Have any of you ever really paid attention to the wording of gay marriage polls? Most of them basically ask, "do you support the right of same-sex couples to marry?" But when you think about it, the way people respond to that question is being used to gauge support for something deeper than that.
The point with these polls isn't to determine the popularity of gay marriage; it's to determine how much support gay marriage advocates have in trying to legalize it through the courts.
Notice how Gallup/Pew/Quinnipiac and these other polling institutions never ask something like, "do you believe legal marriage should only be defined as the union of a man and woman?" or "do you believe there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage?" These questions would actually be more relevant to where the issue is now than the preferential version commonly used. Also notice how no one in the media ever mentions the unlikelihood of the Supreme Court effectively nullifying over thirty state constitutional amendments and the laws in over a half dozen other states just because of some optimistic polls showing a majority of Americans support it.
Reason being, they want to conflate acceptance of gay marriage with acceptance of judicial fiat in enacting broad-sweeping social policy. They hope to use these polls as cover to game the judicial system into legalizing it, much in the same way the legal system was gamed to legalize abortion.
The point with these polls isn't to determine the popularity of gay marriage; it's to determine how much support gay marriage advocates have in trying to legalize it through the courts.
Notice how Gallup/Pew/Quinnipiac and these other polling institutions never ask something like, "do you believe legal marriage should only be defined as the union of a man and woman?" or "do you believe there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage?" These questions would actually be more relevant to where the issue is now than the preferential version commonly used. Also notice how no one in the media ever mentions the unlikelihood of the Supreme Court effectively nullifying over thirty state constitutional amendments and the laws in over a half dozen other states just because of some optimistic polls showing a majority of Americans support it.
Reason being, they want to conflate acceptance of gay marriage with acceptance of judicial fiat in enacting broad-sweeping social policy. They hope to use these polls as cover to game the judicial system into legalizing it, much in the same way the legal system was gamed to legalize abortion.
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