2007 Polls Show 6% Increase in Support for Gay Marriage Since 2006

We're all bombarded with polls about everything around us - who's the best news channel?  Who will we vote for in the next primary/election?  Do we support this cause or that one?

It got me thinking.  I've heard of several polls about civil unions and gay marriage over the years, but I don't really know, other than anecdotally, how things are going - is support really increasing?  Are detractors really losing ground?  And how quickly are things changing?

I did a bit of research online, and found a great site - PollingReport.com - that gives the results of all kinds of polls, including nationwide polls on gay marriage and civil unions.

So now, I had the raw numbers, but what did they really mean?  Different polling companies use different methods, samples are different, and questions can vary, yielding different results even when the polls are taken at the same time.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.  Using the raw polling numbers from 63 nationwide polls taken on gay marriage and civil unions between 1996 and 2007, I created an online chart showing all the data in one place.

As you might expect, this yielded a bit of a mixed picture - with poll numbers moving up and down within a month or two of each other.  Data was also mixed between gay marriage and civil unions, so I had to sort that out.

In the end, I averaged all the poll numbers by year to get a clearer picture of where things are going, and here's what I found (to see the details, click here):

1996: 27% for, 68% against gay marriage

1999: 35% for, 62% against

2000: 34% for, 62% against

2003: 34% for, 59% against

2004: 34% for, 60% against

2005: 35% for, 57% against

2006: 36% for, 57% against

2007: 42% for, 52% against

Admittedly, this isn't a scientific summary.  But nevertheless, I was thrilled to see a 15% increase in support coupled with a 14% drop in the against numbers in 12 years.  And even more interesting is the fact that our support increased 6% in a single year.  One poll, a Gallup poll in May, 2007, even found a startling 46% of respondents in favor of gay marriage.

In some places, the numbers are even closer - in California, for instance, a 2006 Public Policy Institute poll showed 47% of likely voters in the state supported gay marriage, while 46% were opposed.

On the civil unions side, we have data going back to 2003, shortly after several states began to offer domestic partnerships or civil unions as a substitute for full marriage.  Once marriage was suddenly, dramatically put on the table in 2004 with the advent of marriage in Massachusetts and Gavin Newsom's opening of city hall to gay and lesbian couples, civil unions suddenly became an attractive option to many folks on the right as a way of staving off the rush to full marriage rights.

Those of us in the gay marriage trenches saw it a bit differently, of course.  Something (in this case, civil unions) was certainly better than nothing, but still smelled a little of second class citizenship.  In the earlier part of the 20th century, after all, African Americans had access to many of the same services that whites had, but on a separate basis.  And as we all know, the courts eventually declared the "separate but equal" doctrine to be the lie that it was.

Don't get me wrong - my partner, Mark, and I have been signed up as domestic partners with the state of California since 1997, and the state has gradually added more rights and responsibilities to couples on the registry, including hospital visitation rights, joint tax filing (state only), and the application of Prop 13 tax property tax rates to surviving domestic partners.  And these are all good things.  But they still aren't marriage.

In any case, along with support for gay marriage, support for civil unions has increased as well:

2003: 42% for, 50% against civil unions

2004: 47% for, 47% against

2005: 50% for, 42% against

2006: 52% for, 42% against

2007: 53% for, 42% against

It feels like our country reached a tipping point here - not just on civil rights issues, but on global warming, the war in Iraq, and the economy - where prople are finally waking up and seeing the light.

Fully 53% of the country now supports basic rights for gay and lesbian couples, and in at least some states, a majority of voters now also support full gay marriage.

My partner and I have been together now for almost 16 years, and the closest we've come to marriage is the day we stood in the San Francisco City Hall, at the top of the marble staircase, and spoke our vows to each other on March 11th, 2004, the same day a state judge ended flow of gay and lesbian couples to The City.

And although our marriage license was invalidated a short time later, it meant something.  Standing there under the dome of city hall, professing our commitment for one another under the approving eyes of the city felt real in a way that's hard to describe - something that can't be taken away by tearing up a piece of paper.  For a few days, we weren't just two guys signing a contract.  We were married.

We hope that the next few years will bring real change, either from the California Supreme Court, which is finally due to rule on the issue in 2008 after four long years of silence, or from the voters themselves, as public opinion continues to shift away from the politics of hatred and intolerence and toward support of committed relationships.

Only time will tell, but time, so far, has been good to us.

--Scott