Why Does Support for Gay Marriage Continue to Rise?

Support for gay marriage has increased considerably over the last 15 years and even more rapidly over the last three years as a result of a combination of the following three things: passage of anti-gay marriage legislation, increasingly accurate media portrayals of gay Americans and by virtue of more people intimately knowing someone who is gay.

A national Pew Research poll released on Feb. 7 found that the American public was evenly divided regarding same-sex marriage for the first time in the 15 years of polling on the issue.The study, which aggregated multiple 2011 polls, found 46 percent of Americans in support of gay marriage, whereas 45 percent opposed the institution.

Just two years prior, in 2009, an average of multiple polls found a clear majority (54 percent) opposed to gay marriage, with just 37 percent in support. When the polling began in 1996, 65 percent opposed gay marriage, while just 27 percent said they supported it.

An analysis of the polls revealed that support for gay marriage increased 10 percent over the 14 years from 1995 to 2009, but managed to increase nearly the same amount (9 percent) from 2009 to 2011. Read more >>