Yesterday, Gallup released a poll showing that the largest number of Americans (56 percent) since it's been asking the question believe that gay and lesbian "relations" are "morally acceptable."
On the question of whether they should be legal:
So I think there's good news here for marriage-equality supporters and interesting news. The good news is obvious, the interesting news is that on the matter of whether gay and lesbian relations should be "legal," Americans have been close to this number before, in 2003. According to Gallup,the dip after 2003 could be attributed to "a backlash against a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law and gave gays and lesbians new legal protections in that state."
That suggests that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality when the Prop. 8 case finally makes it there, a similar backlash could occur. There was no dip following the vote to abolish "don't ask, don't tell," however, which suggests there's something to the argument that it would be politically preferable to have marriage-equality rights passed through Congress rather than having the court declare bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Still, though there's obviously no guarantee that the plaintiffs in the Prop. 8 case will prevail, I can't imagine arguing that they should have to wait to have the same legal rights as everyone else until Congress catches up to the American people a majority of whom seem to now support marriage equality.
