More than two-thirds of Americans support same-sex marriage, and half of Americans believe people are born gay or lesbian, according to a new Gallup poll.
Yesterday, the venerated firm released results from a poll that show the highest level of support the firm has ever recorded — after more than two decades years of quizzing Americans about their views on LGBTQ-related topics. At a time when the entire community is feeling a backlash against strides made during the Obama administration, the results suggest that the current administration may have emboldened anti-gay zealots, the tide of history continues to roll toward equality.
A research-based consultant company, known over decades for its trustworthy number-crunching first surveyed Americans on the same-sex union in 1996. When polling on the subject began, a mere 27 percent of those surveyed supported gay marriage. In fact, support of gay marriage has increased by three percent annually for the past three years, according to the poll.
While much of that comes as good news to the LGBTQ community, the poll also makes plain the schism between conservatives and progressives. The survey claims that 83 percent of those who classed themselves as Democrats support legally recognized same-sex marriage, a stark contrast to the compared to the 44 percent of Republican respondents. Add to that the Gallup data that shows that more than seven in 10 (71 percent) of those who vote independent say they were in favor of legally recognized same-sex marriage.
Since same-sex marriage was made “This means that Americans are more likely to know someone who has married a same-sex partner, and the visibility of these marriages may be playing a role in overturning some folks’ previously held opposition to their legal status,” Gallup said.
Same-sex marriage was legalised by a Supreme Court decision in all 50 states in 2015 — a full decade after Massachusetts became the first state to make the bond legal.
Over time, Gallup has observed that the number of respondents identifying as LGBTQ+ in America is also on the rise.
In 2017, the firm revealed that 4.5 percent of US adults classed themselves as LGBTQ+, up on 4.1 percent in 2017, and 3.5 percent in 2012 – the year Gallup started recording this data. The firm postulates that the increase in Americans identifying as LGBTQ+ can be attributed in large part to millennials, which Gallup considers to be babies born between 1980 and 1999.
And, while Americans are evenly divided about whether LGBTQ people are born that way or whether being outside the mainstream amounts to a lifestyle “choice,” an additional 10 percent of respondents
said they believed being gay stems both from biological and environmental factors.
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Last modified: August 14, 2019
