When it comes to same-sex marriage, it turns out that many Americans just don't care.
About 1,000 adults were asked as part of a new Associated Press/IPSOS poll about how George W. Bush is handling the country, how they might vote in the November Congressional elections, and what they thought about some top issues.
Including gay marriage.
Now a couple years ago-say, after the Massachusetts marriage debates-anti-gay marriage sentiment reached an all-time high, as much as 63 percent. People were furious and they were fighting.
But in this most recent poll, what percentage thought gay marriage was extremely important?
Only 22 percent, or about one in five.
Thirty-six percent said that gay marriage wasn't an important issue at all and 11 percent called it only "slightly important." Fifteen percent thought it was "moderately important"; 5 percent called it "very important." One percent of respondents weren't sure.
In fact, those polled adults thought that gay marriage was the least important issue they were asked about, coming after eight others including the economy, the situation in Iraq, health care and gas prices.
These adults weren't all Northeastern liberals, either, or secular city Dems. Most of them described themselves as conservative or moderate; slightly more respondents came from the South than from other areas of the United States; more of them were from the suburbs or rural areas than from cities; the large majority identified as Christian.
So. We have these 1,000 likely voters who are overwhelmingly white, mostly Christian, mostly conservative to moderate, and they're asked about same-sex marriage and THEY DON'T CARE.
They care more about social security than they do about gay marriage. They care more about terrorism. Actually, they care more about how much it costs to fill up their SUV than they do about whether someone in the next town or next state-or heck, next door-wants to marry someone of the same sex.
They're not for it. They're not against it. They just don't understand why it's an issue.
And this, my friends, is a good thing.
Really.
Conservative leaders (read: Karl Rove) have been spinning media webs for years, trying to insure that gay marriage becomes a wedge issue, like abortion. They want equal marriage to stand for everything that's wrong with America in the eyes of Mr. Mainstreet; they want it to be shorthand for everything America fears. If gays get marriage, they tell us, then no one will have marriage, because marriage will be meaningless.
These leaders hoped that Americans would be so afraid of instability caused by gays and lesbians that they would vote with conservative Republicans on every issue, no matter how misguided, in the belief that a vote for a Republican was a vote against gays, and a vote against gays was a vote against moral depravity. For a little while, it worked.
For a little while, liberals and moderate Republicans feared that gay marriage might be the issue that kept neo-conservative Republicans in the White House and in Congress for years to come.
But Americans have seen marriage in Massachusetts and they've seen civil unions in Vermont, and there are still straight people getting married and there are married straight people doing things that married straight people do.
Americans have come to realize that opening rights up to one group doesn't mean taking rights away from another.
All this might explain why, in Illinois, anti-gay activists recently stopped pushing for a referendum suggesting that the state's gay marriage ban be written into the state constitution. They were losing. So they gave up.
And in Virginia, Va4Marriage is struggling to raise money to support the passage of a same-sex marriage ban. Much of the funds they've raised so far-a measly $155,000-come from a single donor who doesn't live in the state.
A populace that doesn't care that much about an issue isn't going to fight against it.
Of course, a lot of this apathy must be because gay marriage has quietly receded from the headlines. New York turned its back on civil unions, as did California. Those defeats hurt, even though I'm betting they are temporary.
But apathy on this issue is OK for now. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is heading toward repeal. Let's take that major victory when it comes as a sign that the country really is turning around on gay rights. Let's take it as a herald for the eventual victory of marriage equality.
Because we will get same-sex marriage. And the best thing that could happen when that day comes is for America to hear the news, shrug, and just not care.