Poll: Stigma Of Being Gay Fading LOS ANGELES, April 10, 2004
Most Americans oppose gay marriage and many believe homosexuality is "against God's will," but otherwise consider themselves tolerant of gays, according to a Los Angeles Times poll published Saturday on the newspaper's Web site.
In general, the newspaper says the survey shows gays and lesbians experiencing "a dramatic rise in acceptance over the last two decades."
"Almost seven in 10 Americans know someone who is gay or lesbian and say they would not be troubled if their elementary school-age child had a homosexual teacher," the Tiems says. "Six in 10 say they are sympathetic to the gay community, displaying an increasing inclination to view same-sex issues through a prism of societal accommodation rather than moral condemnation.
About the same percentage said they would be willing to vote for an openly gay political candidate.
"On questions ranging from job discrimination to adoption to whether homosexuality is morally wrong, responses indicate that as gays and lesbians have become more open, heterosexuals in return have become more open toward them," the Times points out.
The newspaper says the change has come within one generation. In two Times Polls in the mid-1980s and other data from the same era, the level of sympathy toward gays and lesbians was half what it is today, the newspaper notes.
"The stigma of being gay is disappearing," Gary Gates, a demographer at the Urban Institute in Washington, told the Times. "This is a huge change. Gay people in general are feeling more comfortable in society — and society is feeling more comfortable with gay people."
The fact that 69% of those polled by The Times said they know a gay or lesbian — up from 46% in 1985 — is particularly significant, Gates said. "Being gay is no longer an abstraction. It's my friend, my neighbor, my brother, my office-mate."
But by a margin of 55 to 41 percent, those polled agreed with the statement that "if gays are allowed to marry, the institution of marriage will be degraded."
About half favored a U.S. constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman, while 42 percent opposed it, according to the poll.
The telephone survey of 1,616 adults around the country was conducted from March 27-30. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Other recent surveys have found at least half of Americans oppose gay marriage, but fewer support amending the Constitution to ban it.
A CBS News-New York Times poll last month found only 38 percent saying gay marriage is an "important enough issue to be worth changing the Constitution for," and an ABC News-Washington Post poll found 54 percent saying the matter should be left to the states.
Only about a quarter of those polled for the Times felt homosexuals should be allowed to legally marry and 38 percent believed they should be allowed to form civil unions. About a third said that neither type of union should be permitted.
While about six in 10 people felt homosexual relationships are "against God's will," a similar percentage felt that legal recognition of same-sex marriages was inevitable.
