New Poll Shows Bush, Vatican Out Of Step On Gay Unions

[Nambe]

365Gay Newscenter

(Washington, D.C.) The Human Rights Campaign released data from a new bi-partisan poll today conducted by the Democratic polling firm of Peter D. Hart Research Associates and the Republican firm American Viewpoint, showing that 63 percent of registered voters support or would accept that gays and lesbians receive the same rights and protections as other Americans.

The Hart/American Viewpoint Poll is in accordance with another poll released today by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News showing that 53 percent of the country favors allowing gay and lesbian couples to enter into legal agreements with each other that are not marriages, but that would give them many of the same legal and financial relationships as married couples. ---

Ride Don’t Drive It’s Global Cool

[robbedvoter]

1. Dang! The polls were safe when W ventured an opinion

Who switched the numbers? Unca Karl? Anybody? Hellooo?

[cjbuchanan]

2. That's why Bush & Co. want to make it a marriage issue

People are in favor of equal rights, but marriage scares people (I do not know why) and Bush knows that. He is hoping to use this as a wedge issue. We need to keep talking about this as a rights issue.

[Ediacara]

3. and it'll only increase

In 30 years, people against gay marriage will be viewed with the same kind of scorn and disbelief as people who oppose inter-racial marriage are viewed today.

People in my generation (twenty-somethings) and younger appear to be almost universal in their acceptance of gay rights, even here in Montana. I'm not saying that my generation is without biggots, because it's not, but the issue is moving in our favor faster than many might have expected.

[sonias]

4. I agree DinoBoy

I can't understand the uproar myself. While I'm not in your generation I do consider myself a young thinker, or at the very least very tolerant. With all this fuss you think we were talking about inter-species marriage. Folks this is just a commitment between two consenting adults, nothing to get upset about. Move on and get along with your lives and stop interfering in the lives of others.

Sonia

[Ediacara]

5. I didn't mean to imply

people in generations before mine were without compassion. Just saying that younger people seem to view homosexuality as a non-issue.

[TahitiNut]

6. You mean young people don't realize that gays ...

... want to sap your vital juices, make you submit to them in the locker room and rest rooms, and convert the dissatisfied wives, daughters, sisters, and girlfriends of every hetero guy to lesbianism? </sarcasm> Believe it or not, this is what some actually believe. :eyes:

[jono]

8. I like the way John Stewart said it

last night on the Daily Show. He said that the push for gay marriage must mean that "man love" would become mandatory, or else why would anyone care?

[TahitiNut]

10. Yup. Saw it. Laughed.

:-)

[DEMActivist]

7. This "old fogey" views it the same way

As a 50+ white heterosexual female, I find no logical reason to condemn another person for who they love and care about.

I don't think the change in attitude is "generational" except that many gays have come out of their societal induced closet and the rest of the world sees it as a non-issue.

The generation which would condemn a family member to the closet are dying off.

[Julien Sorel]

9. Homophobia only has to work once more, for Bush's purposes.

The Demos need to push this issue aggresively, because I think the public is much more in tune with them on this issue than the Republicans. But if the Dems back off, it could easily become part of the Republican 'family values' message. In reality, though, the majority of Americans are close to a gay person in one way or another; what 'family' would want to condemn one of its own to a life of second-class citizenship? If the Dems don't stand up on this issue, it amounts to capitulation on what should be a point of strength.

[headlouse]

11. As a liberal humanist bisexual polyamorous freak,

I admit that my number one agenda is to turn everyone in america -- especially the little ones -- into drug-crazied atheist communist sodomizing nymphomaniac homocidal queers! And with my huge arsenal of sex toys, my first target in this diabolical quest is to destroy your pathetic ritual of marriage!

Hide your children! Hide your spouses! Hide your silverware! You can run but you can't hide -- cause we know all about that closet hiding space of yours!

[Nicholas_J]

12. Who says

The church has to be IN STEP regarding gay unions.

Either you beleive that the constitution places a wall between church and state, as Jefferson stated, so that thos who are religious, are entitled to their own beliefs, to practice them, and to act as their own conscience demands, while government is to enact no law regarding the establishment of religious principals.

Or you beleive, that this government was established by Christians as a nation under god and blah, blah, blah, which obviously I do not believe if you have heard the tone of my blaj, blah, blah's...


What I feel the problem is, and I am sure I will be basged for it, was the rather milquetoast solution that was provided in Vermont with Civil unions. I am not gay, but in researching this, I have found that many gays found this solution an apartheid like solution, a separate but equal type solution, similar to the separate but equal solutions in education provided in the fifties.

It creates a situation in which gays are treated like blacks were, and in many cases still are, not QUITE eauly to everyone else, requireing separate rules that make them just ONE STEP LOWER, than what those who are attempting to do by dealing with marriage as a "RELIGIOUS" institution. The are attempting to SLIP religion into law and do an end run around the constitution and separation of church and state, under the back door, as it were.

The solution to pass "Civil Union Laws" did gays no favor. It statedd that they are still not equal under the laws, but provided parallel laws that gave them many of the legal rights that non-gays have, but denied them true equality with non gays. They have theri own separate little space, but they do not get to share in the rights that have been legally accorded to almost everyone else, the disabled, the eldlerly, te toung, blacks, whites, women. ANDwhile thre is still much to do in making dead certain that these groups rights are respected and that the laws are not gotten around, gays are still at the lowest ring of society regarging their rights.

The answer of the Vermont Progressive Party was the correct one.

Gay marriage, no more, no less. Do not trry to slip religion into the law by using religious definitions of marriage to define marriage civilly.

In Vermont, the bull should have been taken by the horns, the gauntlet thrown down, and the statement, EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL" should have been made, instead of a the botch job that Civil Unions represents. The reason that this question is still a problem in 2003, is that in 2000, someone who had the oportuity to make a bold stance, made a cautious one.

Let us hope that the supreme court of Massachusetts is bold, rather than cautious, and once and for all, the attempt to make religious opinion and precept part of civil law eneded, once and for all.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

13. Insurance companies would love to have us think that

there's something terribly taboo about same-sex marriages. Think of all the additional claims they'd suddenly have to pay.

Then there's the tax benefit married couples have...heaven forbid if they have kids too.

Of course, the repiglicans are concerned about the fundy vote; but their main issue is money, as usual.