Support For Gays Growing In California

Californians have grown more accepting of gays and lesbians and are increasingly likely to support giving them legal rights, a new Field Poll shows.
Released today, the statewide poll found broad approval for several policies against discrimination:
• 67 percent of respondents supported allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military.
• 59 percent supported laws prohibiting employers from discriminating against gays and lesbians.
• 55 percent supported allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt children, if the courts find them to be fit parents.
But public opinion remains deeply split on the question of same-sex marriage.
Fifty-one percent of respondents did not want regular marriage laws to apply to gay and lesbian couples, while 43 percent approved of the idea -- up from 28 percent in 1977.
When the question was phrased differently, 32 percent said they supported allowing same-sex couples to marry, 32 percent backed civil unions but not marriage, and 32 percent favored no legal recognition for same-sex couples.
To Seth Kilbourn, political director of the gay and lesbian advocacy group Equality California, the latter numbers were good news --proving that 64 percent of state residents want some sort of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples.
"Californians support treating everybody equally under the law," he said. "I think that's the biggest message of the poll."
But Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, called the poll utterly incorrect, saying that Californians' stance on same-sex marriage is already clear.
In March 2000, he said, 61.4 percent of actual voters approved Proposition 22, reserving marriage for "one man and one woman."
"What people tell a pollster is going to be very different from how they vote," Thomasson said.
"More Californians support protecting marriage than ever in recent history, and it's because arrogant politicians and out-of-control judges are attacking marriage on our own soil."
The Field Poll report is based on a March telephone survey of 1,000 California adults chosen by random dialing.
While numbers have not vacillated much in the past few years, "when you look at these kinds of measures over the long run, you do see changes in public attitude," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.
In the poll, 43 percent of respondents called homosexual relations "not wrong at all," compared with 38 percent in 1997.
Another 32 percent deemed homosexual relations "always wrong," compared with 45 percent in 1997.
One major factor appears to be fueling Californians' shifting feelings, DiCamillo said: the growing number who report personally knowing someone gay or lesbian (67 percent in the March poll, compared with 49 percent in 1977).
"I think that has a moderating effect," he said. "When you look at people who personally know gays and lesbians, their opinions are much more accepting."
Also more likely to be accepting of gays and lesbians: Bay Area residents, self-described liberals, people with college or graduate degrees, Democrats and nonpartisan voters.
Young adults also are substantially more likely to support legal rights for gays and lesbians, DiCamillo said.
Among respondents age 18 to 39, 66 percent approve of allowing either same-sex marriage or civil unions -- compared with 46 percent of those age 65 or older.
As younger people replace their senior counterparts at the ballot box, DiCamillo said, political realities are likely to shift as well.
from Contra Costa Times