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new poll released by the Human Rights Campaign has found that 60 percent of Americans support "allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally," while only 37 percent oppose it.
That’s only slightly higher than nonpartisan public surveys, which show majorities backing same-sex marriage in recent years. In 2014, polls generally showed support for gay marriage in the mid-50s, and 56 percent of Americans in an ABC News/Washington Post poll in October 2014 support “the Supreme Court action … that allows gay marriages to go forward in several more states.”
The poll also asked respondents to react to a quote from Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who predicted that a Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide would cause a "revolt" or "revolution."
According to a memorandum from pollsters Anna Greenberg and David Walker, 70 percent of voters disagreed with that statement, including 57 percent of Republicans.
“In some of our previous reports to HRC, sometimes in the face of stubborn anti-marriage majority, we have noted the movement toward equality over time and said this question is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when,’” Greenberg and Walker wrote in their memo. “For voters, ‘when’ is ‘now.’”