aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Gay marriage? Yawn.

Republican values voters are disillusioned that gay marriage has lost some of its emotional resonance. With good reason:

A couple years ago-say after the Massachusetts marriage debates-anti-gay marriage sentiment reached an all-time high, as much as 63 percent. People were furious, and they were fighting.

But in this most recent poll, what percentage thought gay marriage was extremely important?

Only 22 percent, or about one in five.

Thirty-six percent said that gay marriage wasn’t an important issue at all, and 11 percent called it only “slightly important.” Fifteen percent thought it was “moderately important”; 5 percent called it “very important.” One percent of respondents weren’t sure. [...]

These adults weren’t all Northeastern liberals, either, or secular city Dems. Most of them described themselves as conservative or moderate; slightly more respondents came from the South than from other areas of the United States; more of them were from the suburbs or rural areas than from cities; the large majority identified as Christian.