Gay Marriage Groundswell

[AdamSmith]

Another intriguing, and hope-giving, piece from the NYT:

Over Time, a Gay Marriage Groundswell

By ANDREW GELMAN, JEFFREY LAX and JUSTIN PHILLIPS

Published: August 21, 2010

Gay marriage is not going away as a highly emotional, contested issue. Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that bans same-sex marriage, has seen to that, as it winds its way through the federal courts.

But perhaps the public has reached a turning point.

A CNN poll this month found that a narrow majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage — the first poll to find majority support. Other poll results did not go that far, but still, on average, showed that support for gay marriage had risen to 45 percent or more (with the rest either opposed or undecided).

That’s a big change from 1996, when Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. At that time, only 25 percent of Americans said that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry, according to an average of national polls.

The more important turning points in public opinion, however, may be occurring at the state level, especially if states continue to control who can get married.

According to our research, as recently as 2004, same-sex marriage did not have majority support in any state. By 2008, three states had crossed the 50 percent line. *

Today, 17 states are over that line (more if you consider the CNN estimate correct that just over 50 percent of the country supports gay marriage).

In 2008, the year Proposition 8 was approved, just under half of Californians supported same-sex marriage,. Today, according to polls, more than half do. A similar shift has occurred in Maine, where same-sex marriage legislation was repealed by ballot measure in 2009.

In both New York and New Jersey, where state legislatures in the past have defeated proposals to allow same-sex marriage, a majority now support it.

And support for same-sex marriage has increased in all states, even in relatively conservative places like Wyoming and Kentucky. Only Utah is still below where national support stood in 1996.

Among the five states that currently allow same-sex marriage, Iowa is the outlier. It is the only one of those states where support falls below half, at 44 percent.

This trend will continue. Nationally, a majority of people under age 30 support same-sex marriage. And this is not because of overwhelming majorities found in more liberal states that skew the national picture: our research shows that a majority of young people in almost every state support it. As new voters come of age, and as their older counterparts exit the voting pool, it’s likely that support will increase, pushing more states over the halfway mark.

State figures are based on a statistical technique has been used to generate state estimates from national polls. Public opinion is estimated in small demographic categories within each state, and then these are averaged using census information to get state-level summaries. Estimates in 2010 are projected from 2008 state-level estimates using an aggregate national estimate of 45 percent (or 50 percent) support for gay marriage.

The authors are professors of political science at Columbia University.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/weekinreview/22gay.html?hp

[Guest zipperzone]

All this is very interesting. But the passage of laws to permit same sex marriage should not depend on public opinion.

How can our rights be determined by "The Majority". They have nothing to loose - they can marry whoever they choose to.

If it depended on the "majority" would inter-racial marriage be permitted? Would women have the right to vote? Could African Americans sit anywhere on the bus they wanted to?

It's great that public opinion is changing, but it's the court's opinion that matters and they should not be swayed by what they are led to believe "most people want".

[AdamSmith]

It's great that public opinion is changing, but it's the court's opinion that matters and they should not be swayed by what they are led to believe "most people want".

Of course. But it's an inescapable reality that the federal courts often do look over their shoulder out of concern not to get too radically far ahead of public opinion, the fear being the weakening of perceived judicial authority. Whether or not that is as it should be.