POLL WATCHING: Jonathan Rauch

In catching up on my reading I just came across this August AP poll. Contrary to common belief (including mine), it suggests that whether you talk about "civil unions" or "gay marriage" makes basically no difference either to people's approval of the idea or their presidential voting intentions.

Hmm. Can it be so? I'd be most interested in hearing how fellow bloggers respond to this question: do you or equally approve/disapprove of legal same-sex unions regardless of whether they're designated marriage? To what extent is this a debate about the label?

Here's the poll:

ASSOCIATED PRESS Gay Marriage.Conducted 8/8-12/03; surveyed 1,028 adults; margin of error +/-3% (release,8/19). A response of * indicates less than 0.5 percent.

Question one: "Would you favor or oppose allowing gays and lesbians to form a civil union that would give a same-sex couple the same rights and benefits as a married couple?"

41% favor; 53 percent oppose; 6 percent refuse or don't know

Question two: "Would you favor or oppose a law that would ban gay marriage, requiring that marriage should be between a man and a woman?"

52% favor; 41 percent oppose; 7 percent don't know, refuse.


posted by maggie at 11:44 PM | Link |

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home