Note: Repost from last night; I realized that I buried the lede in the original title.
Poll: Majority in Michigan now support gay marriage
Detroit — A majority of Michiganians supports gay marriage and broadening rights for homosexuals, a dramatic reversal from just a few years ago, according to a statewide poll released Tuesday to The Detroit News and WDIV-TV Channel 4.
Support for same-sex marriage has increased to 56.8 percent, up 12.5 percentage points from last year — movement fueled largely by shifting opinions from Republicans and independents, the poll of 600 registered voters by the Glengariff Group Inc. showed.
The support is in contrast to 2004, when Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
That year, Glengariff found 24 percent of state voters supported gay and lesbian marriages. Now, 54 percent would repeal the ban and replace it with an amendment to allow same-sex marriages, the poll found.
Unfortunately, I wouldn't expect us to be the 13th state to make things right; at the moment, the powers that be have their sights set wayyyyy out there in 2016:
Gay rights legislation still faces challenges in the Republican-controlled state Legislature. Efforts to include gays in the state's civil rights law, the Elliott Larsen Act, have failed for years.
Similar bills should be introduced soon, while a campaign to drum up support to repeal the constitutional ban on gay marriage is planned in anticipation of a 2016 ballot proposal, said Emily Dievendorf, managing director for Equality Michigan, a Detroit-based bipartisan gay and lesbian group seeking to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
2016? Hell, at the rate the dominos are falling, we'll be behind
Oklahoma by that point (ok, not likely...). Hopefully a few more polls like this one will encourage Equality Michigan and other entities to push for 2014 instead...assuming there's no procedural/technical barrier from doing so, such as a 12-year state election law ban on attempting to overturn an amendment or whatever.
Case in point: Check out Nate Silver's most recent projections about what year he figures that each state will finally break the 50% mark (scroll down quite a bit for the state-by-state projections).
See Michigan? As of March of this year, he had us down at 43% in 2008, 49% in 2012, 55% in 2016 and 61% in 2020.
Assuming this latest poll is correct, Michigan is already at nearly 57% approval, 3 years ahead of his projections. Think about that for a moment.