January 27, 2004
SUPERWEDGIE:
American Public Opinion About Gay and Lesbian Marriages (Gallup News Service, January 27, 2004)
A Jan. 9-11 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans if they would favor or oppose a law that would allow homosexual couples to legally get married, or if they have no opinion on the issue at all. The results show that a majority of Americans, 53%, oppose such a law, and 44% of respondents oppose it strongly. Twenty-four percent of Americans say they would favor such a law, and 23% do not have an opinion about gay marriage.Results to a similar question asked in a mid-December poll (but without an explicit "no opinion" response) show that 65% of Americans said marriages between homosexual couples should not be recognized as legally valid, while 31% said they should.
In other words, because of party dynamics Democrats are pushing an issue on which they have a 3-1 disadvantage. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 27, 2004 7:30 AM
2-1, not 3-1. However, they won't push it during the general election. It will be one of those issues that they will dance around.
Posted by: Brandon at January 27, 2004 8:20 AM3. The No opinions are anti's who are uncomfortable telling pollsters that.
Posted by: oj at January 27, 2004 8:34 AMThis is such a non-issue, as gays already have the right under contract law to establish legally recognized relationships that are the functional equivalent of marriage. Call it a "roll your own" marriage. They can have all the trappings of marriage, they could set up their own roll your own wedding chapels, rent halls, have big ceremonies, blah blah blah.
Posted by: Robert D at January 27, 2004 10:29 AMRobert:
But it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the rest of us--they require that we formally condone their pathology.
Posted by: oj at January 27, 2004 10:33 AMUnfortunately (for the Dems) the Mass. courts are going to make sure the issue is front and center in a few months when their 180 day grace period expires. Like Vietnam veteran John F*** Kerry's Senate record, it's something that's not going to go away.
The real problem isn't the definition of marriage, but how that defintion is being imposed by a couple of judges in one atypical state on an unwilling nation. (Nothing new there, as it was Massachusetts extremism that helped drag the country into a war in the mid-19th century.) It's bad enough that they've inflicted Kennedys on the rest of us for half a century, but this is just too much.
The Democrats sure as hell won't push this issue in the general election, but the question is whether Bush will.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 27, 2004 11:02 AMWell, Andrew Sullivan sure as heck will.
Anyone who has observed Dubya objectively will realize that he tends to not do in-your-face pushes. Rather, he hangs a rope over a tree branch and puts up a sign saying "George Bush says don't put your neck in this here noose."
With rare exception, he mentions a position and then allows somebody else to rise to the bait----while he quietly proceeds to impliment his desired policy.
With respect to gay marriage, all he'd have to do is casually mention that he doesn't think it's a great idea, and the barking moonbats will take it from there.
Say------didn't he kinda mention in the recent SOTU that he didn't quite cotton to the idea?