Amongst the gloom there is some bright news, here in Washington state support for Same Sex Marriage has grown by 5% in the last year since R71 was passed expanding Washington's "Domestic Partnership" laws to extend all the state rights responsibilities and protections of marriage just with out the name, those earning it the nick name the everything but marriage law.
In the poll of state voters, conducted by
the University of Washington which consisted of 4 different questions, it found 37% believed that gay and lesbian couples should have access to legal recognition as long as its not marriage,(got to linked study for total breakdown, pg17 unless your interest in WA political polls for this fall) 19% say no recognition at all, but 41% say that we should have full marriage rights. Compare this to last year when 39% said we should have some form of legal recognition, (again go to link for brake down) 36 said they supported full marriage and 23% said they supported non at all.
Its not until you look at things in the more long run though that you start to realise just how much of a deal that this, when you look at the picture starting from 2006 when the case before the state supreme court attempting to overturn Washington's DOMA failed. at that time there were no protections in place for gay couples in the state and the numbers looked like this, 41% thought we should have some kind of legal recognition of our relationships, 30% said we should have full married and 26% said we should have non at all. The jump 5% jump in support between 2009 and 2010 is only tied with the 5% jump between 2006 and 2007. This as much as some may hate to admit it dose seem to show that the slow and steady approach to marriage dose work and dose have its abilities to help change minds and harts. It may not be as fast as some would like, goodness know it is not as fast as I would like but then again rights struggles really are, however we have goon from having only 30% of the public supporting our right to marry to 41% that is an 11% gain in 4 years.
The courant think is to now get the 23% that already support the existing all the same rights just not the name, to realise that with out the name we are excluded from the federal rights responsables and protections, as well as being able to truly credible in the eyes of the federal government fight for those rights. It is to help to nudge those 23% of votes over into the marriage camp, while not abandoning moving others up the ladder, after all it's easier to win you over in the campaign when you only a rung bellow instead of 3. hopefully we can make even larger leaps then this one as we focused on getting those who are already so close to supporting marriage equality to realize how much power that word actually carries.
I hope that this brought some sunshine to all of your day, as always thank you for reading. Comments are always welcome and very much enjoyed as well as appreciated. have a great day :-)
Comments
Post a Comment