The Political is Personal: Same-Sex Marriage and the 2004 Presidential Election by Susan Pinkus

Attitudes toward homosexual Americans have come a long way over the past ten to twenty years. The Los Angeles Times poll has conducted surveys going back over two decades exploring attitudes of the American public toward the gay community, including one in March 2004 in the wake of President George W. Bush's advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The poll showed that the public appears to be more accepting of people in this country who are gays and lesbians than they were even a decade ago.

One of the reasons for this acceptance is the fact that most people know at least one person who is homosexual, as a family member, personal friend, co-worker, or acquaintance. In a December 1985 Times poll, just a plurality of the public said they knew someone who was gay, compared to almost seven in ten today. And twenty years ago, in a September 1983 Times poll, just three in ten said they were sympathetic to the gay community. Today, the opposite is true—six in ten now say they are sympathetic. Just looking at the national landscape, we see openly gay politicians, domestic partnership benefits for some government and corporate workers, and even an openly gay daughter of the vice president of the United States.

However, this trend toward acceptance is not distributed evenly among different segments of the nation's population. Christian conservative fundamentalists (who represent about 14 percent of Americans) still believe almost unanimously that being gay is against God's will, and majorities of them are against anything that would increase acceptance and recognition of gays in society (see Figure 1).

There are differences between married and single men and women. And there are wide generational differences between the youngest respondents (ages eighteen to twenty-nine) and the oldest (ages sixty-five and over). As might be expected, in general the youngest group is more accepting of gays than the oldest respondents—probably in large part because more young respondents know (or are aware they know) someone who is gay, compared to the oldest (see Figure 2). In this case, familiarity apparently breeds acceptance.