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Gallup: Half of Americans Support Legal Gay Marriage (Dems/Independents for, Republicans against)
Gallup ^ | 05/08/2012 | Frank Newport

Posted on 05/08/2012 1:31:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

PRINCETON, NJ -- Fifty percent of Americans believe same-sex marriages should be recognized by law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages -- down slightly from 53% last year, but marking only the second time in Gallup's history of tracking this question that at least half of Americans have supported legal same-sex marriage. Forty-eight percent say such marriages should not be legal.

Trend: Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?

These results -- based on Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 3-6 -- come at a time when Vice President Joe Biden's remarks on "Meet the Press" Sunday have at least temporarily brought the issue of same-sex marriage back into the news spotlight. Biden said he was "absolutely comfortable" with the idea that same-sex couples and heterosexual couples are "entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties." President Obama, however, has stopped short of saying that he favors legalizing same-sex marriage.

Last's year's Values and Beliefs survey marked the first time in Gallup's history of tracking this issue that a majority favored legalization. Prior to last year, the highest level of support had been 46%, measured in 2007. In 1996, when Gallup first asked the question, 27% supported it, while 68% were opposed.

The issue of same-sex marriage sharply divides the American public along political and religious lines. Almost two-thirds of Democrats support legalizing it, compared with 57% of independents and 22% of Republicans.

Support for Legal Same-Sex Marriage, by Political Subgroup, May 2012

(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: gaymarriage; homosexualagenda; homosexuality; kenyanbornmuzzie; moralabsolutes; swrdswllwngsdshw
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To: svcw

That’s the point.
It’s not that gays want to get “married”,
they just want to undefine the institution for everyone else.


21 posted on 05/08/2012 1:55:24 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter knows whom he's working for)
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To: SeekAndFind

Bovine Excrement! Gallop lies!


22 posted on 05/08/2012 1:58:14 PM PDT by Mechanicos (Vote NOT-ROMNEY ; Take it to the Convention and do it over!)
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To: Sacajaweau

Maybe because this poll sampled from ALL Americans, not necessarily people who are most likely to VOTE in elections.


23 posted on 05/08/2012 1:59:24 PM PDT by txrangerette ("HOLD TO THE TRUTH...SPEAK WITHOUT FEAR" - Glenn Beck)
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To: FreedBird

24 posted on 05/08/2012 2:02:40 PM PDT by Autonomous User ( I guess a liberal and an out-of-work bum look a lot a like, daddy.)
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A lot of Americans are libertarian when it comes to personal issues. If one were to substitute the words Civil Union for marriage the % would be higher for civil unions. The state shouldn’t restrict who is designated who owns a piece of property purchased by 2 people access to a person who isn’t family when their partner is in the hospital ect.

Conservatives make a mistake when they want the government to enforce their religious preferences. This also empowers to enforce the ‘relifious’ preferences of the secular humanist.

You think we would have figured this out. Allow civil unions, let a marriage be a marriage. MEpower your church not the government.

Before someone brings up abortion murdering a baby in the womb of course is/should be covered by laws against murder since the baby in the womb is a seperate person as defined scientifically by their DNA and entitle to the same constitution protections as any other person.


25 posted on 05/08/2012 2:09:37 PM PDT by Leto (Damn shame Sarah didn't run the Presidency was there for the taking)
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To: FreedBird

“Are they working to divide us all on purpose?”

You know damn well we cannot co=exist with liberals. Libs do their best to destroy this country. There is no way we can share this country with these POS’s.


26 posted on 05/08/2012 2:09:47 PM PDT by max americana
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To: SeekAndFind

A poll with the validity of ‘likeability’ ratings for Obama.

People give a politically correct answer and the results are skewed beyond reason.


27 posted on 05/08/2012 2:17:43 PM PDT by relictele (We are officially OUT of other people's money!)
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To: rockinqsranch
Here's my take on these polls:

"Fifty percent of Americans believe replied to our survey that same-sex marriages should be recognized by law as valid"

"In other polling news, surprisingly, only 4% of Americans own firearms"
28 posted on 05/08/2012 2:25:22 PM PDT by kevcol
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To: SeekAndFind
It sounds like Gallup has smoked a pole......literally.

I just wonder who they actually poll. I never get a call.

29 posted on 05/08/2012 2:25:42 PM PDT by Sarajevo (http://rulesoftheinternet.com/index.php?title=Main_Page)
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s in the very 1st sentence. Support has dropped from 53% to 50% since last year. Not a big drop ... and probably w/in the MOE ... but a decrease nonetheless.


30 posted on 05/08/2012 2:25:42 PM PDT by mellow velo (Oxymorons: jumbo shrimp, rap music, liberal think-tank)
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To: SeekAndFind

They say that people want to win and tend to vote for who or what they think will win. So they plant the thought in people’s head that gay marriage is acceptable & maybe some will change their minds. This poll was done only to try and persuade NC’s voters.

Whoever is doing this poll doesn’t realize is that only democrats who obey the big brother. Conservatives think for themselves and don’t need to vote with the pack.


31 posted on 05/08/2012 2:27:39 PM PDT by Linda Frances (Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.)
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To: SeekAndFind

There seems to be a fundamental disconnect.

Supposedly, majorities (or at least pluralities) of Americans think gay marriage should be lega, yet whenever Americans in even the most left-wing states vote on it, they end up banning it.

This tells me that there’s some bias in the polling.


32 posted on 05/08/2012 3:37:38 PM PDT by Yashcheritsiy (Anybody but Obama and Romney)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yes. Look at the chart, it was higher in 2011. It declined in 2012.


33 posted on 05/08/2012 3:41:11 PM PDT by WashingtonSource
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Comment #34 Removed by Moderator

To: SeekAndFind

The government shouldn’t even be involved, who gave the government permission to issue “licences” to get married to begin with?


35 posted on 05/08/2012 4:08:17 PM PDT by TexasFreeper2009
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To: SeekAndFind

Those numbers are not surprising, considering the all out propaganda from the homosexual lobby and the MSM (but I repeat myself), over the past 8 years.


36 posted on 05/08/2012 8:28:05 PM PDT by SuziQ
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To: SeekAndFind; SuziQ; wagglebee; little jeremiah; rockinqsranch; Uncle Slayton; TexasFreeper2009
More telling to me is the distribution between those who regularly attend services (regardless of creed) and those who are "cultural ________" (for example, "Christer (Christmas / Easter) Catholics")

So it seems to me that the most productive thing to do would be to get peoples' butts back into church on Sundays.

Pope Leo XIII identified the ultimate aim of secular marriage back in 1880, when he wrote:

16. Yet, owing to the efforts of the archenemy of mankind, there are persons who, thanklessly casting away so many other blessings of redemption, despise also or utterly ignore the restoration of marriage to its original perfection. It is a reproach to some of the ancients that they showed themselves the enemies of marriage in many ways; but in our own age, much more pernicious is the sin of those who would fain pervert utterly the nature of marriage, perfect though it is, and complete in all its details and parts. The chief reason why they act in this way is because very many, imbued with the maxims of a false philosophy and corrupted in morals, judge nothing so unbearable as submission and obedience; and strive with all their might to bring about that not only individual men, but families, also -- indeed, human society itself -- may in haughty pride despise the sovereignty of God.

17. Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.

18. Hence are owing civil marriages, commonly so called; hence laws are framed which impose impediments to marriage; hence arise judicial sentences affecting the marriage contract, as to whether or not it have been rightly made. Lastly, all power of prescribing and passing judgment in this class of cases is, as we see, of set purpose denied to the Catholic Church, so that no regard is paid either to her divine power or to her prudent laws. Yet, under these, for so many centuries, have the nations lived on whom the light of civilization shone bright with the wisdom of Christ Jesus.

(the rest of the document, at the link, is worth reading as well)

Marriage, being an icon of the relationship between Christ and His Church, is therefore a logical target for those who would seek to remove Christ from our culture. Back in Pope Leo's day, the goal was to remove the permanence of marriage (a/k/a easing divorce)...therefore removing the perceived sacramental, divine character of marriage. 125 years later, the notion of "homosexual unions" seems like a logical step in the process: to make an utter mockery of the institution itself...

That's why the results of this poll actually make sense to me. Everybody receives a moral formation from someplace. Those who actually regularly go to church would tend to receive formation more in line with that church, while those who don't will receive their formation from the secular media (a media that works in direct collaboration with "the archenemy of mankind")

FWIW.

37 posted on 05/09/2012 2:01:11 AM PDT by markomalley (Nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good-Pope Leo XIII)
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To: SeekAndFind

No sale.

I bet anything:
1. This poll was a skewed sampling by Gallup, and
2. The “Bradley-Wilder effect” is in play here.

Tuesday’s North Carolina landslide vote (the REAL poll) against gay “marriage” is most certainly more representative of American values than this stinking Gallup poll.


38 posted on 05/09/2012 2:10:36 AM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: markomalley

Great post. I always say that Pope Leo XIII saw this coming 130 years ago. Folks have been conditioned to think that marriage comes from the state, therefore they are much more likely to consider any two or more individuals married as long as they have piece of paper from the state saying they are. And the state’s definition of the institution is simply whatever judges,pols, or the majority thinks it can be at any one time. It was always a danger with the state involved in the institution. Up until recently that involvement was good for both the institution and the culture. Now, perhaps not so much. A recent poll has 40% of people thinking marriage comes from man and thus the state.

Freegards


39 posted on 05/09/2012 8:00:03 AM PDT by Ransomed
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To: SeekAndFind

Here’s what matters: Is it supported at the ballot box? The answer to that question - in every state where people are allowed to vote on the issue is - - NO. NO. NO...


40 posted on 05/09/2012 8:02:59 AM PDT by GOPJ ( "A Dog In Every Pot" - freeper ETL)
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