Search results for support gay marriage

The figure below, borrowed from Good via Graphic Sociology, is a great example of the way that social problems are not given or automatic, but must be made.  It shows that, in 1998, gay marriage was not largely a social issue that needed to be addressed at the state level. Only Alaska had taken a stand on gay marriage.

Somehow gay marriage became a threat. And, by 2004, many states had passed resolutions making it illegal. Note that they needed to do so specifically because the possibility of legal gay marriage had gained support for the first time in (recent?) U.S. history. This was, essentially, a backlash against gay marriage that proved that pro-gay marriage initiatives were gaining ground, even as states moved to counter them.

The backlash continues through 2009, with a handful of states saying “yes” to gay marriage, creating a conflict that simply did not exist in 1998.

This is a great example of how social “problems” are socially constructed. Social processes, like activism and media attention, affect what issues gain the attention of the day, whether that be homelessness, nuclear power, teen pregnancy, global warming, or same-sex commitment.

The figure also reminds us that all of those anti-gay marriage laws can be interpreted as progress for the pro-gay marriage effort.  The laws prove that gay marriage is on the agenda.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

John L. sent in a link to a visual illustrating support for gay marriage by state and age:

The data supports the notion that younger people are more supportive of gay marriage than older people. I also think it’s interesting that, even in states that we normally consider quite hostile to gay rights (the ones at the bottom of the table), there is still a significant age difference:  18-29 year-olds in Alabama, for example, are more supportive of gay marriage than people 65 and older in Massachusetts.  So, while we like to think about states as “liberal” or “conservative,” spreading out the data by age tells a much more complicated story.

For more data on support for gay rights, see here and here.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Andrew Gelman, over at FiveThirtyEight, presents a graph from data put together by Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips regarding opinions about various policies affecting gays and lesbians:

In another post, Nate Silver asks how public opinion about same-sex marriage might change if polls worded the question somewhat differently. Instead of asking “should the government allow same-sex couples to marry?”, we could just as well ask “should the government prevent same-sex couples from marrying?” He suggests that pro-gay-marriage groups might also frame the issue in this way–of keeping the government from taking away rights that people presumably already have rather than as the government giving new rights. It’s an interesting thought, and illustrates the role that question wording can play in affecting how survey respondents think about an issue.

UPDATE: Well, I was taken to task for not providing a better explanation of the graph. However, commenter Christopher explains it pretty well:

For each state, the status of seven public policies is listed as either pro- or anti-gay with seven colored circles which are either filled or empty with respect to the status. In addition, the position of the circle reflects the status of public opinion for each policy.

That is, each color represents one of the policies listed in the legend in the upper-left corner, so, for instance, red = public support for same-sex marriage. If the dot is filled in, it means gay-friendly legislation about the issue was actually passed in the state. If the dot is an empty circle, it means no gay-friendly legislation exists in the state. And the position of the circle tells you what percent of people in each state support each policy.

In this ad, the National Organization for Marriage appears to be trying to capitalize on the idea that people of color do not support gay marriage.  Wait till the end for the direct appeal:

Found at Feminocracy.

These screenshots of the anti-gay marriage, Californian “Yes on 8” website also appeal to a multicultural (if segregated) constituency.  See also this post challenging the idea that Black people and gay people are always at odds or even, of course, categorically different groups.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Toban B. sent in a link to a set of photos from the 1970s gay rights movement. Given that since the anti-gay-marriage Prop 8 passed in California in November, many people have argued that a) the African American community is particularly homophobic and voted against the bill (so it’s Black people’s fault Prop 8 passed) or b) gay rights organizations have failed to reach out to the African American community and win their support (so it’s elitist gay people’s fault Prop 8 passed), both positions that imply that gay rights and African Americans are at odds, I found this photo from Philadelphia (in 1972) particularly striking as a reminder that African Americans often did and do support gay rights, and the gay rights movement has often actively included them…oh yeah, and also there are gay Black people:

Here’s an image of people picketing the White House in the 1960s in support of legislation to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians in federal employment:

There are also quite a few vintage gay movement images mixed in to this set of photos. Thanks, Toban!

Political donations are by law public. With this information, someone has put up a website which shows, on google maps, which households (in the Bay Area, Salt Lake City, and Orange and L.A. Counties) donated money to Proposition 8 (California’s successful proposition to prohibit gay marriage). When you click on the arrow, it also tells you the name of the person in the household, that persons occupation and employer, and how much money they donated. Take a look.

Over at The Daily Dish, one person is quoted saying:

What could possibly be the use of this kind of information, presented in this way? It’s intended to intimidate people into not participating in politics by donating money. Do that, and you’ll end up on some activist group’s map, with hotheads being able to find your street address on their iPhones.

Andrew Sullivan weighs in:

I don’t get the fear. If Prop 8 supporters truly feel that barring equality for gay couples is vital for saving civilization, shouldn’t they be proud of their financial support? Why don’t they actually have posters advertizing their support for discriminating against gay people – as a matter of pride?

Elsewhere on the same website, a reader writes in:

I zoomed in on the cities and neighborhoods where my relatives live.  What do I find but that one of my own aunts, in San Diego, contributed $200 to the Prop 8 cause last summer.  This same aunt, a good person I honestly believe, has even invited me and my partner to stay with in her family’s home. Call me naive, but I’m kind of having trouble wrapping my brain around this seeming contradiction.

This back and forth raises some interesting questions:

Is the map violating some sort of privacy? If not technical, legal privacy, then some sort of cultural agreement about how far is “too far”?

Is the first commenter correct that this is essentially a nefarious act? Should political donations be public in this brave new world of google maps and internet access? Has “public” taken on a whole new meaning here?

Then again, the right to free speech protects a lot more aggressive and heinous things than this google map. Is the first commenter overreacting?

And what of Andrew Sullivan’s comment? Are those who donated proud to see themselves on the map? Or are they ashamed?  When political action is unpopular (not that I’m sure this one is), does that change the nature of participation? Should holders of unpopular political beliefs be protected, perhaps by allowing them to donate anonymously?  Or is shaming part of how cultural change happens and, thus, a perfectly legitimate strategy on behalf of gay rights?

Further, maybe people like the last commenter deserve to know if their friends or relatives are donating to political causes that discriminate against them?  Then again, does the Aunt have any right to be able to donate to the cause without disrupting her relationships with her family?

Thoughts?  Other questions you think this brings up?

Marriage–as a social and legal institution–has not always been what it is today.

In early American history, when families largely lived on farms and worked for sustenance, people didn’t marry because they loved each other.  And they certainly didn’t split up because they did not.  Marriage choices were highly influenced by their families and, once married, husbands and wives formed a working partnership aimed at production.  They teamed up to support themselves and make children who would take care of them when they were old and help them in the meantime.

Today, we still (generally) think of marriage as comprised of a man, a woman, and kids, but mutual love and happiness are now central goals of marriage.  This idea only emerged in the 1900s.  It hasn’t actually been around all that long.

I bring this up in order to shed some light on the pro- and anti- gay marriage rhetoric.

On the one hand, those against gay marriage need to define “marriage” in a way that excludes same-sex couples.  One way to do this is to refer to a “traditional” marriage (image found here).

But there is no such thing as a “traditional” marriage, just a long history of evolving forms of marriage.  For example, few anti-gay marriage types would actually be in favor of returning marriage to one in which women were property that can’t contract, vote, testify in court, own anything, and have no rights to their own bodies or custody of their children (though the idea that women are property is still out there today).  Because there is no such thing as a “traditional” marriage (that is, no reason to privilege one historical form over another), when someone speaks of “traditional” marriage, they actually just mean “the kind of marriage that I like that I am pretending existed throughout all time before this current threat right now.”

On the other hand, to make an argument in favor of gay marriage rights, the movement must either (1) change the collective agreement as to what marriage is (the social construction of marriage) or (2) convince the collective that gay marriage already is what we believe marriage to be.

This ad in favor of gay marriage does the latter. Mobilizing the social construction of marriage as about love, the commercial then defines same-sex relationships as about love. If you accept both premises, then, presto, you are pro-gay marriage.  That is exactly what this commercial is trying to do:

NEW!  This Swedish commercial for Bjorn Borg’s dating website, sent in by Ed L., similarly mobilizes the idea that marriage is for love and that gay men’s marriages are, therefore, beautiful:

One important lesson from political science and sociology is that public opinion often holds steady. This is because it is difficult to get individual people to change their minds. Instead, people tend to keep consistent views as “settled dispositions” over time, and mass opinion changes slowly as new people age into taking surveys and older people age out.

Sometimes public opinion does change quickly, though, and these rapid changes are worth our attention precisely because they are rare. For example, one of the most notable recent changes is the swing toward majority support for same-sex marriage in the United States in just the last decade.

That’s why a new finding is so interesting and so troubling: NORC is reporting a pretty big swing in self-reported happiness since the pandemic broke out using a new 2020 survey conducted in late May. Compared to earlier trends from the General Social Survey, fewer people are reporting they are “very happy,” optimism about the future is down, and feelings of isolation and loneliness are up. The Associated Press has dynamic charts here, and I made an open-access, creative commons version of one visualization using GSS data and NORC’s estimates:

As with any survey trend, we will need more data to get the true shape of the change and see whether it will persist over time. Despite this, one important point here is the consistency before the new 2020 data. Think about all the times aggregated happiness reports didn’t really change: we don’t see major shifts around September 11th, 2001, and there are only small changes around the Gulf War in 1990 or the 2008 financial crisis.

There is something reassuring about such a dramatic drop now, given this past resilience. If you’re feeling bad, you’re not alone. We have to remember that emotions are social. People have a remarkable ability to persist through all kinds of trying times, but that is often because they can connect with others for support. The unprecedented isolation of physical distancing and quarantine has a unique impact on our social relationships and, in turn, it could have a dramatic impact on our collective wellbeing. The first step to fixing this problem is facing it honestly.

Inspired by demographic facts you should know cold, “What’s Trending?” is a post series at Sociological Images featuring quick looks at what’s up, what’s down, and what sociologists have to say about it.

Evan Stewart is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at his website, on Twitter, or on BlueSky.