It was only two years ago that, for the first time, the share of Americans who think same-sex relations are morally acceptable grew larger than the share who condemned them—a first, and a breakthrough. Is same-sex marriage now at that point?
Maybe. Or, anyway, close. A unique data set going all the way back to 1988 finds that now, for the first time, more Americans support than oppose same-sex marriage.
I don’t actually think we’re there yet. Polls showing plurality support for SSM remain outliers. Most show the larger number are opposed: for example, this one shows 48-42 against.
Perhaps more significant: when you ask the question in what I think is the best way, offering the third option of civil unions, a lot of gay-marriage support shifts to CUs, with about a third of the public supporting each option. But that, too, represents a change. As recently as 2004, those opposing any legal recognition for gay couples outnumbered SSM supporters by two to one in many polls. (In 2008, Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute published an excellent roundup.)
So, no, I don’t think gay marriage has attained true majority support. But gay relationships are there already. And, any way you slice it, the progress has been remarkable.
More: Here are two excellent scatterplots summarizing opinion on gay marriage. H/T Charles Franklin and HuffPo.
12 Comments for “Marriage at a Tipping Point?”
posted by esurience on
Perhaps more significant: when you ask the question in what I think is the best way, offering the third option of civil unions, a lot of gay-marriage support shifts to CUs
I’m not sure that is the best way to ask the question, as it potentially adds some serious confusion as to the difference between marriage and civil unions. And ultimately, when the marriage issue is decided, it’s a yes/no question put in front of state legislators and/or voters, so it seems to me that asking it as a yes/no question is the best way of polling it.
What I mean by confusion is that many people don’t understand we’re talking about civil marriage, rather than religious marriage. If you throw the term “civil union” in there, that adds to that uncertainty. After all, what’s the reason for distinguishing between those things? People will jump at the idea that the only reason to distinguish between them is because one would force religious organizations to perform/recognize same-sex marriages, whereas the other wouldn’t. It’s an erroneous belief of course, but a common one.
posted by Houndentenor on
A few things.
1) Those opposed to same-sex marriage tend to be older and more likely to vote, especially in off-year elections.
2) The campaigns for ballot initiatives to prohibit same sex marriage are full of red herrings and outright lies.
3) Time is obviously on our side as younger people are far less homophobic than their elders.
4) Yes, the swiftness of the movement in polling on this issue is remarkable and wouldn’t have happened if many hadn’t pushed ahead for marriage equality in spite of many of us (myself included) thinking it was way too early.
posted by Tom on
I do think that public attitudes are at a tipping point, and I don’t think that it will be too many more years before marriage equality is the norm rather than the exception, in the sense that a large percentage of Americans will live in states with marriage equality laws.
We’ve reached the tipping point very simply: Social conservatives ranted and raved about anal sex, incest, pedophilia, polygamy, animal-human marriages, recruitment, religious suppression, and the rest of the imagined and irrational fears that they conjured up, while gays and lesbians — the “quiet ones” came out to their neighbors, friends and co-workers, letting them see the reality of our lives.
The simple fact is that most gays and lesbians live their lives in ways that aren’t much different than anyone else, and as people got to see that, and contrast it with the ranting and raving, they reached their own conclusions.
I think that the process toward acceptance of marriage equality will accelerate in the next few years. The Prop8 trial helped move the ball by exposing the hollowness of the rationale underlying the “fear and fixation”, as did the debate over DADT. The DOMA defense, to the extent it receives press, will move the ball still further.
We are rapidly reaching the point where 75% of our work is being done by the social conservatives themselves. And the best part is that it doesn’t cost us a cent.
This presents a dilemma for the Republican Party, with its primary system still dominated by social conservatives and Tea Party adherents. In this election cycle, and probably for the next two or three, Republican candidates are going to have to continue to pander (assuming that they don’t themselves believe) as Tim Pawlenty is doing on DADT reinstatement, and that is going to make it tougher for them in the general elections.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though, not really. I was fascinated to watch the Wyoming Senate, where the Republicans enjoy an overwhelming majority, in the last couple of weeks, as it took up an anti-marriage amendment and a bill to ban recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages. Both failed to pass the Senate.
Wyoming Republican Senators, more closely aligned with traditional constitutional conservatism than with social conservatives, stood firm for individual liberty and equal treatment under the law.
The “traditional marriage” crowd will go after the “Just Say No!” Republicans in the next primaries, to be sure.
Becky Vandeberghe, president of WyWatch Family Action, said she was “thrilled” by the most recent vote, describing actual passage of the bill as mere “icing on the cake”, and trilling: “But we got the cake, which is the voting record.”
We’ll see whether she should be “thrilled” or not in the next election cycle. Becky will no doubt go after the Republican Senators who denied her the pleasure of licking the icing off her fingers. Wyoming Republican voters may hand her a different desert.
posted by Carl on
This is very well-written. I was relieved about Wyoming as I had assumed they had the votes to pass these bills.
Unfortunately it seems like the social conservatives still have the money, message, and sway. Just look at how they managed to tie up Maryland’s house in knots and convince a series of legislators who campaigned on equality to backtrack clumsily.
posted by BobN on
And the best part is that it doesn’t cost us a cent.
Unless we live in one of those states that gives us no legal status at all, and we can’t move for one reason or another.
posted by Tom on
Unfortunately it seems like the social conservatives still have the money, message, and sway. Just look at how they managed to tie up Maryland’s house in knots and convince a series of legislators who campaigned on equality to backtrack clumsily.
Carl, the anti-gay advocacy groups — NOM, FRC, AFA and the lot — are a determined, formidable foe. They fight hard, they fight dirty, they are well-funded, and they are relentless. They are skilled at getting social conservative voters to write, call and e-mail legislators, and turning those voters out at the polls, particularly in primaries and off-year elections, when their influence is amplified by lower turnout.
Nonetheless, the number of voters that are in their thrall is getting smaller and smaller. I think marriage equality is going to take about 10-15 more years — it will be 2025 or so before we gain marriage equality nationally — but we are little by slowly winning.
What is most interesting about Wyoming — and you can confirm this by watching a number of the videos of the Republican state senators speaking before the vote — is that the Republicans fought the bills on rock-solid constitutional conservative grounds.
The conservative case for marriage equality exists — it always has been — but Wyoming is a state where significant numbers of Republican constitutional conservatives weren’t cowed into silence, for once, by the anti-gay foes. I’m not sure if this is a quirk or a (as Stephen put it) a “green shoot”.
It might be simply that Wyoming is so heavily Republican that the social conservatives don’t enjoy the primary dominance in that state that social conservatives enjoy in most other states, and nationally. It might be that Wyoming has a cultural and political history — it is, after all, the “Equality State” — of individual liberty that is atypical, and Republicans in Wyoming have a sense of the cognitive dissonance arising out of the clash between social conservative values and constitutional conservative values. I don’t know.
But whatever it is, I’m glad to see it, and I hope that it gains traction in the Republican Party.
posted by BobN on
While I, too, am heartened by polling, I’d really hate for this to be another DADT situation, where the GOP blocked action for two decades despite widespread support for a change in policy.
posted by Tom on
DOMA (Section 3, anyway) is likely to fall within the next three years. SCOTUS will decide this one, not Congress.
posted by BobN on
not Congress
And isn’t that a pity?
And you have more confidence in our black-robed masters than I do.
posted by Amicus on
50% may be a statistical “tipping point” but just a gentle reminder (perhaps especially to those who are really getting carried away with rhetoric) that super-majorities are required in many (most?) states to undo the barriers hastily erected in the past 15 years as well as in Congress.
posted by Tom on
50% may be a statistical “tipping point” but just a gentle reminder (perhaps especially to those who are really getting carried away with rhetoric) that super-majorities are required in many (most?) states to undo the barriers hastily erected in the past 15 years as well as in Congress.
That’s why the fight is going to go on another 10-15 years, most likely coming to rest with a SCOTUS ruling like Loving, probably coming in the 2020-2025 range.
It could be quicker, but I don’t think so, based on the Silver projections, adding a minimum of five years after the “acceptance point” in each state to allow time for the anti-marriage amendments to be repealed.
My guess is that we’ll have about 10-15 states holding out when SCOTUS rules. The “tipping point”, in my view, will begin when a majority of Americans live in marriage equality states, and that tipping point will be well after a majority of Americans favor marriage equality.
posted by FredB on
I think Gays in the USA had got it wrong wanting to stick with the name “Marriage”. The debate would have been closed by now if people could accept civil unions with the same rights as heterosexuals. It is dragging on because you see things as black and white in most of cases and these are not helping to get a consensus.
From across the pound. Cheers