NY Times/CBS News Poll. 4/22-26. Adults. MoE 3% (3/12-16 results)
Which comes closest to your view? Gay couples should be allowed to legally marry. OR, Gay couples should be allowed to form civil unions but not legally marry. OR, There should be no legal recognition of a gay couple's relationship.
Legal Marraige 42 (33)
Civil Unions 25 (27)
No Legal Recognition 28 (35)
These results are nothing short of stunning. Support for gay marriage is up 11 points in a single month, and up from 22 percent in March 2004. Those advocating second-class status for gay couples are headed toward "fringe minority" status. The biggest gain over this past month came among Republicans, who went from 6 to 18 percent support for gay marriage -- still a significant minority in their caucus, but evidence that the efforts of Steve Schmidt and Meghan McCain are having an effect. If the GOP is to remain an ongoing concern in the future, it will have to evolve toward a more tolerant position on gay marriage.
In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, released on Monday, 31 percent of respondents over the age of 40 said they supported gay marriage. By contrast, 57 percent under age 40 said they supported it, a 26-point difference. Among the older respondents, 35 percent said they opposed any legal recognition of same-sex couples, be it marriage or civil unions. Among the younger crowd, just 19 percent held that view.
America is evolving, with its multicultural and tolerant younger generation rapidly replacing the bigots. Now, the tipping point has been reached, with gay marriage suddenly legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont, with several additional states almost sure to be added to that list this year (next up: New Hampshire and Maine). The Mississippis of this country may end up being the final outposts of bigotry and hate in this country, but even within the evangelical movement, intolerance is in retreat.
Leaders of evangelical Christian organizations — the most vocal opponents of gay marriage as the issue polarized the electorate for much of this decade — now face a similar divide in their own ranks. In a survey last fall by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Inc., 58 percent of white evangelicals ages 18 to 29 said they support either civil unions or gay marriage; support dropped to 46 percent among white evangelicals who were older than that. (Asked about gay marriage exclusively, the support figures were 26 percent for the younger group and 9 percent for the older group.)
"The data do show a growing divide between younger and older evangelicals. There clearly is a generational difference," said Amy E. Black, a political scientist at Wheaton College, an evangelical liberal arts school in Illinois. She characterizes the thinking among many younger evangelicals as, "What big deal is civil unions, really? What I care about is the environment, or what I care about is human rights."
The attitudinal divide between younger and older evangelicals was also revealed last November, when one-third of white evangelicals under 30 voted for Barack Obama . That was double the share of the vote that John Kerry drew four years before from the same demographic, exit polls showed, even though both Democratic candidates supported civil unions, abortion rights and stem cell research.
The trend poses a big challenge to an already beleaguered evangelical Christian movement as it tries to get its message heard this year in Washington, where both the White House and Capitol are filled with people who don’t generally share similar views. To keep growing, the movement will have to bring in new generations of activists with new ideas. But most evangelical organizations aren’t about to relax their orthodoxy on hot-button culture-war issues for the sake of broadening their appeal with the young. And as a practical political matter, evangelical leaders worry that they will jeopardize their established activist base if they stake out more conciliatory positions on issues such as gay marriage or the environment.
Sucks to be them, unable to grow because their existing membership is wedded to a policy of intolerance and bigotry. Stuck with a membership so regressive, they are gearing up to once again fight hate-crimes and employment discrimination legislation.
But time remains the bigot's biggest enemy, and it stops for no one.