Makah Indian Reservation is one of only 19 “bellwether” counties in the nation to vote for every presidential winner since 1980.
It appears Clallam did it again, backing Biden by about six points. That is 11 presidential pick ’ems in a row, spanning 40 years. Maybe we should spare the two-year-long campaign with its insufferable advertising, and just let Port Angeles choose next time?
Morning Briefing Newsletter
Get a rundown of the latest local and regional news every Mon-Fri morning.
