Support for Marriage Equality on the Rise!

And the people who are in support may surprise you. In the most recent poll to come to light, various religious groups and denominations are showing majority support for marriage equality in America. Jews at 76 percent lead ahead of many other groups like White Catholics (at 56 percent), Hispanic Catholics (at 53 percent), and White Protestants (at 52 percent). While some of these numbers may seem low to a few of you out there, you must take into account that polls done in 2004 saw most of these numbers in their 30’s if not lower. In fact, I suspect that a large reason why a majority of Americans in general support marriage equality is due to the shift in opinions among the religious groups!

Those who support marriage equality the most are the religiously unaffiliated (at 72 percent) and the Jewish people (mainly Reform Jews and other moderate denominations. Orthodox Jews are known for being more conservative in their views). The groups that are polled to have the lowest support are: Black Protestants (at about 33 percent), Mormons (at 23 percent), and White Evangelicals (at 20 percent). White Evangelicals have been the most outspoken about their opposition to marriage equality but they, themselves, have also shifted positively in opinion from their 2004 poll percentage.

There were many other groups that were unfortunately left out of the poll. One group, whom I was looking forward to seeing the most, were American Muslims. Muslims, however, were not included in the poll.

I already had a rather pessimistic prediction that the support percentage among Muslims in America would be low anyway but I was looking forward to see if there was any visible progress from previous years. I searched all over the internet but found nothing (and if anyone happens to find a poll with this information then please share it with me. I sincerely want to see it). Because of this, I’m afraid all I am able to do is make logical predictions based on what I know about Muslims, the American people, and the facts offered to me by these statistics and by those in other countries.

One poll done in Great Britain in the year 2009, for example, found that absolutely zero percent of British Muslims felt that homosexuality was even tolerable! This was out of a thousand and one people. Even French Muslims (at 35 percent) found homosexual behavior to be morally acceptable. While this may be suggestive, I have reason to believe that American Muslims are far different from British ones. Most British Muslims are new immigrants from North Africa or the Middle East and have brought their stuck-in-the-past culture with them. Their people are poor, uneducated, and unable to assimilate into the British culture. Muslims in America, however, tend to be the opposite. They have more comfortably assimilated into American society and, according to a 2004 survey, are also more educated and affluent than the national average with 59 percent of them holding some kind of undergraduate college degree.

Add to the fact that Muslims are not politically marginalized like the ones in many parts of Europe are, and you can tell that foreign polls are unreliable in predicting American-Muslim views on same-sex marriage or marriage equality in general. Despite all of these positive factors, I have no doubt in my mind that less than a third of American Muslims support marriage equality. This is not to say that their views on the subject haven’t changed in the last decade. From what I’ve seen with these statistics, they most likely have. And they will only continue to grow in the future as the world matures and as the younger generations (the ones noted by all for being more gay-friendly) begin to take the helm. I just don’t believe that they are there yet. If you have proof to the contrary then I will be the first to apologize and thank you for your contribution.

Major legislative battles have been fought recently in America, resulting in Washington most likely becoming the next state to allow marriage equality and Maryland may not be too far behind. New Jersey citizens should also stay tuned for the marriage equality referendum that Governor Christie has forced upon us in the upcoming future. Much of the opposition is coming from the Religious Right but as we can clearly see, the “battle” between LGBT people and faith is slowly coming to an end.

We are realizing that faith and homosexuality are not incompatible, despite past attempts by religious groups (including the Salvation Army of all things) to hinder the LGBT rights movement. Many have also recently come to the realization that their condemnation of gays has played a large part in the many suicides committed by LGBT youth (especially those from religious/conservative households). With the youth of the nation opening their eyes to this sort of societal mistreatment, coupled with the fact that almost everybody nowadays has someone very close to them who is gay, it seems that positive change in the future is imminent.

http://perezhilton.com/2012-01-25-deployed-us-military-members-release-it-gets-better-video#.T0SrYnnCmSo

We still have a long way to go, but things really are “getting better.” Just ask our military!^

References:

http://www.uuplan.org/profiles/blogs/majorities-of-most-religious-groups-favor-marriage-equality

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/07/muslims-britain-france-germany-homosexuality

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html