Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company

According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, opposition to gay marriage is declining. Only 53% of respondents oppose the idea, down from 65% in 1996. A more in-depth look at the poll can be found on the Pew website. While white mainline Protestants have been the biggest shift, going from 26%-65% opposed in 1996 to 45%-44% in favor in 2003, white American Catholics have had almost as sizeable shift, going from 31%-60% against to 47% to 41% in favor of gay marriage.

That's right. Except for (probably) Jews (who aren't listed), white Catholics are pretty much the religious group most supportive of gay marriage. This does not surprise me, though it might surprise you.

My interpretation of this data is that a) gay marriage in the United States is a matter of when and not if and b) when gay marriage becomes legal, it will be supported by at least 60% of Americans a few years after that happens. Catholics are a swing progressive political bloc in the United States. A rapid change in their political opinions tends to presage progessive reform. One of the key examples is opposition to the Vietnam War. The shift in American public opinion against the war was led by the change in the beliefs of American Catholics, not damn, dirty hippies. Heck, the hippies probably inhibited the war effort by offending Catholics.

I also expect American public opinion to swing in favor of gay marriage once it is legalized. Most likely, it will follow the chronological profile of American opinion on abortion. Before Roe v. Wade, the majority of Americans opposed abortion. Within a few years, most Americans, upon seeing that the world hadn't ended, decided that abortion wasn't so bad. Mostly, it was the typical preference for the status quo, so long as the present regime isn't a mess. Since I don't expect gay marriage to cause the end of the world, I rather expect that a majority of Americans will eventually swing in favor of it.

So this is me putting the skills I learned in college to use for some simple analysis.