Over Time, a Gay Marriage Groundswell (NYT Uses Its Crystal Ball)

New York Times ^ | 8/21/10 | Andrew Gelman, Jeffrey Lax, & Justin Philips

[zort]

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....

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)....

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....

[DJ MacWoW]

Weeeeell. This is the best I can do.

[little jeremiah]

LOL!

[fwdude]

The fight for the imposition of same-sex “marriage” has had other casualties - the right of people to constitutionally vote for an issue that is not addressed by the constitution; the right to privately support traditional values with impunity; the right to have your children educated free from coerced perversion, etc.