Very interesting new survey. Barna, the researcher, is himself a pretty religious person, and not at all associated with the pro-gay side of this debate, as far as I know. Here's what he found in his recent poll about the anti-gay constitutional amendment:
This is interesting:
The survey of 1618 adults revealed that 37% of voting-age citizens have never heard of the amendment.This is good, and certainly not a mandate for amending the Constitution:
46% favored the amendment while 44% opposed it and the remaining 10% had no opinion.Nothing new here, other than the fact that smart people are with us (I love how "Republicans" are on the opposite side of the poll from "college graduates"):
The strongest support for the amendment came from evangelicals (83%), conservatives (58%), Republicans (56%), Protestants (49%), and non-evangelical born again Christians (47%). At the other end of the spectrum, the segments most fervently opposed to the amendment were liberals (55%), atheists and agnostics (51%), and college graduates (43%).That's good news:
Among the 37% who were previously unaware of the amendment, upon hearing a description of the amendment 37% said they supported such a change to the Constitution, 45% opposed it, and 18% remained undecided.Bad news, though not too high a number:
The survey also showed that the adults most likely to vote in November favored the amendment by a comfortable margin, 52% to 43%.This is odd:
The homosexual niche constitutes just 4% of the adult population, of whom 78% oppose the FMA.Putting aside for a moment the "homosexual niche" comment (it makes us sound like we're insects, or something), who are these 22% of gay people who either favor or have no opinion on the amendment? That number sounds an awful lot like the number of gay peopled who voted for Bush last time around. I simply refuse to believe that 22% of self-identified gay people support the amendment, that's just bizarre. (Now tell me they don't deserve to be outed>)
