NJ Poll: Majority Reject Gay Marriage
The
Eangleton-Rutgers poll of 809 New Jersey adults was taken Oct. 29-31. Margin of eror 3.5 percent. The results are dramatically different from a
widely touted June New Jersey poll suggesting majorities favored gay marriage.
Only 29 percent of New Jerseyans support gay marriage, while 40 percent support civil unions and 16 percent no recognition at all.
Most dramatically, New Jerseyans now support a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of husband and wife: 54 percent to 38 percent.
posted by maggie at
8:38 AM | Link |
Hmmm -- adding the 29 percent who favor gay marriage and the 40 percent who favor civil unions (which, last week, people like you said was basically gay marriage), and it looks like more people favor some sort of official government sanctioning of gay unions than don't.
Also, if 69 percent of people favor some sort of gay union, how can 54 percent want an amendment to ban it?
I'm glad for the sake of our schools that you guys aren't math teachers.
Actually tmcd, what I have argued vigorously publicly and repeatedly is that marriage and civil unions are NOT the same thing, and that redefining the public meaning of hte word marriage (along with the various punishments government has in its arsenal for punishing and marginalizing people it consider bigots)is the main way in which gay marriage will damage marriage as a social institution. I have issues with civil unions and alot of ambivalence about them, but I don't think its the same thing. Neither does Evan Wolfson, or virtually any person I've debate on gay marriage for the three years. Neither did the plaintiffs in the New Jersey case.
In my public debates I notice that in a 15 minutes speech gay marriage advocates spend a lot of time explaining why civil unions arn't good enough.
But if you are happy with civil unions, I'm happy that you are.
Certainly it would be a quite differnt and less contentious national debate.
I believe that most NJ residents are infavor of the consitutional amdendment. However, its irrelevant. The people of NJ are hopelessly addicted to the democrate party. No amount of corruption or perverted behavoir has shaken the democrat hold on NJ government.
We'll at least our governor is a regular working stiff, just like you or me.... right. ;)
M.
(Just waiting to escape from the peoples' republic of New Jersey)
The people at National Review, who link to you ALL the time, spent the day of last week's court ruling saying that the court OK'd gay marriage, that the liberal media would spin it the other way, but that it was essentially gay marriage. Also, Bush & Co. have spent the past week going around telling people that civil unions = gay marriage = hell in a handbasket, so if you didn't personally say that, fine, but the majority of people on your side are saying it.
That was a minor point, however. My major point is that the majority of people DO favor legal recognition of gay unions, whether you call them marriages or civil unions. If this is so, then a majority can't also want a constitutional amendment banning the unions they are in favor of.
I don't think you'll find too many people who say they are in favor of gay unions but that they should be banned in the state constitution. If they do, those people are too dumb to have any say in the matter.
The form of argument "people link to you all thet time" therefore I'm justified in saying their arguments are your argument" is a little too silly to respond to.
Lots of people do think and argue that civil unions and gay marriage just the same. I'm not one of them.
I think it's pretty clear what's going on:
1) Most people don't "hate" gays and pretty much don't care if two men or women want some things like co-insurance, visitation rightws in hospitals, and are even willing to foot the bill for some benefits.
2) At the same time, the whole "men and women are indistinguishable and should be treated as such" is pretty much discredited in this country.
3) The insulting nature of the NJ's Supreme Court attitude towards the legislature and, indirectly, the people, wasn't completely lost upon New Jerseyites. They wouldn't be asking for a constitutional amendment if they trusted the Supreme Court.
In other words, everything is situational. Gays want insurance benefits? Fine. Want some tax benefits. Well, OK, whatever. Want to eliminate public celebration of Father's day because it's insulting to Lesbian couples raising children? Good Luck with that one. And let's see what happens when a gay couple sues because a child was preferentially placed with a married couple.
I think quotes like "too dumb to have any say in the matter" tell us precisely why the moderates have abandoned the left in the last 10 years.
It's just SO OBVIOUS to the left that everyone who is against gay marriage is either stupid or evil. Tmcd, why didn't the ancient Greeks have gay marriage: was it perhaps their evil Judeo-Christian-based homophobia? Or were Plato, Socrates, Pericles, et.al. just a bunch of unknowing hicks?
Jon asks: why didn't the ancient Greeks have gay marriage?
Because marriage was not controlled or restricted by the state. In ancient times, marriage compared to "shacking up" were the same things. In all generations and societies, relationships, whether state licensed or not, has always been about the economics of the partnership. In an agrarian culture where children were necessary for your old age, the calculus of marriage was different than in ours, where bank accounts are what matter. That is why same-sex marriage makes sense, and will be legal and supported nationwide within 15 years. /1
Footnote /1 Supported by all except those who are so intolerant of Gay people that they will never support any pretense of equal treatement.
When the state offers one class of partners significant economic benefits that are not offered to all classes of partners, then equal protection questions arise. That is what the NJ Supremes decided last week.
Personally, I think the status of the m-word is important. There are valuable benefits to society from the stability that marriage would offer same-sex couples that clearly justify the granting of equal rights/rites to same-sex couples.
But don't babble about protecting marriage and the children. Unless you also stop giving no-fault divorces to selfish heterosexuals, and revoke marriage licences for childless couples.
$0.47
Gary
Gary, we give no-fault divorces to selfish homosexuals too. Sexual orientation isn't particularly relevant to the concept of "family" is it?
Mom and Dad however, are pretty much fundamental -- barring some sort of tragedy, of course.
Pretending that kids don't have one of each is just that -- pretending.
The comment about childless couples aside, whom could adopt, it is comments like what Gary said about the protection of marriage being a joke in this country ever since the instigation of no-fault divorce, that are genuinely hurting the argument that marriage between one man and one woman must be protected. It's been just one bad fruit of the generation that took prayer and the Bible out of schools, which in itself has been the single worst event in the history of this country. Domestic violence (and this is very significant among gays, especially lesbians but also among gay men, I might add, to the point of requirements of legal civil unions in some states including pre-payment for domenstic violence programs), early pregnancy, divorce as I mentioned, and many other factors, all started in the early 60s -- right when the school system decided God's basic, basic laws were not for kindergarten teachers to teach about. We the children of that generation (most of us), are reaping this, and unless it's stopped, comments about 15 years in the future aside, it'd hardly be recognizable anymore that this country is the Land of the Free.
Land of the Oppressed, more like.
By the way, I myself am an ex-homosexual, and involved with ex-gay ministries.
-EW
AMERICA, BLESS GOD! (and do it now!)
What is the societal purpose in enacting a preferential status on the basis of something as subjective as "gay identity"?
Look, in opinion polls there is the "third option" effect where two choices are split to create an apparent third way. People will gravitate to that third choice on issues that are highly contentious.
Doesn't really solve anything but people like to think of themselves as being fair about this sort of thing. And the vast majority just up to the top of the agenda in this country. SSM is not marriage, but the rhetoric of SSMers turns people off who don't like the insults of bigot! and homophobe! being hurled around unjustly. Too much of that happens in these discussions and it is sure way of cutting off conversations, you can betcha.
But at the same time people are fairminded, for the most part, and we've all become sensitized to the claims of minorities for "rights".
Reciprocal beneficiares would probably get the same degree of favor as civil union, if that was offered as the third choice. It is pretty much an empty word that people approve with a sort of shrug.
If they were asked, do you want to attached same-sex union to marital status? Or would you prefer that same-sex partners be allowed to become reciprocal beneficiaries in an explicitly nonmarital alternative arrangement? Or would you prefer no publicly recognized arrangement for same-sex partners?
The responses would favor the middle way, just because it is the middle way, but in this instance also because it would not be marriage merged with nonmarriage.
Gary, the only part of your comment that has any validity is that no-fault divorce should be stopped just as same sex marriage. I fear that if we keep ignoring God's moral laws we may get what we deserve.
—
I'm afraid TMCD that you have some arithmetic skill but are not summing up the comparable numbers correctly. I have not read the poll and the numbers given only add up to 85% (29+40+16). Nevertheless, 69% may favor some sort of gay union but 54% could still favor a state constitutional amendment protecting marriage. You must see that only 29% favor gay "marriage" so when it comes to a marriage protection amendment that 40% + 16% vote together to give a 54% or more (56%) majority. As 15% is unaccounted for that may also impact the actual number count.
Gary47290, you misunderstood Jon's accurate question: "Why didn't the ancient Greeks have gay marriage?" You reduce the question to state marriage and give some a ludicrous interpretation of marriage in ancient times. The fact is that the institution of marriage precedes the state's involvement in marrying people. There were nevertheless, wholesome marriages in which the man and woman, or man and women, brought children into the world, made a family and cared for the family which was also tied to an extended family.
Now, there was a period in ancient Greece in which homosexuality among men was rampant. There army did not have a "don't ask, don't tell" protocol. Instead, everyone asked and told and did. It was believed that having a homosexual partner made you fight harder to protect your partner or partners. Just about all the men where involved in homosexual relationships which demonstrates that when it is socially acceptable it definitely spreads.
Yet the curious thing is that they never conceived of turning these relationships into marriages. When they left the army the majority of them married women and raised families, demonstrating the fluidity of sexual encounters when socially reinforced. Their homosexuality like their pedophilia was never seen as anything more than pleasurable sexual encounters that may or may not be lasting or vastly variable. They recognized that these relationships had nothing to do with marriage.
the relationships between a man and woman, and a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, are not the same in structure or in function, and the presence of love is not enough to make them the same.
we have separate words for lesbians and gays, why not different words for marriage and civil unions? i can understand that until the two are on an equal level that no gays or lesbians would be satisfied. i hope that we can give them both the same status and still be able to keep the words separate. if the federal government were to define civil unions and het marriage as separate, but then give them many of the same rights (put civil unions in alongside marriage whenever it is mentioned) that would be enough of a compromise for both parties.
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