THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL, GAY MARRIAGE, AND FEDERALISM: Dale Carpenter

...Exit polls showed that 27 percent of voters favor gay marriage, while 35 percent favor "civil unions." This led some excited gay pundits to proclaim that a whopping 62 percent of the public favors gay marriage or its equivalent.

Don't believe it. Polls on gay marriage cannot be trusted. They systematically undercount opposition, often by 10 or more percentage points, as they did before the election.

As for civil unions, it's doubtful most people understand what the term means, much less understand it in the way gay activists do. Confronted with a polling question containing the actual definition ("Should homosexual couples receive all of the benefits and privileges of marriage, albeit under a different name?"), public support would drop. Informed specifically that gay couples in a civil union would have a right equal to married couples to adopt children, public support would likely fall to levels close to the support for gay marriage.

But there's a deeper reason to be concerned, deeper than particular fights over state amendments. We may be in the midst of a long-term religious revival, a periodic fact of life in this country's history. The revival has been most pronounced among Christian evangelicals who cleave to a literal -- and anti-gay -- interpretation of the Bible. ...

This leads to my third suggestion. In the face of resurgent anti-gay religiosity, our best bet is to defend the principle of federalism. ... Federalism-based arguments are the only thing that saved us from a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage this past summer.

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posted by Eve at 1:28 AM | link

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