Gay Marriage Is Fading as 'Values' Focal Point

[t0dd]

Source: FiveThirtyEight

It's Mike Huckabee's win in the presidential straw poll at this past week's Value Voters' summit that's drawing the headlines. But this is every bit as interesting:

Abortion ranked first among issues of concern to straw-poll voters, getting 41 percent of the vote, with protection of religious liberty second with 18 percent.

Opposition to same-sex marriage was third at 7 percent.

Emphasis is mine. These are not the tea-partiers, who have a libertarian bent. This is a forum, rather, sponsored by the Family Research Council, an organization which continues to insist that homosexuality is curable and to link it to pedophilia. But the actual attendees at the forum -- religious conservative activists from around the country -- just don't seem to be all that riled up about the prospect of two men getting married.

This is not to suggest that these voters have become pro-gay marriage. If any of them was spotted in leather chaps at Remington's after the event -- it was not, I assure you, to show solidarity for their gay brothers and sisters. But the last time this poll was conducted, in October 2007, gay marriage was the top choice of 20 percent of the attendees. That's quite a decline, particularly given that gay marriage has been more in the news than abortion for the past couple of years.

Public opinion is moving toward acceptance of gay marriage. But it is doing so very slowly, at a rate of perhaps a point or two per year, and has at least a few years to go before it is the majority opinion. In the near term, the more relevant dimension may be 'passion', or depth of feeling. It used to be that the conservatives were ahead on passion -- they were strongly opposed to gay marriage, whereas liberals were, at best, lukewarmly in favor of it. Increasingly, that dynamic seems to be reversing.

More here: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/gay-marriage-is-fading-as-values-focal.html

[BlooInBloo]

1. I.e., they know they're losing.

[DCKit]

10. I've long thought it's a result of outrage overload.

The religiously insane have been hitting it so hard and so long, the sheeple are all *yawn* about it now.

[beyurslf]

2. It's because they know they are one justice short of overturning Roe

and they hope to sneak in someone.

[Zoeisright]

3. Happens with every single conservative 'issue'.

They eventually lose. Because they're wrong.

[t0dd]

4. Except abortion.

That will always be an issue with them

[Zoeisright]

5. And they're still wrong. And they lost.

I don't know why they can't get it through their thick skulls that the issue is PRIVACY. It's none of their fricking business.

[Iggo]

6. Conservatives used to love privacy, too.

Sad.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

7. Overturning Roe

Would be THEIR "Waterloo" and they know it. How else would abortion have remained legal 36 years on? Also, in eliminating Roe, they will be challenging the Griswold case, Roe's underpinnings. We all know they have been monkeying around with birth control but they can't logically argue that there is a right to privacy when it comes to birth control and not to pregnancy.

[Zoeisright]

8. Of course. That's why nothing happened to Roe despite years of repuke rule.

If they overturned it they would lose one of their screaming points.

And rich repukes will still fly their daughters and mistresses to Europe to get abortions on demand.

[Ian David]

9. If only sexually desirable aliens would land on Earth.

That would give them something more serious to worry about.

"Marriage is between two humans! god created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Seldar-Seven! Tripods! RUN!!!!"

[eppur_se_muova]

11. "Protection of Religious Liberty" is second ??? Irony meter PEGGED !! nt