Verified by 
So-called “social issues”—abortion, rights for sexual minorities, issues related to religion, etc.—are often seen as the bread and butter of political polarization: at any one time, large portions of the American electorate are supportive of them while similarly large portions are opposed. This static look at opinion at any one point in time, however, mischaracterizes public opinion, something that is readily clear in an over-time examination of public opinion toward same-sex marriage.
In a report this week, the Gallup Poll shows that half of Americans support same-sex marriage, while a nearly identical proportion oppose it. These percentages, however, are not what are most interesting about the issue. The report opens with an over-time graph of opinion trends since 1996, when 68% of Americans opposed same-sex marriage and barely a quarter supported it. In the last sixteen years twice as many Americans have grown to support same-sex marriage. (Indeed, in that time President Obama has reportedly “evolved” in his stance, though Politico and others have reported that Obama already supported same-sex marriage back when he was among the minority in 1996.)
Polarization, this is not. The clear trend is toward greater numbers of people supporting same-sex marriage, which we can reasonably expect to continue into the future.
Despite North Carolina voters’ tilt toward restricting marriage to between man and woman, opinions nationally are moving in the opposite direction. The Christian Science Monitor correctly reports on the importance of religion in driving voters’ (especially African American voters’) opinions on the issue. And the Gallup report shows this clearly, with nearly all of those who do not identify with a religion supporting same-sex marriage, more than half of all Catholics supporting it, and only 38% of Protestants supporting. These numbers should be seen as further evidence of the over-time trend because even Protestants and Catholics (whose leaders have most vocally opposed same-sex marriage, as is visible in coverage of Billy Graham’s widely publicized ad endorsing the amendment) are trending toward majority support.
Why the trend toward positive attitudes toward same-sex marriage? For the best discussion, see Paul Brewer’s Value War: Public Opinion and the Politics of Gay Rights which provides the best, most data-rich, but most challenging discussion. An earlier article by Brewer (gated), explains that while moral traditionalism reduces individuals’ support for gay rights (not including marriage), two other trends are occurring that help to explain why people are more favorable toward gay rights. First, peoples’ opinions toward gays and lesbians are increasingly positive, thus the trend in support for their rights. Second, however, views of gays and lesbians per se are increasingly detached from attitudes toward gay rights policies, such that people are less and less likely over to think about gay rights in terms of “gay” and instead are thinking about them in terms of “rights.” (A 2007 documentary film, For the Bible Tells Me So, takes up this and the religious aspects of support for gay marriage, though not in a fully unbiased fashion.)
Another very rigorous treatment of the linkages between public opinion and policy can be found in a 2009 American Political Science Review article (gated, ungated) by Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips (Columbia), who find that policy shifts in favor of gay rights (of various kinds) reflect public opinion trends: as the public becomes more supportive, policy changes accordingly, but with a bias. Even when large majorities support a particular right (e.g., same-sex marriage), states lag in shifting policy to be congruent with the public’s views.
In short, news coverage of same-sex marriage this week should not be emphasizing Obama’s “evolving” position nor the North Carolina vote, but instead the unavoidable fact that opinions toward same-sex marriage are increasingly supportive. Marriage may seem like a divisive issue, but it is not.
Diverse segments of the public agree (especially when the over-time trend is taken into account) and it is only among the most religious and most “traditionalist” Protestants that there is majority (though not overwhelming) opposition to same-sex marriage. Indeed the strength of their conviction can sometimes be interpreted by media and otherwise as equivalent to widespread opposition: the high intensity of a minority’s opinions easily mask the low intensity but overwhelmingly moderate opinions of most Americans on this issue.
