Public's Shift on Same-Sex Marriage Was Swift, Broad

By Ben Leubsdorf and Colleen McCain Nelson, The Wall Street Journal

27 June 15

remarkably swift and broad shift in public attitudes toward gays and lesbians, unlike any other in recent history, preceded the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

A Supreme Court decision makes gay marriage legal in all 50 states. What constitutional principles did the court’s majority apply, and what are the implications? WSJ’s Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.

As recently as 1990, about seven in eight Americans said sexual relations between adults of the same gender were wrong. In 2004, less than a third supported same-sex marriage, and only one state, Massachusetts, allowed it. Voters in more than two dozen states approved constitutional bans during the first decade of the 2000s. In 2008, the presidential nominees of both major parties publicly opposed gay marriage.

Then the scales tipped. In Maine, 53% voted to reject same-sex marriage in 2009; just three years later, 53% of Mainers voted to legalize it.

This month, a strong national majority was ready to support the high court’s 5-4 ruling on Friday.

By comparison, it took 30 years after the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws for a majority of Americans to approve of marriage between blacks and whites. Decades of national debate over abortion rights have failed to narrow deep divisions.

“It is a unique phenomenon, that change of this magnitude has occurred so quickly on an issue like this,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who helps conduct Wall Street Journal/NBC News surveys.

Perhaps the single most important factor in changing minds: Gays, lesbians and bisexuals came out of the closet. Some 77% of Americans in a Journal/NBC News poll this spring said they personally know or work with someone who is gay or lesbian, up from 62% in 2004.

“The fact that Americans are much more likely to know now that a family member or a co-worker or someone who is a member of their church or synagogue or mosque is gay—that makes them reevaluate their past attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women,” said Georgia State University sociologist Dawn Michelle Baunach.

Technology and media have been factors, as well, some say. Television shows such as “Will & Grace” and “Modern Family,” which portray gay relationships in a positive light, may have helped change attitudes, Ms. Baunach said.

And with the rise of the Internet and social media, “it’s easier to come into contact with these ideas,” said Amy Bree Becker, assistant professor of communications at Loyola University Maryland. Social networks such as Facebook enable mobilization by activists on issues beyond gay rights, she added.

Not everyone has changed their minds. Only 27% of white evangelical Protestants favor same-sex marriage, according to polling by the Pew Research Center. Other groups that on the whole do not favor gay-marriage rights in Pew’s polling include people born before the post-World War II baby boom and conservatives. How Gay and Interracial Marriage Became Legal See how the path to legal same-sex marriage compares with interracial marriage, relative to when the Supreme Court took up each issue.

Just a few years ago, opponents of gay marriage were a majority. Now, with the Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, a small and solidly conservative group of Americans is finding itself out of the mainstream.

On Friday, some of these Americans saw in the Court’s decision another sign of the emergence of a world many say they don’t recognize. They view with concern a culture that has rapidly become more welcoming of gay unions and transsexuals.

“The country that I was born into is gone,” said Joy England, a retired teacher in Sylvan Springs, Ala. “I feel like I’m living in a different country…I’m amazed how quickly it came about.”

As same-sex couples rushed to courthouses seeking marriage licenses and President Barack Obama declared the court’s decision a “victory for America,” Ms. England said she was on the verge of weeping. From South Carolina to Oklahoma, many opponents of gay unions echoed Ms. England’s dejection Friday while vowing to ramp up the fight to protect what they call traditional marriage.

These Americans now are in the minority, but they have outsize impact on Republican politics and will play a central role in the party’s 2016 primary campaign, presenting a test for candidates who must navigate a primary electorate that will look far different than the general-election voting pool. The dilemma is particularly acute for Republicans as they wrestle with the question of whether to rally the base and continue the battle against gay marriage, or reluctantly move in the direction of the broad shift in public opinion.

Support for gay marriage rose in Journal/NBC News polling over the last six years among women and men, whites and blacks and Hispanics, Democrats and Republicans, in cities and suburbs and small towns, among every age group and in every income bracket.

“There is no group that has become more opposed,” Mr. McInturff said.

The young helped lead the way: Support among 18- to 34-year-olds surged from 47% in October 2009, to 57% in March 2012, and then to 74% in March this year.

Suburban residents, political independents, Midwesterners and Hispanics all saw support for same-sex marriage surge by 22 or 23 percentage points between 2009 and 2015.

Friday’s ruling based the right to marriage on the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection and due process under the law. But Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion traced the legal decision back to changes in American society.

“In the late 20th century, following substantial cultural and political developments, same-sex couples began to lead more open and public lives and to establish families,” Mr. Kennedy wrote. The question of gay rights reached the courts, he wrote, because of “a quite extensive discussion of the issue in both governmental and private sectors,’’ as well as “a shift in public attitudes toward greater tolerance.”