Katie Connolly
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May 12, 2009 03:38 PM
This Sunday, May 17, is the five year anniversary of the first gay marriage license issued in Massachusetts, the first state in the nation to allow same sex partners to wed. Since then, over 10,000 gay and lesbian couples have taken marriage vows. (The first gay couple married in Massachusetts - Susan Shepard and Marcia Hams - will celebrate their five year anniversary on Sunday too.) Although Massachusetts has a reputation for liberalism, the path to gay marriage was a tough one, which ended in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. In November 2003, when the court ruled to allow gay marriage, only 50 members of the state's 200-strong legislature supported the move, and barely a majority of voters were in favor. But today, a poll sponsored by Hattaway Communications and grassroots advocacy group Marriage Equality Works shows that a decent majority Massachusetts residents now support it.
Lake Research Partners, who conducted the survey, asked 600 Massachusetts residents whether they would vote for or against a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Fully 62% of respondents said they would oppose such an amendment, up from 52% in a similar 2005 survey. Interestingly, the poll found that many residents supported marriage equality because it promoted traditional values like commitment and responsibility. This finding will surely come as a suprise to anti-gay marriage advocates who argue that it undermines the foundations of the family.
Respondents were asked "Do you agree or disagree that the following outcome has surfaced because gay and lesbian couples can legally marry:
Marriage encourages responsibility and commitment, which are important values for a strong society. It’s better for society that more couples are taking responsibility and making long-term commitments to each other." Fully 74% of people agreed with that statement. Overall, Massachusetts folks seemed proud of their state, with 60% saying that gay marriage had helped the state live up to its values of equality and fairness. They also tend to believe the rest of the country should acknowledge their laws: 70% of respondents thought that gay and lesbian couples married in Massachusetts should receive all the same federal benefits as other married couples. In terms of demographics, younger, more educated, less religious people were more likely to be supportive of marriage equality, and women were slightly more supportive than men.
Doug Hattaway, CEO of Hattaway Communication, explained to your Gaggler that the results shouldn't be dismissed just because they come from a reliably blue state. Massachusetts has a significant Catholic population that is often socially conservative. Achieving marriage equality wasn't a walk in the park to begin with, and there were repeated attempts to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage following the Supreme Court's 2003 ruling. "Our side had a pretty hard mountain to climb," Hattaway said. But attitudes slowly changed. When the last constitutional amendment was offered in 2007, 151 of the 200 legislators voted to defeat it. Hattaway noted that no state legislators had lost their seats as a result of opposing the constitutional amendment.
The poll isn't reliable indicator of national attitudes towards gay marriage - consider the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Nor does it gauge the depth of emotion around the idea of same sex marriage. Oddly enough, while the issue often gets treated as a hot button one, Hattaway says that one of the difficulties marriage equality proponents have in making their case is that many people don't really care deeply about it because it doesn't affect them. It's not until they're forced to deal with it that their opinions really develop. What this poll suggests is that once made legal, attitudes towards gay marriage soften over time.
