Thursday, November 26, 2009

Nation & World

God and Country by Dan Gilgoff

Survey: Support for Gay Civil Unions Grows to 57 Percent

October 09, 2009 04:18 PM ET | Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Americans elect a socially liberal president, and—for the first time in recent years—most Americans say they oppose abortion rights. The cause and effect may seem pretty obvious.

But following that logic, most Americans would lurch rightward on gay rights, too, so that fewer would be expected to support civil unions than did a few years back. However, a new Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey shows that just the opposite has happened:

A clear majority of Americans (57%) favors allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements with each other that would give them many of the same rights as married couples, a status commonly known as civil unions. This finding marks a slight uptick in support for civil unions and appears to continue a significant long-term trend since the question was first asked in Pew Research Center surveys in 2003, when support for civil unions stood at 45%.

Check out this graph tracking the trend:

At the same time, most Americans continue to oppose gay marriage, with 53 percent against it and 39 percent in favor. Here's the graph on that trend line:

Read the full survey report here.

Source for graphs: Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life, © 2009, Pew Research Center. Reprinted with the permission of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, www.pewforum.org.

Tags: religion | polls | gay rights

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Reader Comments

Courage Apostolate

If anyone gets the chance check out the Courage Apostolate which has to do with Same Sex Attraction.

Excellent website. I recommend it. I found it sometime ago.

If anyone likes the sight pass on peacefully.

I found it most rewarding and informative.

Thanks Ophu for wise, accurate comment

Ophu reminds us how "non-whites" suffered under separate but equal laws & policies. A century after emancipation, LBJ signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Victims were denied fair amounts of government funding for education so it was hard to acquire skills for high-pay jobs. Cheapskate bosses gave $ to to elect anti-Labor, anti-Union, Ban-Abortion candidates. Non-whites became a pool of Cheap Labor. They passed to their children their arc in the cycle of poverty. By banning interracial marriage, non-whites seldom wed into rich white families. As a WWII war bride, I followed my husband to bases where he trained pilots. I came from SF where all races rode buses together. In Texas, I was asked to move up front. Had I been older & more assertive, I could have been a white Rosa Parks. To pass time, I served lunch to Texas business men. From the kitchen, where blacks cooked wonderful food, I went through a door and 10 steps later served it to segregationist people. I worked hard for the Civil Rights movement as to race. Now I do it for people born homosexual. I praise activist gays, Lesbians & Bi-Sex. To them I say-Lean hard on our darling Constitution. It's there for all of us.

Dshade insists he's right about EVERYTHING..all kneel..

I quoted from Isaiah (where God says he creates evil) after I phoned a man to thank him for his letter to the editor. He said the paper censored his letter & LEFT OUT the Isaiah quote. Its religious editor refused to let readers know that, in Isaiah, God makes the stunning admission that he creates evil. He gave me the Isaiah quotation. It knocks the Bible totally out of orbit & makes nonsense of its pages, lst to last. Your attempt to belittle Wikipedia, so you can belittle my comment, does zero to support your claims. I own shares in Google, now $517 a share, & I find Wiki on it. DShade is expected to invest at least 10% of his income to support the church whose preachers "forgive his sins." As years pass & Google continues to increase in value, I'm satisfied to be an atheist with better money management skills. After death, will DShade get his bonus of "ten times, packed down & running over." as his preacher promises? Yes, the church mentions money in so many places that only tithers will deny there's something "fishy" about it. Christ, as "flsher of men," is supposed to

"get them hooked." Again--apologies for hurting feelings, but I can't let the USA become a theocracy,

'

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Dan Gilgoff covers religion for U.S. News & World Report. He is the author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War, and is a former politics editor at beliefnet. E-mail Dan at godandcountry@usnews.com.

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