http://people-press.org/report/553/same-sex-marriage

Thought it was interesting to look at some of the stats related to marriage vs unions, and other attitudes toward homosexuality.

I'm a bit surprised that 37% of people aged 18-29 oppose gay marriage. That's obviously way better than the other age cohorts but still substantial.

Protestant churches need to be ground zero for organizing and persuasion in the coming years. It's hard to imagine marriage equality with only 27% support among Protestants...that's not a group you can ignore and expect to get anywhere in this country.

One more note: almost all of the results have 5-10% non-responses. I think we can safely count those missing percent in the "no" category--people are often hesitant to answer these kinds of questions in the negative, even to computerized polls. Things look a lot different when you consider support in the East region as 45% yes-55% no (or even 48%-52%) as compared to 45%-45%.

It's easy for gay people to surround themselves with people who think same-sex marriage is not even worth debating. My friends tend to be college-educated (49%-43%), young (58%-37%), Democratic (72%-24%), nonchurchgoers (60%-34%) from the East (45%-45%) or West (47%-47%). If put on the spot, peer pressure would make them profess support for civil unions at the very least, and they would get an earful if they said they were on the fence about SSM. This kind of atmosphere is great for daily life but causes ugly shocks when you get a taste of the outside world. I need to remind myself often that my peer group is not reflective of the country as a whole, or even of my age group as a whole. There's a lot of work to be done.

My REALLY BIG beef w/ this study. 1st you have--for the most part--a majority of people saying that homosexuality is morally wrong:



But then you have a majority of people (including White Evangelicals) saying that the glbt community has it the worst in terms of discrimination:



Well duh! Maybe if the majority of Americans would stop believing that homosexuality ISN'T morally wrong then there wouldn't be discrimination!

Edit:

What I did find surprising, interesting, & refreshing is that Hispanics overall had less of an issue w/ homosexuality & were more supportive of our community than any other group.

And as usual, blacks are the most non accepting of the racial groups, which I know has ties to black masculinity and the black church. But jesus christ....of all the people who should not be trying to oppress other groups. I swear...religion does more harm than good.

Yeah, unfortunately the Church (& other religious traditions) has a BIG influence on peoples opinions about our community. Sad but true.

Truer words have never been spoken

It's incredibly counterproductive to make sweeping statements like "religion does more harm than good." I frankly don't agree with the sentiment at all. But even if I did, I wouldn't simply brush off religion. Some protestant denominations are actively engaged in the struggle for gay marriage, ordination of gays, etc. These religious folks are our allies, which makes sense since many (most?) religions focus on helping the oppressed. It's much better to build respect and alliances through acknowledging what is good in religion without accepting (and working to counter) the opinion that gays should be condemned. Aren't some of us always saying that we should be out to give provide examples of how gay people are everywhere and their contributions to society? Why doesn't that apply equally in religious institutions? The haters are more than happy to see gays slinking off and muttering amongst themselves that "religions does more harm than good."

Good point but in the history of the world, it is religion, and those who head it, who have used their ideology for oppression and outright justification for atrocities. I guess I shouldn't have generalized as much as I did because you are right; there are factions out there who are accepting of homosexuals and gay marriage. But the majority are not. We definitely should be working for further outreach though.

I thought of this thread when I read this. I couldn't resist.