Poll: Calif. gay marriage ban driven by religion

December 4, 2008 — Deacon Duncan

In a poll that will surprise probably no one, the Public Policy Institute of California
reports that Christian convictions were one of two factors strongly linked to the success of California’s Proposition Hate—er, sorry, Proposition 8.

Voters’ economic status and religious convictions played a greater role than race and age in determining whether they supported the Nov. 4 ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California, a new poll shows.

The ban drew its strongest support from both evangelical Christians and voters who didn’t attend college, according to results released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California.

I’m a bit pressed for time today, so I’ll just mention this in passing, but it does confirm what people have been saying all along: Christianity is leading the oppression of gays. It’s not just a harmless, personal belief. It causes people to inflict deep and enduring suffering on others, just to satisfy their own selfish bigotry.

 
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Posted in Society. 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Poll: Calif. gay marriage ban driven by religion”

  1. Chigliakus Says:
    December 4, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    “Voters’ economic status and religious convictions played a greater role…The ban drew its strongest support from both evangelical Christians and voters who didn’t attend college”

    I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that the lack of college contributed to these voter’s economic status and their evangelical Christianity. People who lack a college education are less likely to have ever acquired the critical thinking skills necessary to question their faith.

  2. Loren Petrich Says:
    December 4, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    On this subject, the Los Angeles Times did an interesting regional breakdown:

    http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-2008election-prop8prop22,0,6153805.htmlstory

    Proposition 8 and Proposition 22
    Gay marriage ban: A tale of two votes

    That article has a very nice interactive graph that you can use to compare the votes on Prop 22 (2000) and Prop 8 (this years). Prop 22 won by 61% and Prop 8 by 52%, which is an improvement. Back then, only the Bay Area counties supported gay marriage, and only some of those. But this year, nearly all the Bay Area counties supported gay marriage, with the supporters’ margins increasing. And opposition margins elsewhere in the state also decreased, though mostly in urban areas like Los Angeles and Sacramento. In the rest of the Central Valley and the northern end, opposition to gay marriage continued at about the same rate.

    So there’s an interesting regional divide here.

  3. Deacon Duncan Says:
    December 4, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    That’s a very interesting map indeed, thanks for sharing it.

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