Just to give you some context: I'm Black, my family is Black, and my uncle was the pastor of a church. It was an evangelical Presbyterian church that was very racially diverse. We had White people, Black people, Asian people, interracial couples, and so on. So, on the surface, it seemed fairly liberal, right?
The church had a lot of Trump supporters, but it also had a lot of Black members, including my uncle, who hated Donald Trump and still do. They didn't like Trump, didn't like the Republican Party, and generally voted Democrat.
To be specific, our youth group was small—only eight teenagers, four of whom were brothers. We were all people of color. One of the church members, however, was a hardcore Republican and MAGA supporter. He invited me and some of the other kids to come paint his fence one day, but my aunt told my mom she didn't want me going over there because of his politics. There was even some friction within the church because some members supported Trump, while the anti-Trump members strongly disliked those who voted for him.
However, here's what confuses me: almost every single one of the anti-Trump members—outside of me and maybe two other people—was extremely homophobic and transphobic. They were also all strongly pro-life. They hated abortion and viewed it as "murder." One kid in the church literally said, "Gay people deserve to be hurt."
So they held very socially conservative views, yet they didn't support the Republican Party and hated Trump. Why is that? Why would someone hate MAGA while basically agreeing with many of the same social positions? Why would they call themselves liberals or Democrats? My uncle literally said he was a liberal who votes Democrat, yet he's extremely pro-life. How can that be?
I'll ask the same question about the other side. Look at Brad Polumbo—he's gay, supports LGBTQ+ rights, and has spoken out against racism and homophobia, yet he's still right-wing and supports the Republican Party. The same goes for Arielle Scarcella, who's a lesbian, and Blair White, who's a trans woman and probably the most famous example. I don't think Blair is necessarily transphobic, but she supports Trump and identifies as Republican.
So why does this happen? Why do some people identify with a political party even when they disagree with that party on major issues? And why do some people reject a party despite agreeing with many of its core positions?
There's some different race related history stuff in the US, but this sort of thing doesn't just happen in your church. Typically, Southern churches don't really like queer people, doesn't matter if they're black churches or white churches. White churchgoing Christians also have an added element of racism. Because the white Christians also tend to be racist, they're more likely to like Reagan and the Republican party that's existed since then. Black people tended to vote for the Republican party for decades after the Civil War because it was the party that Abraham Lincoln was part of. Partially due to the New Deal's programs, many black people switched to the Democratic party and stuck with it, likely due to social programs that help many members of the community, such as food stamps. There's plenty of other examples of people within the Democratic party that don't like certain parts of its platform, such as many Catholics and abortion rights. It's also pretty easy to find queer people that are racist as fuck. People being part of one minority group has less bearing on their biases as one might hope. Hopefully none of this is horribly wrong.