US support for same-sex marriage falls to 51%
by Laurel Duggan, UnHerd:
A new poll from Ipsos has found that support for same-sex marriage among Americans has fallen to just 51% approval.
The finding marks an eight-point drop since a peak for support in 2021, part of a steady decline following the rapid rise in approval around the time the US recognised same-sex marriage nationwide. When asked their opinion on same-sex couples in the new poll, 51% of Americans supported legal marriage, 14% supported some form of legal recognition besides marriage, and 18% supported no legal recognition.
The decline in support since 2021 is a major reversal from the years prior, when approval was consistently growing. In 2014, 46% of Ipsos respondents believed gay couples should be allowed to marry. That climbed to 59% by 2021, then dropped to 54% in 2023 and decreased a further three points this year. The post-2021 decline in support has been smaller than the pre-2021 rise, but it has occurred at a much faster rate.
During the 2010s, there was a rapid change in public policy and opinion on the issue. The US had a patchwork of laws alternately recognising and banning same-sex marriage at state level until 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that states were required to recognise and license same-sex marriages. Approval rapidly rose afterwards.
But just a few years earlier, same-sex marriage was unpopular with American voters, including many Democrats. For example, in deep-blue California voters passed a ballot measure officially banning same-sex marriage in 2008 — the same year the state voted for Barack Obama by a 24-percentage-point margin. Obama himself had campaigned against same-sex marriage.
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