It is remarkable how clueless non-religious people like Stephanopolis are. Even if they are not part of a religion, they should have a basic concept that religious people are following a higher authority than public opinion. That's what makes religions what they are.
It is amazing isn't it? Religions historically are always founded on some sort of dogmatic principle otherwise they have no purpose. When Sakyamuni Gotama came out from under the Bodhi tree he did so to teach something specific. If what he sought to teach could be changed by popular vote then he actually had nothing to say at all. There would be no reason for listening to him. Suggesting that religion should bow to public opinion would be, in my mind, akin to demanding that scientists change what they teach for the same reason. If enough of us dislike the restrictions of gravity maybe we can vote it out.
Very well put.
This may be related: some great thinky person (was it maybe Jacques Ellul?) said that people usually pair together Religion=Magic and Science=Technology, when actually Religion and Science make a true pair, and Magic and Technology make another.
Why? Because Religion and Science are based on an obedient search for truth, i.e. an obedient conformity to the known facts. We respect the facts; we live in accordance, or in harmony with them. We make logical conclusions from them; we may even draw reasonable inferences from them. But the facts rule: the facts are "magisterial".
Magic and Technology, on the other hand, are based on the usefulness of something: "I'm doing this because I think it'll work. That is, it may work for me." It is not based on a desire to actually respect the bigger facts, the bigger laws: empirical technology, like magic, may not be based on a coherent and fully-fleshed -out understanding at all, or even a desire for understanding: only a desire for immediate-term profit, advantage, gain.
So if something is a religious/moral fact (e.g. "the directly intended killing of an innocent person is always prohibited as murder") it is something you have to obediently live by, whether it "works" for you or not.