Support for same-sex marriage has reached a new national high, but there are some “final holdouts to the opposition” — Americans who attend church weekly, Gallup polling released Thursday shows.
“Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?” Gallup asked Americans in a poll conducted between May 2 and May 22.
That polling found that 71% of Americans support “legal same-sex marriage,” the polling organization said, a number that exceeds record-high support (70%) Gallup recorded in 2021.
According to Gallup, when the organization began polling on the issue in 1996, only 27% of the public supported legalizing same-sex marriage. Support reached the majority level in 2011, then 60% one month before the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage in 2015, and then escalated to 70% in 2021.
“Rising national support for legal same-sex marriage reflects steady increases among most subgroups of the population, even those who have traditionally been the most resistant to gay marriage,” Gallup said in a release. “Adults aged 65 and older, for example, became mostly supportive in 2016 — as did Protestants in 2017 and Republicans in 2021.”
Americans who rarely or never go to church have been the most supportive of same-sex marriage since the issue first entered the national discussion, Gallup noted.
Those who attend church weekly are “the final holdouts of opposition,” according to Gallup: 58% of Americans who report that they attend church weekly oppose same-sex marriage, while 40% of that group are in favor.
“As Gallup’s trend on support for legal same-sex marriage inches ever upward, the question is when it will reach its ceiling,” Gallup writer Justin McCarthy notes. “While support has typically increased by small percentages on an annual basis — often within the margin of error — cumulatively, the increases have produced a transformation in U.S. attitudes on an issue Americans once vehemently opposed.”
McCarthy drew on the claims of pro-abortion activists who insist that Supreme Court justices may “clear a path for the conservative-leaning court to also overturn Obergefell,” drawing on the leaked draft opinion suggesting the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The draft document, which is not final, says Roe v. Wade was egregiously wrong.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
Gallup polls a minimum of 1,000 adults aged 18 and older across the United States via landline and cellphone with a minimum quota of 70% cellphone respondents and 30% landline respondents.