When public opinion is moving quickly on an issue, corroboration is king. We now have no less than four reputable national public opinion surveys in three months showing a slim majority of Americans now support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. Looking at the current convergence of polls, past trends, and current support patterns, this clearly looks like the beginning of the end of the same-sex marriage debate.
Just yesterday, we at Public Religion Research Institute released results from the PRRI Religion & Politics Tracking Survey, which finds a slim majority (51 percent) of Americans now favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry, compared to 43 percent percent who are opposed. And today, Gallup released corroborating results showing, for the first time since their tracking of the issue began in 1996, a majority (53 percent) of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, compared to 45 percent who say it should not.
Earlier this year in March, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found 53 percent of Americans said it should be legal "for gay and lesbian couples to get married," and in April a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found 51 percent said marriages between gay and lesbian couples should be "recognized by the law as valid." The results of the four polls are remarkably consistent even though the surveys were conducted independently by different organizations using different question wordings in different field periods.
The PRRI poll also revealed a truth that is too often missed in media coverage of the issue: the debate is no longer between secular Americans who support same-sex marriage on one side and religious Americans who oppose it on the other. It is true that religiously unaffiliated Americans are strongly supportive of same-sex marriage (77 percent). But solid majorities of Catholics and white mainline Protestants (56% and 55% respectively) also support allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry. On the other side of the debate are white evangelical Protestants and minority Christians, a group made up mostly African American and Latino Protestants. Only 23% of white evangelical Protestants and 37 percent of minority Christians support allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry.
The partisan divides are also large. More than 6-in-10 (61 percent) Democrats and a majority (55 percent) of political independents support allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry. In contrast, less than 4-in-10 (37 percent) Republicans and only 34 percent of Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement support same-sex marriage.
Three other observations from the data are worth noting for their possible implications for the remaining skirmishes over same-sex marriage:
Results from the PRRI Religion & Politics Tracking Survey were based on telephone interviews conducted May 5-8, 2011, among a national probability sample of 1,007 adults age 18 and older. The overall margin of error is +/- 3.0 percentage points. To read the topline results and full methodology, click here.
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Children progress through predictable and necessary developmental stages. Some stages require more from a mother, while others require more from a father. For example, during infancy, babies of both sexes tend to do better in the care of their mother. Mothers are more attuned to the subtle needs of their infants and thus are more appropriately responsive. However, at some point, if a young boy is to become a competent man, he must detach from his mother and instead identify with his father. A fatherless boy doesn’t have a man with whom to identify and is more likely to have trouble forming a healthy masculine identity.
A father teaches a boy how to properly channel his aggressive and sexual drives. A father also commands a form of respect that is more likely to keep the boy in line. And those are the two primary reasons why boys without fathers are more likely to become delinquent and end up incarcerated.
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18060
"We're losing on[gay marriage], especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don't know if that's going to change with a little more age—demographers would say probably not. We've probably lost that."
Let's bring Lady Gaga in the schools to teach your daughters how to helicopter..
Take it for what it's worth. States are goin one way or another on the open sexuality and loosening of marriage thing.
Newspaper pictures of mean faced Southern cops, with their riot sticks, sunglasses, and snarling police dogs, faced off against peaceable civil rights demonstrators, convinced a lot of fence sitters during those years that, however much they reluctant they might be to support black civil rights, there was no way they wanted to be associated with racial bigotry that ugly.
And today, The Westboro Baptists hold up a very unflattering mirror to the face of sexual bigotry. Middle of the road Het voters may take the Levitican ban on homosexuality very seriously, and they may find what gays do in the bedroom distasteful, even repulsive, but, looking at the Westboro flock, with their horrific "God Hates Gays" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" picket signs, easy to think, "These people are bigots; they are ugly and hateful. I don't share their values. I don't want to stand in solidarity with them. I don't want to be associated with them in an way."
And so the balance shifts, millimeter by millimeter. The US could approach a civilized balance on this issue... any decade, now!
Nice to hear from you again. You know, in life, often compromise is the best option to live in peace. You bring up laws about granting equality becsue you pay taxes. HOw many people have done that in this country and are still denied total coverage under the Consitution. The reality is this: there is the law and their are people. People are the variable in this equation more than noble words written on a doucment that is supposed to look after all people. Bottom line: with people, any form of immorality away from the norm (normal man/woman in matrimony blessed by God) is met with a negative response. That negative response is directly proportional to the distance it is away from that traditional norm. Question: do two lovers, were are both adluters, recieve a positve or negative response...even though they are in love and commmited to each other-when busted? I'll bet a number of gays laughed and professed their support of morality when Tiger and the "Governator" got busted. Folks simply don't like immorality made public. The compromise: since you will not ge the positive response you seek with pointing to the Consitution, protests and whining, do what you must do, in a gay community or in the privacy of your home or hotel room. do like the adluteres and fornicator do--keep it to yourself and take it up with God. I understand that God, unlike man, is very merciful.
But human nature will not change about immorality made public. Keep it to yourself and you won't have to argue, fuss, cuss and fight. Make it an issue and look at all the time you've wated when you could have been making love.
Common sense is not as common as it seems!
What the law says in that regard is irrelevant.
What gays want is acceptance through the marriage ticket.
Real marriages do produce offspring.
Nothing, not even the law, will ever change that.
Then there's no reason not to change it.
I have seen so many posts on HP where the opponent to gay marriage states something like, "Most people don't want it--Majority rules--so there."
Somehow I think they are going to change their tune soon about "majority rules".
you fail.
I simply see no real concrete change happening, sorry. I want it to happen, but I think the want is unrealistic. I just think polls like this aren't as accurate as we may hope they to be.
"Nothing wrong with Texas, except the weather and the people"
--- the only large state where young people poll
This is not going to be one big battle that decides everything. The anti-gay marriage side likes to crow that gay marriage NEVER wins at the polls.
Support for gay marriage was at 27% 15 years ago. We had a bunch of elections right at the tipping point because the anti side could see that it was their last gasp. They're counting a bunch of 52% to 47% results as mandates.
This poll indicates that while the courts take another six or seven decades to decide whether or not they should decide whether or not they should decide who should decide who should decide who has standing to argue cases before which courts, we may start seeing gay marriage actually voted in at the state level.
Not across the country. But in a few key places.
Jim Crow didn't end overnight. It takes tiny moves on multiple fronts. This is a good piece of ground to get.
Are you speaking of 27% nationally. And which poll is this specifically. 15 years ago would make it 1996. When was the tipping point? What are you referring to? What year was that and what elections? Mid-term - national elections - blue state - red state? What the heck are you talking about?
Once the Prop 8 groups in California started using Google maps to target people and businesses polling became a farce.
When the DOMA states repeal Paul then you can wake me up.
Ever see gays huddle together and tank the career of a conservative Roman Catholic manager who exercised the right of free speech outside of work?
The only polls that count are on election day. The rest are now intrusive agi-prop by troublemakers looking to resell demographic information.
Sorry Paul, there's more skewing those figures than you think.
As far as polls go I refuse to take them. And the blue collar tea party types that hang out at the local bar? They have words for the info snoops and like to game them if they do participate.
I work in IT in a Gay marriage state. And if that is happening here I can only imagine what's happening elsewhere.
Yech Polls. And there there's the wording of the questions and the new polling mantra--we pollsters decide public policy. People don't want to be on the wrong side of the polls. We can sell more polling on hot button issues if they show positive trending. Yada. Yada.
When the polls successfuly track the election polls on a gay issue please do wake us up. Until then the business people own your pollng model and question phrasing or methodology.
That's what I thought about today, too. There are 31 states with DOMAs. If they manage to get enough signatures on a petition in ONE those states to clear the first hurdle in repealing a DOMA, I will be impressed. That would be worth about a billion of those polls where someone gets his TV watching interrupted and answers, "yeah, whatever" then hangs up and continues watching.
Never thought I'd say this in this forum, but F&F!