海角大神

It has been more than two years now since we first started seeing polls showing that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, including聽the most recent Gallup poll on the issue,聽which showed 55% of Americans support marriage equality,聽a mere 15 years after the same poll showed that more than three-quarters of Americans opposed it. Not surprisingly, this polling has also showed differences across a number of demographic groups. younger Americans, Americans who are more highly educated, and people who identify as Democratic or Independent are now groups that strongly support the right of gays and lesbians to marry; while older Americans, Republicans, and those who self-identify as conservative have tended to remain opposed. A new poll from NBC News and Marist College, though, has聽some surprising results when it comes to Republicans:

On some level, of course, this isn鈥檛 entirely surprising. While previous polling has shown people who identify as Republican more likely to oppose same-sex marriage than support it, those numbers have been changing, just like the numbers for the population as a whole have been changing. Thanks to the fact that Republicans are more likely to be religious and politically conservative, it鈥檚 no surprise that it has taken longer for them to come along on this issue than other Americans, but it was always likely that they would start to change their minds just as the general public has, it鈥檚 just happened more slowly. The Republican lag on same-sex marriage in polling has also been influenced by the fact that older Americans have been the demographic group most likely to oppose marriage equality, and they also happen to identify as Republican more than other age group. As younger Americans come to be a larger portion of the subgroup of self-identified 鈥淩epublicans,鈥� though, it only makes sense that the poll numbers would reflect that change. In other words, the generational changes that have played a large role in the widening public acceptance of same-sex marriage are affecting Republicans as much as they have everyone else, it鈥檚 just happened at a slower pace.

More than demographic changes, though, I suspect that a large factor in the changing Republican attitude on same-sex marriage is quite simply the fact that most Republicans, just like most Americans, are coming to realize that the debate on same-sex marriage is essentially over. In just the past two years, we have seen the Defense of Marriage Act declared unconstitutional, something which led to a whole series of court rulings that have made same-sex marriage legal in the vast majority of the country. In addition to those legal victories, voters and state legislatures in a number of states have legalized same-sex marriage, while the last time that a ban on same-sex marriage was passed into law was the North Carolina referendum in April 2012. The Supreme Court has let decisions striking down same-sex marriage bans in dozens of states stand, which has opened marriage up to couples in states from Alaska to Florida, including such unlikely places as South Carolina, Kansas, and Alabama. Now, we are mere months away from a Supreme Court decision on the appeal of the only federal appeals court decision upholding a marriage ban that will, according to all of the available evidence, result in a decision declaring bans against same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. From a handful of states in 2012, we are now at the point where same-sex marriage is legal in 37 states and will likely be legal in the remaining 13 states in a few short months. Throughout the entire process, many leading Republicans have been largely silent on the issue, and many have been supportive of the expansion of marriage equality.

This poll, I would suggest, reflects an opinion among many Republicans that the best thing that can happen to their party is for the same-sex marriage issue to go away, which is essentially what will happen if the Supreme Court rules as most court observers expect it to. The recent events in Alabama confirm that there will likely still be some element in the Republican coalition that will be strongly opposed to marriage equality, at least for the foreseeable future. This element of the party will likely try to do what it can to mount some kind of counterattack, but this poll, along with others that we have seen recently, seems to suggest that they are unlikely to find many supporters inside the GOP. In the end, Republicans will come to accept same-sex marriage just like the rest of America has, and the social conservatives who exploited the issue in the past will find themselves left out in the cold.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.