Posted on 08/27/2010 8:57:30 AM PDT by zort
Gay marriage is not going away as a highly emotional, contested issue. Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that bans same-sex marriage, has seen to that, as it winds its way through the federal courts.
But perhaps the public has reached a turning point.
A CNN poll this month found that a narrow majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage--the first poll to find majority support. Other poll results did not go that far, but still, on average, showed that support for gay marriage had risen to 45 percent or more (with the rest either opposed or undecided).
That’s a big change from 1996, when Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. At that time, only 25 percent of Americans said that gay and lesbian couples should have the right to marry, according to an average of national polls....
According to our research, as recently as 2004, same-sex marriage did not have majority support in any state. By 2008, three states had crossed the 50 percent line.*
Today, 17 states are over that line (more if you consider the CNN estimate correct that just over 50 percent of the country supports gay marriage)....
This trend will continue. Nationally, a majority of people under age 30 support same-sex marriage. And this is not because of overwhelming majorities found in more liberal states that skew the national picture: our research shows that a majority of young people in almost every state support it. As new voters come of age, and as their older counterparts exit the voting pool, it’s likely that support will increase, pushing more states over the halfway mark.
State figures are based on a statistical technique has been used to generate state estimates from national polls....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“You’re not a conservative” is not an insult.
True -- that argument is the equivalent of equating minor rollbacks in the welfare state with throwing Grandma out to starve.
That's your opinion. It's not mine.
When someone is called "not a conservative", when speaking on a conservative forum, it is plainly insulting.
Do you think it was a compliment? It was an attempt to define me. It was either a flattering definition, or an insulting definition. I'm sorry you aren't able to discern that.
Just a statement, that’s all.
You’d have to be incredibly thin skinned to feel insulted by that.
Frank Bruni swears he fell on it in the shower.
Statements aren't necessarily made in a vacuum - absent any prior history. Just saying.
Again, you’d have to be INCREDIBLY thin skinned to be insulted by that.
I dunno — basically, it’s an accusation that “you don’t belong here”.
Sorry, it’s not an insult.
Neither is telling someone they’re thin skinned.
Oh, and “Welcome to FR.”
You'd have to be a pretty unintelligent person to think that this was our first exchange.
You don't think that, do you? And, you'd have to be pretty thin-skinned if you think being called unintelligent is insulting - it's just a statement, right?
See how this works.
Saying someone is not a conservative on a conservative website, isn't flattering and it's not a term of endearment. Insults are either bad for everyone, or they're bad for no one. It can't be something in the middle.
You’d have to be INCREDIBLY THIN SKINNED to be insulted by that.
And you would have to be INCREDIBLY OBTUSE to think that.
You can call me names, and I can call you names. It isn't that complicated, to anyone who isn't INCREDIBLY OBTUSE.
I can be just as argumentative as you seem to want to be. In fact, I enjoy it.
Still doesn’t change the fact that you would have to be incredibly thin skinned to be insulted by a statement.
You can wiggle, squirm, and try to best Lawrence Taylor’s football field footwork all you want, doesn’t change the fact that you’d have to be incredibly thin skinned to be insulted by “You’re not a conservative”.
>In fact, I enjoy it.
No, you don’t.
Is exactly the argument someone would make who was incredibly obtuse. You’ve got that down. You should look for a publisher. Your first book is going to be a blockbuster.
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