Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips put together a dataset using national opinion polls from 1994 through 2009 and analyzed several different opinion questions on gay rights. Here I'm going to talk about their estimates of state-by-state trends in support for gay marriage.
In the past fifteen years, gay marriage has increased in popularity in all fifty states. No news there, but what was a surprise to me is where the largest changes have occurred. The popularity of gay marriage has increased fastest in the states where gay rights were already relatively popular in the 1990s.
In 1995, support for gay marriage exceeded 30% in only six states: New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and Vermont. In these states, support for gay marriage has increased by an average of almost 20 percentage points. In contrast, support has increased by less than 10 percentage points in the six states that in 1995 were most anti-gay-marriage--Utah, Oklahoma, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Idaho.
Here's the picture showing all 50 states:
I was stunned when I saw this picture. I generally expect to see uniform swing, or maybe even some "regression to the mean," with the lowest values increasing the most and the highest values declining, relative to the average. But that's not what's happening at all. What's going on?
Some possible explanations:
- A "tipping point": As gay rights become more accepted in a state, more gay people come out of the closet. And once straight people realize how many of their friends and relatives are gay, they're more likely to be supportive of gay rights. Recall that the average American knows something like 700 people. So if 5% of your friends and acquaintances are gay, that's 35 people you know--if they come out and let you know they're gay. Even accounting for variation in social networks--some people know 100 gay people, others may only know 10--there's the real potential for increased awareness leading to increased acceptance.
Conversely, in states where gay rights are highly unpopular, gay people will be slower to reveal themselves, and thus the knowing-and-accepting process will go slower.
- The role of politics: As gay rights become more popular in "blue states" such as New York, Massachusetts, California, etc., it becomes more in the interest of liberal politicians to push the issue (consider Governor David Paterson's recent efforts in New York). Conversely, in states where gay marriage is highly unpopular, it's in the interest of social conservatives to bring the issue to the forefront of public discussion. So the general public is likely to get the liberal spin on gay rights in liberal states and the conservative spin in conservative states. Perhaps this could help explain the divergence.
Where do we go next in studying this?
- We can look at other issues, not just on gay rights, to see where this sort of divergence occurs, and where we see the more expected uniform swing or regression-to-the-mean patterns.
- For the gay rights questions, we can break up the analysis by demographic factors--in particular, religion and age--to see where opinions are changing the fastest.
- To study the "tipping point" model, we could look at survey data on "Do you know any gay people?" and "How many gay people do you know?" over time and by state.
- To study the role of politics, we could gather data on the involvement of state politicians and political groups on gay issues.
I'm sure there are lots of other good ideas we haven't thought of.
Further discussion (and another pretty graph) here.
52 comments
It's simple social influence. Influence spreads through a population exponentially. As the proportion of supporters increases, the numbers of people knowing supporters increases. That's how social influence spreads. Doesn't have to be a tipping point--just standard accumulation of influence.
Very interesting note. I would comment that it would seem to me like gay marriage is a polarizing issue. I like the social network hypothesis.
Another way to try to explain this is that "liberal" folks are practically the only ones changing, and while they are converting at similar rates, they are available in smaller numbers. The way to test this would be to take a package of issues and show that they display a similar underlying distribution by state.
So it looks like gay rights advance at a roughly exponential rate. This is great!
Equality for all.
Andrew, tracking support for gay _marriage_ is not the same as tracking support for gay rights in general. Many years ago, and probably as recently as 15 years ago, most gay rights supporters thought that actual marriage for same-sex couples was unachievable... and said same-sex couples were not necessarily sure marriage was something they wanted anyway. It was not at all difficult back then to find gay couples who would say "we wouldn't get married even if we could."
What you're seeing in the numbers you're looking at is that lots of people who have always backed gay rights but used to say "why should we give a flip about marriage when job discrimination is still legal," or "marriage is a heterosexist patriarchial institution, who needs it," are now saying "yes, we support gay marriage!" Of course, this doesn't happen in conservative states where not many folks are concerned about heterosexism...
Put another way, now that same-sex marriage is seen as within the realm of possibility, and GLBT culture is becoming more mainstream, more gay rights supporters are specifically saying they support marriage, whereas before the question wasn't really on the radar. It's a shift in the priorities and agenda of the "movement" - nothing more - thus it is extremely unlikely to generalize to any other issue.
Missouri really stands out in the graph, its almost an outlier probably.
"Why did Missouri lose its bellwether status" would be an interesting article for fivethirtyeight to do. :) Clearly something happened there, or maybe nothing happened and the rest of the country left it behind.
Along the same lines of people coming out of the closet, is people moving...
If you are gay and live in Utah and want to come out of the closet, you are very likely to move to California or Vermont. Its hard for me to imagine anybody doing the opposite. Hence, there are more gay people in gay friendly states. This will likely result in a feedback loop. Gay friendly places get more gay people and become more gay friendly. Homophobic places cause gay people to move and as a result they become more homophobic....
I am not mathematically inclined but my own experience has been that the thought of two men acting as a couple was such a taboo in my mind that I was extremely uncomfortable with the first gay couple I knew. I freaked the first time I saw one of the men put his arm around the other man's shoulders. I freaked less the second time. By the third time I hardly noticed. The men didn't act any differently than any other couple except that they were both men. I was surprised how quickly I went from it's a taboo to it's no big deal to it's no different than a man and a woman. Of course, if the two men would have acted inappropriately (as far as couples go) then that would have been a different story. But then a man and a woman acting inappropriately (as couples go) would probably bother me just as much.
I forgot to make my point...the change in my attitude was quick and it was the result of knocking that taboo down...only took knowing one gay couple a short time. I never realized taboos were so easy to shake.
I can't make hide nor hair of this one.
I'd like to see it ranked by the end point, tho, to get a better idea of how far each state has come.
@Andrew: I think your interpretation makes sense, how this grows in a wave or cascade. I think this needs to be modeled in the same way that rumors are modeled.
How many points of contact, or exposures to "open" gays or gay couples do non-gays typically have before they conclude that gays are perhaps even randomly distributed around them -- and it becomes increasingly senseless to stereotype, to stigmatize, not to mention to isolate oneself in a "non-gay" shell?
That said, while I agree that the pattern of change over time shown in the graph is quite remarkable, it's also true that there was and is great variation across states. I haven't calculated, but it looks like there is a very strong correlation between %Democratic and support for same-sex marriage.
One way to interpret this is that social liberals or Democrats are more acceptant of all arguments or appeals about equal individual rights.
Ian,
Missouri was never a bellweather. It was and has been a weather vane for the last few elections. I'm too lazy to look, but Slate did a nice article on this in the run up to the 2004 elections.
I'm with the self reinforcing feedback loop. As like people congregate in areas where they are accepted, they become more accepted and as such the overall attitude of the environment where they move becomes more accepting.
I'd be interested in correlated data such as public health care,gun control, and democratic voting patterns since 1994.
I'd overlay this, if it were possible, with migration data among the gay community, and I would bet you'd get a correlation almost everywhere except Georgia.
These statements just show how mindless people are that they would change their whole viewpoint, just because of their friend.
If one of my friends told me he was gay, I would try to help him change his ways and if he refused, I would just never talk to him again.
@Philip. Your change in mind is awesome! I'm a gay 31 year old (and one of the 18000 married couples in california), and have to say the same thing happened to me - as kids in Ohio we were so conditioned to think that being gay was weird or strange that it was shocking to see two men together - holding hands, kissing, in a textbook, wherever. Maybe for slightly different reasons but even knowing I was gay there was still something pretty surprising. It's for this reason that having gays on TV and other high visibility places is so great - there really is an "exposure --> understanding" kind of relationship. This really shows the power of coming out, and also coming out as straight supporters of gay people, which is almost as hard. I credit my parents a LOT for what they've felt comfortable talking about year by year.
My a priori tilt is towards the "social network" hypothesis being correct, with some help from the "migration" hypothesis.
Demography and religion are certainly going to be things to control for, though, as they're well known correlates. (Silver 2009)
(side note: I wonder how difficult it would be for some of this site's material to get the "peer review" stamp of approval... Nate puts out more good analytical research than most Profs I've known)
Two interesting things I noticed just eyeballing the data. The actual presence of same-sex marriage (or civil unions) in a state seems to make some difference in how much change there is. From the first to the second data point for instance, Massachusetts (the only state that had marriage by the second data point) jumps from fourth place to clear first, while Vermont (which was the only one that had civil unions during that time) jumped from sixth to second. Hawaii (which had some form of recognition as early as 1998) also passed the four states above it.
A second thing to notice - western states where libertarian attitudes are prominent seem to have jumped a huge amount in the time period studied. Note the way Nevada, Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming stand out from the states just above or below them in the graph (and to a lesser extent, New Mexico, Idaho, and Arizona as well - you might explain Idaho's behavior as a combination of Montana and Utah). I suppose Oregon and West Virginia are the only states in the lower half of this graph that have substantial jumps without being traditional libertarian western states.
Iowa has it legal, but less than 40% support it.
So, opinion change on a social issue happens faster in progressive states than conservative states. Who'd have thought? Sheesh.
Nothing is more important then coming out, and breaking the Satanistic churchs closet of shame and terror. When people discover that people they know and respect are gay, you will have moved 90% of those people some distance towards decency and acceptance.
And yes it does snowball. BTW, in the NE, where gay marriage is in 5 of 6 states, the Catholic church is losing big time. Because their top level tyrants are old foggies stuck in the past.
I went to the gay day on the DC mall in 2000, because I knew Matthew Shepards parents would be there. I actually met his Dad, and also someone I knew from work.
And yes, I almost rebelled when I saw two men kiss for the first time. It took a couple seconds until I remembered why I was there. And also, just to make it interesting , one of the guys was black.
And doing phone banking, I find a number of people who have a real live and let live attitude. They don't support gay marriage - they can't get past the religious connotation of the word, but they do support full equal rights and CUs etc. In a couple years, this middle ground will drive the marriage thing to fruition in the second tier of states to legalize gay marriage.
And the churches who always need some victim group to denigrate, to appeal to the worst nature of people will be looking at pews filled only with dust, and wondering what happened.
As they already are in almost all of western Europe.
Do your part to make it happen
I think this indicates why Obama has not moved to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. It looks like half the states would have to hit the 50% mark to do that. Either that, or they're waiting for the polling results in Iowa. If there's a backlash then progress will be slower. Kennedy promised civil rights while he ran for President but held it off for a better time. LBJ ended up doing that, so it may be that Don't Ask Don't Tell, or Gay Marriage will get much more momentum after the midterm elections or 2012.
Wow, the % has dropped in Utah over the last 5 years? Has the LDS been as active in public messages there as they were in CA on Prop 8?
Another important variable which I haven't heard discussed at all is a pretty simple one: The percentage of gay people living in a state. I haven't looked it up, but anecdotally I'm pretty sure that more gay people live in liberal states (Dan Savage certainly tells every poor closeted gay kid who lives in conservative areas to move to San Francisco or New York on his podcast). While this probably wouldn't have a huge direct effect at the ballot, the increased presence of gay people in liberal areas could cause more people to come in contact with them and thus support gay rights.
Kelvin said...
I think this indicates why Obama has not moved to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell
A somewhat different issue than this, although potentially related. I really expect that the military is working on a comprehensive policy regarding homosexuality. Repealing DADT isn't just as simple as "we aren't going to kick you out now". It opens up a number of issues that need to be sorted out.
Sure some of those include questions where the two intersect like the issue what the pecking order is for next-of-kin, and benefits like "spousal" medical. But if the military's largely successful racial integration program demonstrates anything, actively taking on issues that have the potential to be divisive is a solid strategy for neutralizing them.
The "Reversed Feedback Loop;" While young gay people now are fleeing the rural areas to live in more gay friendly cities, older gay people are now retiring in less expensive rural areas. I have done this and am finding acceptance among my straight, non church contemporaries.
This is one more step in bring down the house of homophobia, and in time gay bashing will be as unthinkable as "Whites Only" signs.
Isn't a significant factor the educational attainment in the states?
Also, given the GoP's accent on "moral" issues this has created a more divisive political culture in the country.
Re:Missouri
In truth, wasn't Missouri a "bell-weather" state because Democratic St Louis and Republican rural areas were about 50:50. Missouri was never a bell-weather like Ohio is now. Ohio is a microcosm of the U.S.A. i.e. urban/rural,white/non-white, affluent/non-affluent. Missouri was never a microcosm of the U.S.A. but merely a state where the political parties were about 50:50. However, this balance has swung towards the Republicans in the last ca. four elections.
Interesting to see where one of my favorite states, Utah, is going. As long as Mormons dominate the state I'd expect gay marriage to have a tough go there, though I think Mormons are surprisingly tolerant of gays.
Conceiving children is such a big part of their religion. Couples are married for eternity, souls are waiting for bodies, etc. My hope for that state is that they officially recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere. That might be a fairer measure considering their religion.
As more and more states choose to legalize gay marriage, how much pressure does that put on other states to legalize it? I'm wondering how significant an influence that has on the acceptance of gay marriage and gay people in each state.
I wonder what your numbers would look like if you added people who, although not directly supportive of gay rights, would not oppose them directly in a referendum... The so-called "abstainers" or "don´t mind/don´t carers"...
I happen to think that there are a statistically significant amount of people who, hands down, really don´t take sides on this issue.
If you have represented this group in your data already, I didn´t see it....my fault.
typo: "that there IS a statistically-significant amount of people"
Champion 88... I think it´s even more "mindless" to think that you can make a person "change his mind" about being gay...
So you would just lose a friend.
Oooooooor... in your mindless mind-bend, maybe you would be better off far away... What´s to say that your gay friend couldn´t convince YOU to be gay, eh? lol BE CAREFUL!
BOO!
There's a fair amount of interesting agent-based modeling stuff that looks at self-sorting (both racial/ethnic and by things like partisan ID). Others have mentioned gay people moving to liberal centers, but it's also likely to be the case that among straight people, the pro-gay rights individuals prefer being around other tolerant people and the anti-gay rights people prefer being around other bigots. Thus, it may be the case that there's a fairly uniform shift of about 20 points that looks like a 10 point shift in some states and a 30 point in others simply due to self-sorting effects.
It would be very interesting to see some crosstabs on religious demographics. The evangelical Christian, Mormon and Catholic involvement has been well noted on the conservative side of the issue, but I haven't seen good statistical discussion. On the other end of the spectrum, there are Christian denominations (such as UCC), Quakers, Unitarian/Universalist, Reform Judaism who are just as active on the liberal side of the issue.
I tend to support the social influence side mechanism for the state-by-state variations and church congregations often tip as a single unit. A good overlay for the graph in this article might be the cumulative membership in open and affirming congregations as a percentage of population by state.
"Wow, the % has dropped in Utah over the last 5 years? Has the LDS been as active in public messages there as they were in CA on Prop 8?"
Maybe the large and vitriolic protests singling out the Mormons when many other demographics when unconfronted might have something to do with it.
At first glance, it looks like there may be a positive correlation between states with high Catholic populations and acceptance of gay marriage. Of the states that show 50% or more support for gay marriage, MA (54% Catholic), RI (62%), VT(37%), NY (44%), CT (50%), and CA (29%) all have a percentage of Catholics higher than the US as a whole (26.2%). Meanwhile the bottom five, UT (6%), OK (8%), AL (4%), MS (7%), and AR (5%) all have low numbers of Catholics. (stats from http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf ,a small pdf)
Now, I'm not saying that Catholics are more likely to support gay marriage than non-Catholics at first, but maybe the anti-gay marriage folks have a tin ear for Catholic culture, when they claim that legal gay marriage will force churches to perform marriages for two men even if that church finds homosexuality to be an abomination.
Anyone raised around Catholics, or who is Catholic, immediately recognizes that argument for the bald-faced lie that it is. No governmental body has ever managed (or seriously tried) to force the Church to bless the marriage of a divorced couple, an interfaith couple or any other marriage the church did not approve of. Having been raised in a Catholic family, I can tell you, nearly every Catholic knows or knows of someone who was denied marriage rites for one reason or another.
Once the Southern White Protestants who develop the intellectual repertoire for the anti-gay side, are caught in one lie, all of their other arguments quickly become suspect.
If the opposition to gay marriage hopes to turn the tide on this issue, they need to be more inclusive of more segments of the population, and tailor their message accordingly. Fortunately for those of us who support gay rights, fundamentalists and evangelicals are not noted for their ability to empathize with and learn from people different from themselves.
Let me soften one thing I said before someone pounces... that no governmental body has ever tried to force the church to marry people.... I imagine someone, somewhere may have tried. But, in the main, the Church now marries who it wants without outside interference.
@Jeff: It was exactly agent-based modeling that I had in mind in my first post. The idea of a tipping point coming about both as a product of sorting (migration) and "coming out" or revelation of closeted gays -- which leads to the some critical realization: "My golly, my boss is gay, my uncle is gay, my daughter is gay, it's time to deal with reality here" -- would be interesting to model.
Of course, some people would go nuts to discover they're surrounded by gays, just as one of my freshman year college roommates -- an innocent from a very waspy, all white background -- was shocked when he realized that 25% of his classmates were Jewish, shocked enough to switch schools the next year. (Though it may have been his embarrassment at discovering toward the end of the year that his "noble French ancestor" from the court of Louis XVI turned out to have been just Louis' mistress, thus making him the great-great-great...grandson of a whore. In any case, we didn't miss him when he left the college. He was an intolerant SOB.)
We also have re-ordered versions of the trends graph by 2008 level and by total change. Thanks for the feedback. --Jeff
How in the world do you account for what has happened in Iowa?
Texas and Missouri both have had less change than states with similar initial levels of support. Both of these states have major cities AND a significant Southern Baptist/Scots-Irish/Fundagelical population. (I know they're not the same things, but heavily overlapping.) Most of the other states with the least change have the SB/S-I/F population but not the major cities (Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina). So maybe this has something to do with the fact that this population is particularly hard to budge on this issue.
It would be interesting to see the same kind of chart, but for interracial marriage percentages instead of same-sex marriage percentages.
Sure, it's probably above 50% in every state in 2009, but that wasn't always the case. One might expect the same-sex numbers to behave similarly to the interracial numbers, except lagging by a few decades.
@Nosimplehiway,
Having lots of Catholics in a state is correlated with acceptance of equal marriage for reasons having little to do with Catholicism. Historic immigration patterns brought lots of Irish and Italians to New England and the New York metro area (also Portuguese in NE and Puerto Ricans in NY). Places that receive immigrants are typically more urban and more culturally tolerant than places that don't. Urbanness and a more open-minded culture rather than Catholicism bears on support for equal marriage. A relevant comparison would be Delaware versus culturally and demographically similar New Jersey or Maryland. New Jersey is the third most Catholic state, Maryland the 26th, and Delaware the 41st. All three states have essentially the same level of support for equal marriage.
Kelvin said...
I think this indicates why Obama has not moved to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell.
If the recent poll by Gallup is accurate, the time to repeal DADT is now. The poll found 69% of adults in support of allowing gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. The same poll found that 58% of conservatives and 60% of weekly church goers also are in support of gays and lesbians serving openly.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/120764/Conservatives-Shift-Favor-Openly-Gay-Service-Members.aspx
@Patrick:
The difficulty of amending Iowa's constitution with a dash of Iowa's historically libertarian streak. Despite the corn, Iowa is not a typical midwestern state.
With prohibition, one "tipping point" may have been the exposure of hypocrisy -- people who made fame for themselves denouncing alcohol started getting caught drinking.
The same thing may happen with gay marriage, since most Christian denominations accept people who have been married more than once (which Jesus equated with adultery, hardly part of the "traditional definition of marriage"*) What happens when prominent members of the anti-gay marriage movement are exposed as blatant and unrepentant adulterers, according to the definition given by the Son of the CEO of the universe?
Or, we could just sit back as some states ban gay marriage, and then watch all the closeted gay population leave for other states, along with their money. Imagine the pressure from local companies! It would be a cage match between God and Mammon, and I'd buy front-row seats.
* Matthew 5
h0tbl4ckd3s14t0 is correct.
Iowa has been a leading state on many civil rights issues throughout history. 18 years before Dred Scott, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against a slave-owner trying to reclaim a slave living in Dubuque. In 1868, they forbade a public school from denying admittance to a girl based on her race, and in 1869 they cited the new 14th Amendment in deciding in favor of a woman who'd been denied access based on her race. Iowa passed the first civil rights law in 1884 making it a crime to refuse service based on race, well before many the states we traditionally think of as "progressive".
Iowa was also the first state to admit a female lawyer to the Bar, three years before the US Supreme Court ruled that women did NOT have the right to practice law! Iowa was the first state to recognize that women had the right to vote and serve on juries, and for several years after the passage of women's suffrage, they were still one of only a handful of states that allowed women on juries.
So, despite the corn, Iowa has always had a progressive view on civil rights and other equality-based issues. As a whole, Iowans are a very pragmatic and fair people. The Iowa court ruling on gay marriage fits nicely in the Iowa tradition, and I expect the attitudes of average Iowans will shift accordingly in the next few years.
Because it's fair. And here in Iowa, we like things to be fair.
I live in the St. Louis area, and it's night and day between here and most of the rest of the state: urban vs. rural, Midwest vs. South. In this part of the state, I wouldn't be surprised if support for gay marriage has reached a plurality, while I can't imagine support being above 35-40% in the state as a whole.
I'd be curious to know if a state's vicinity to gay-friendly states also comes into play in the state's level of acceptance. The relatively gay-friendly states of Iowa and Illinois border Missouri, and I wonder if the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa and the likely legalization of civil unions in Illinois could have any impact on attitudes in the state.
In particular, I think bi-state metro areas (like St. Louis) would be interesting places to examine, as commuting between states put more people in contact with each-other.
(Another interesting area to look at might be the Philadelphia, PA-NJ metro.)
There is probably a great deal of difference on this issue between urban and rural areas. That is typical of Democratic/Republican voting patterns as well. Urban areas expose their residents to a wider variety of people and ideas. Rural areas and small towns tend to be more isolated.
I tend to favor the tipping point argument because it squares with observations I have made living in disparate areas of the country. I spent four years in Mississippi, and I couldn't believe how different that state was from anywhere else I have lived. It was a political echo chamber where liberal arguments were simply absent from the conversation. Fox News was seen as the norm, and MSNBC played re-runs of "Deal or No Deal" in Keith Olberman's time slot. I was routinely asked what church I attended as a conversation starter. Areas like this will require an enormous amount of time before the conversation about gay marriage can even begin.
Could be. In regard to Missouri, we only have to major metros--KC and STL--that strattle other areas.
St. Louis is a mecca for gay-rights supporters in the southern Midwest. The suburbs of St. Louis are in-between. Many "out" gay people work in the suburbs (particularity, St. Louis County), but few are still legally married or have a civil union. I think when Illinois legalizes civil unions, that may change.
I don't think Iowa having same-sex marriage will have much impact on Missouri. There are no major cities on the Iowa/Missouri border. In Missouri, a significant change would only come from Illinois or Kansas, and only the former is likely to happen. The St. Louis metro area will be the only area where progress takes place, and it will come from both the city and the Illinois side.
As a worker in St. Louis County, do I think most of my coworkers would vote for gay marriage? Probably not. Maybe 47-53. Do I think most of my gay coworkers are for civil unions? Absolutely.
I live in a suburb in Missouri. People here are more tolerant than they are often portrayed.
I liked what Colbert had to say about choosing to be gay. He asked his guest (I forget who, Andrew Sullivan maybe?) when he chose to be gay. He responded, "Do you choose to be straight?" Stephen said, "Yes, I wake up every morning and say to myself, I am not going to choose men today, I have to stay straight."
I paraphrase of course (couldn't find the quote) but it nicely summarizes things.
It shouldn't surprise us that people who think they were born racist might not have a realistic understanding of which things we choose and which we do not.
Personally, I think homosexuality is one of the best things to have ever happened to society. It takes the best looking guys out of my pool of competition, as well as the worst looking women. It's a real boon to us straight guys (you, those of us who've chosen to be straight, I guess.)
If it was a choice, why wouldn't I choose to be gay? They have the best dance clubs, the best parades and offer the quickest, easiest way to piss off our parents. Aside from having to deal with conservatives, I really don't see much of a downside.
Mclever said..."Iowa has been a leading state on many civil rights issues throughout history"
Isn´t it unfair that people don´t know about this grand tradition of fairness outside of Iowa?
As a Californian, I wish I could be as proud of my state as you must be of yours.
Congratulations, Iowa. And thank you for the great example.
Greg said...
"Wow, the % has dropped in Utah over the last 5 years? Has the LDS been as active in public messages there as they were in CA on Prop 8?"
Maybe the large and vitriolic protests singling out the Mormons when many other demographics when unconfronted might have something to do with it.
What, exactly, are you trying to say here? I wouldn't expect the Knights of Columbus to be particularly active in anti-gay PR in Utah. I also would refer to them as "unconfronted".
What demographic are you talking about in Utah that could lead would see a negative movement in the poling?
Not That Much, Really said...
Another important variable which I haven't heard discussed at all is a pretty simple one: The percentage of gay people living in a state. I haven't looked it up, but anecdotally I'm pretty sure that more gay people live in liberal states (Dan Savage certainly tells every poor closeted gay kid who lives in conservative areas to move to San Francisco or New York on his podcast). While this probably wouldn't have a huge direct effect at the ballot, the increased presence of gay people in liberal areas could cause more people to come in contact with them and thus support gay rights.
I can see what you are stating, but I also consider this:
When a gay person moves out of state (from an anti-gay locale to a more gay-friendly area), there are dozens, or even hundreds, of friends, relatives and acquaintances 'left behind'. If those dozens or hundreds 'left behind' (especially relatives) know of the reason, then their opinion might change some from the blatant anti-gay towards neutral, or even towards a gay-friendly opinion.
In my particular case, I moved from a very anti-gay area of Indiana to the DC metro area (though not specifically for sexual orientation reasons, more related to politics and job opportunities). Gradually members of my family started to accept a less anti-gay attitude, and some even became gay-friendly, such as my step-father who in the mid-60s was close to joining the John Birch Society. My mother (extremely anti-divorce) put a stop to that by threatening to divorce my step-father if he joined the JBS.
So when I moved out of Indiana, I temporarily, and by a minute amount, decreased the 'gay-friendly' population in the state, but over time the gay-friendly (or at least not as 'anti-gay') numbers among friends, relatives and acquaintances still living in Indiana gradually increased.
I'm not stating that my situation is universal, but I also don't think it's isolated, either.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
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