If You Won't Change Your Mind About Gay Marriage, Will You Limit Your Opposition to Quiet Grumbling?

Adam Serwer makes a
good point about the politics of gay marriage:
Many recent national polls have shown
that support for marriage equality is growing. But what's also
interesting is that the opposition, while still present, may be
growing less fervent.

Let's take New York as a test example. Despite the recent passage
of a marriage equality bill, support for marriage equality in New
York isn't that much higher than in the country as a whole -- it's
currently at 54 percent, according to
Quinnipiac, which is similar to the low-50s level of support we
see in national
polls.

Support for same-sex marriage in New York varies
depending on religion, with white Catholics being evenly divided at
48 percent opposed and 48 percent supporting. But white Catholic
voters in New York approve of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who drove
passage of [the] marriage equality bill, is at a nearly 3-1
margin. White Protestant opposition to same-sex marriage is
even higher at 54 percent, and yet 60 percent of white Protestants
approve of the job Cuomo is doing.

What this suggests is that some of the people opposed to same-sex
marriage rights nevertheless support Cuomo anyway. This gets to
something I think polling has yet to properly examine -- the
dwindling importance of same-sex marriage to even those voters who
voice opposition to it. The shift towards support for marriage
equality isn't just a matter of more people saying they support it.
It's also a function of people who are nominally opposed caring
less about the issue in general as the inevitability of marriage
equality becomes more apparent.
Read the whole post
here. Read more on same-sex marriage here.

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