Subscribe to Breaking NewsLowenstein: Do 63% of Americans support marriage equality? Maybe. Maybe not.
During the 2008 Presidential election, one man emerged head and shoulders above his peers. He was unquestionably hailed as the best in his field, and all his competitors faded away in comparison.
Barack Obama? Yea, him too.
But I meant Nate Silver, the blogger behind fivethirtyeight.com, whose sophisticated statistical analysis accurately predicted election results throughout the primaries and the general, and often blew more established polling houses out of the water.
So when Nate talks, I tend to listen.
And yesterday, he started talking (or, rather, writing) about how questions are phrased in polling and how that phrasing impacts poll results. In particular, he examined polls that ask Americans their views on gay marriage, and noted that they are overwhelmingly phrased in a positive direction (ex. “Should the government permit a same-sex couple to get married?).
What Nate observed was that in a recent Gallup/USA Today poll that switched the language around, poll results were markedly different.
When asked if the goverment “has the right to prohibit or allow such marriages,” 63% of respondants answered that it should be a private decision, and only 33% of respondants thought the government had the right to interfere.
While Nate concludes that changing language around can only have so much impact, these results are illustrative. If we start framing the debate over marriage in dramatically different terms, will people respond dramatically differently?
First things first, I’m not looking to rain on anyone’s parade. Having been a survey taker, I can say that poll results are ENTIRELY about the way questions are phrased. You get different answers to what is essentially the same question when you phrase that question differently. I don’t know that these polls represent anything at all other than a certain population’s answers to a specific set of questions. Polls in general don’t answer questions so much as they set parameters for asking questions in the future, in other settings.
The Menstruator Ranted:
“Who cares what the breeders think?”
Anyone interested in achieving equality for the gay community, my dear. Like it or not we live in a predominantly straight world, and if we want to achieve equality we HAVE to care what the “breeders” think, and offensive, bigoted attitudes like yours don’t help our cause.
I have no interest in seeking approval from anyone, save perhaps a couple of my closest friends who I genuinely respect. I don’t need the straight community to approve of my lifestyle, but I do need them to allow me to live my life, and that means having the ability to exercise some rights they currently deny me.
Further, I have straight friends and family and I care a great deal what they think. I also strongly object to people like you referring to them as “breeders”. Jesus Christ woman! You do NOT fight prejudice with prejudice, hate with hate. It doesn’t work, and your brand of bigotry only serves to give those in the straight community more ammunition against us.
They are human beings, like us. Some are mindless bigots, like some of us. Some are reasonable, intelligent, kind and generous, like some of us. The only real difference between them and us is sexual preference. It’s bad enough that some of them see that as reason enough to discriminate without people within the gay community buying into that bullshit too.
Grow up.
How can a country that can’t even support itself support gay marriage? We can’t even have a fucking gay pride w/o straights being there. There can’t be a LOGO Awards show without gays fawning all over lousy breeders.
Nothing gay is just strictly gay anymore. It’s like we are struggling for breeder approval, but screw them. Who cares what the breeders think? Why is everyone from Ellen to Withers trying to dance and sing for the straight folk? What the hell do we care? We do not need straight approval for validation, not sure who told this generation that, but it’s gross to watch.
The lousy gender traitor website AFTER ELLEN is the biggest offender. Half their “articles” aren’t even about lesbians. Ladies 2000 is a huge offender… they don’t even call their parties gay or lesbian, just “women” parties.
It’s like we want all the benefits of being breeders w/ none of the homo responsibility.
Mr partner and I are together for almost 40 years, and have adopted 4 children…we are a family in every sense of the way, except for marriage and the rights that go with marriage….I ask, is that fair ?????
Marriage Equality is a MUST. I’ve had just about enough of all the sheeple’s diatribe against it. How the hell does anyone have the right to vote on someone else’s rights anyway?!!!
You know what is REALLY annoying too? the fact that some of the a-holes that voted yes on “protecting” marriage in California probably are part of the statistics of those failed marriages. What gives them the right to vote on someone’s marriage when they couldn’t even make theirs work?
EQUALITY NOW!!!
I just noticed that the poll question doesn’t define “government” as state or federal. It’s important to know how the results might differ if state or federal government were specified.
I see great potential here. I clicked through to the article to try to glean how the poll question was worded. At first blush, I’d suggest a proposed amendment along these lines:
“The decision of whether or not to marry a member of the same sex shall be a private matter between the two partners; the government of California shall pass no law to prohibit or allow such marriages.
The poll results suggest that most people would vote in favor of that amendment. Of course, Proposition 8 would simultaneously have to be voided. The other option would be to change only the advertizing, but I suspect that would be less effective.
Most polls use language to change the results, that’s why I don’t trust most of them. But I do feel that phrasing words differently will persuade many minds. Many people I feel don’t understand the difference between a “civil” marriage and the religious one.
This just reinforces how out of touch EQCA is. Geoff Kors was one of the main architects of the failure by refusing to listen to anyone other than his elitist friends. And he even had the audacity to pat himself on the back afterward about what a good campaign they ran.
And yet, he’s still there. Still defending his clearly erroneous decisions and still criticizing anyone who has different (and better) ideas. He was disappointed the surveys showed we wanted to go back to the polls in 2010 because that didn’t match his preconceived ideas. He even criticized the two students who want to put an initiative on the ballot replacing the word “marriage” with “domestic partners” bypassing Prop 8.
EQCA doesn’t deserve any more money from us until they start getting better leaders.
should Government or the church meddle in Marriage? The government bestowes tangible rights to marriage. It that’s true, should the church be meddling in government business. And if it does, does the government then get the right to get in church business?
I hope this gets people’s attention. When we frame the question in terms of “Please allow us to get married”, which is how it was phrased in California, then the implication is the power currently stands with the government and the people who aren’t comfortable with same sex marriages. If we emphasize the government’s meddling with our lives, and really push not just what is being taken from us by an institution, that let’s be honest most American’s aren’t thrilled with anyway I think there will be a very different response.