This is nothing more than unsupported bravado on your part. I seriously doubt that you have any evidence that major surveys on the issue are flawed.
I note, for example, that you rely on election results to support your belief. This, of course, ignores the reality that elections, (particularly referenda), are expensive to promote and that the results of recent elections have steadily been turning away from the anti-SSM position. There were a number of elections in 2004–concurrent with the Republican tide that kept GWB in the presidency–in which the anti-SSM forces prevailed, but since that time, state after state has swung in the opposite direction and polls taken in the states that voted against SSM in 2004 have shown a large number of people have since changed their views.
I have no idea whether a poll showing support for SSM greater than 50% is truly indicative of the U.S. population today (although I have seen no survey in the last six months that says otherwise). However, both the polls and the elections have steadily swung in that direction in the past eight years and I see no reason to believe that the figure will not be much greater than 50% by 2014.
What is the explicit methodology that is incorrect in the following polls?
2004? There wasn’t a single election that supported marriage equality until three months ago. Every one before that went the other way and there were more than 0 in the eight year interval.
The Catholic Church has obligated its members to donate time and money to anti-gay and specifically anti-marriage causes. The idea that only 51% of members support this is crazy. You don’t “support gay marriage” by serving on the “going door to door telling people to vote against gay marriage or go to hell” committee. By definition, anyone who has not left the Catholic Church is anti-gay, and a good way to confirm this is by talking to Catholics.
Surveys showing a majority of Americans believe in such and such versus what a majority of Christians believe, and the big difference between these polls and the ballot results (the new Bradley effect) speak for themselves.
Then perhaps a better analogy would be the definition of marriage as between “two persons neither of whom has a previous spouse still living”.
There have been entire societies where it was universally accepted that if you got married and your spouse was still alive somewhere, then it was simply impossible—not just illegal, but fundamentally impossible and not “real”—to be married to a subsequent spouse. The very nature of marriage was held to exclude the possibility of sequential marriage unless the original spouse was dead.
Most people are perfectly satisfied with our society’s having redefined the essential nature of marriage away from that fundamental claim (although there are still some who stick to it). I think few people nowadays would argue that a divorced person with a living ex-spouse who wants to go through a marriage ceremony with another person is somehow “taking something away” from or “destroying” traditional marriage.
But in the past, the idea that marriage was immutable and exclusive until death did you part was as essential and fundamental to its “reality” as the idea that marriage was between a man and a woman. So I still think it’s disingenuous to argue that such fundamental characteristics of marriage can’t or shouldn’t be changed in the legal recognition of marriage, because it’s clear that they can and they have been.
Considering the success of all the initiatives legalizing gay marriage and the failure of those banning them in the four states that had such initiatives last year, such a view seems to be backed up the evidence.
One of the things they speak to is that the percentage of Christians who do support same-sex marriage is rapidly increasing. It seems kind of silly to get so furious about “Christians” as an undifferentiated group on charges of mass homophobia when views on gay rights among so many Christians are changing so significantly.
The Catholic Church has also obligated its members to eschew contraception. The notion that Catholics are in some sort of lock step obedience to the Vatican is an idea more suited to 1950s (or 1920s) era Catholic bashing than a serious discussion.
I said nothing about bigotry. I noted that your rhetoric, (still unsupported by any evidence), is reminiscent of claims in the 1920s and 1950s that U.S. Catholics “took orders from Rome.” It was not true, then. It is not true, now.
I have no idea what your beliefs are on the topic, but when you make odd claims that the ‘Catholic Church has obligated its members to donate time and money to anti-gay and specifically anti-marriage causes’ and that Catholics are ‘serving on the “going door to door telling people to vote against gay marriage or go to hell” committee’, you are engaging in the same sort of anti-Catholic rhetoric that mostly fell into disrepute after the election of JFK. I would not be surprised to discover that some bishop somewhere urged his diocese to campaign against SSM, but no bishop “obligated” anyone to do so either with time or money.
Since the flaws are so obvious, care to describe them?
Polls now show that support for the war in Afghanistan is down to 31% of Americans, and yet we’re still at war. Does this mean that the poll methodology is flawed, or that those polled are lying? No, it means that people’s opinions don’t translate directly into policy, it must pass through a complex and slow political process first.
Nienstedt pretty well meets my definition of “some bishop somewhere.” (I haven’t checked, lately, but I would not be surprised to find Archbishop Bruskewitz did something similar before he retired–again, “some bishop somewhere”–but I have not heard of his successor pushing such a plan.) If you follow up on the situation in Minnesota, you will find that while Nienstedt urged, (not “obligated”), his diocese to put his odd plan in motion, he was unable even to get all his pastors to go along with his efforts, much less the majority of their parishioners. (Many did, of course, but nowhere near 50%.) With another 270+ diocese in the country, you are going to have to provide a bit more evidence that this is a church wide effort that is embraced by some huge percentage of Catholics rather than sporadic efforts by individuals within the church.
My sister is okay with same sex marriage, and she’s about the most diehard fundie I know. Her argument? “Maybe if we let them do it, they’ll shut up about it. It’s not like it matters anyway.”
This argument has certain merit. Considering that divorce for any reason (and no reason at all) is allowed and except for occasional rhetoric very few people wish to reverse this fact it is a bit ridiculous to think gay marriage is a be-all and end-all issue even from a socially conservative viewpoint.
So let’s say for the sake of wild crazy argument that all resistance drops and homosexuals can marry all across the U.S., with no legal distinction made between a same-sex and differing-sex marriage.
Chaos? Anarchy? Seriously, what’s the worst possible outcome, seven or eight years down the road?
I’ve come to realize that when SSM advocates talk about equality, they don’t mean equality under the law or equality offered by civil unions. No, they mean equality in the eyes of others. Not just some others, all others. And they are never going to get that. They’re doomed to being pissed forever.