A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that fifty-nine percent of Americans support marriage equality, up from thirty-two percent just a decade ago:
Half of all Americans believe that gay men and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll in which a large majority also said businesses should not be able to deny serving gays for religious reasons.
Fifty percent say the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection gives gays the right to marry, while 41 percent say it does not.
Beyond the constitutional questions, a record-high 59 percent say they support same-sex marriage, while 34 percent are opposed, the widest margin tracked in Post-ABC polling.
Another interesting result is that fully 69% of Americans are not buying the Religious Right’s fake claims of persecution or threats to their “religious freedom,” saying that businesses should not be able to refuse service to gays and lesbians, even if they claim it goes against their “sincerely held beliefs.” As is so often the case these days, the shrinking anti-gay cohort has misplayed their hand, assuming that Americans would believe their invented tales of trials and tribulations at the hands of liberal gay activists. Americans know that this simply isn’t happening, and that religion is not under attack in the United States. Is bigotry under attack? Insofar as people are still very much entitled to bigoted beliefs, no. It’s simply that anti-gay bigotry is becoming about as socially acceptable as Klan membership.
These numbers will only rise in the next few years, which leads us to wonder whom, exactly, NOM and other similar groups think they’re representing. They’ll continue to say they represent the “American people” until they’re blue in the face, but it’s obvious that the American people have left them in the dust on these issues.
