The Next America by Paul Taylor

Author:Paul Taylor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781610393515
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 8.7

Growing Support for Same-sex Marriage

Source: Aggregated data from surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the press, 2003–2012. 2013 data from Mar. 2013 survey only

Our surveys also toss cold water on the premise that gays are rushing toward marriage while straights are running away. Among LGBT survey respondents, 60% said they are either currently married or would like to marry one day; among the general public, that figure is 76%. Even in its troubled state, marriage hasn’t fallen off its pedestal. It remains a life aspiration for the vast majority of Americans—“a status symbol, a highly regarded marker of a successful personal life,” in the words of Andrew Cherlin. Indeed, in his majority opinion for the US Supreme Court in the ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Justice Anthony Kennedy paid homage to the symbolic importance of marriage. He ruled that the federal government’s refusal to recognize legal same-sex marriages imposed a “stigma” that “demean(s)” gay couples and “humiliates” their children. DOMA, he wrote, deprives a group of people their Fifth Amendment rights not only because they cannot get access to the many tangible federal benefits that accrue to married couples, but because the law is telling them that their marriages are somehow “less worthy” than those of straight couples.

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