Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Two Marriage Equality Notes at the end of a long day

Two "breaking news" bits before I head out for the night:

A new nat’l poll released today says 52% of Americans favor marriage equality. We’ve NEVER seen that before. Read it all here

It is being widely reported that Judge Walker will rule on the stay on his ruling tomorrow morning. From advocate.com:
U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker will issue a Thursday morning ruling on whether to stay a decision in the Proposition 8 federal case pending appeal, according to a late Wednesday e-mail from the court.
And yes, that COULD mean rainbow wedding bells again. Stay tuned!

1 comment:

JCF said...

Very interesting . . . and not entirely positive (from a broad human rights perspective).

I notice that the question was asked in the context of being asked about birthright citizenship (49% would amend the Constitution to stop it. Basically, IMO, "Fear of a Brown USA"). And, even more disturbingly, was the overwhelming % opposing the proposed Islamic community center, inc mosque, in Lower Manhattan near Ground Zero.

Are human rights a zero-sum game? You can only grant them to same-sex couples, by taking them away from someone else? (asked JCF, disgusted).

[The interesting factoid: the difference towards SSM, based on slightly different wording. The overall 52% approving, came from phrasing the question "SHOULD gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to get married", whereas the phrasing "DO they have a right..." broke, overall, 51-49 against. While that difference might be seen as fairly slight---certainly w/in the margin-of-error---even more interesting was a factoid in the sub-breakdown. In the "DO they" form, 52% of women were positive, while 45% of men were: a 7% "gender gap." But in the "SHOULD they" form, it broke women 67% in favor and men only 37% in favor: a PHENOMENAL 30% gender gap!!! What in the world??? (I'd really like to know more about this discrepancy: something "Does Not Compute" here)]