California First-ever majority favors gay marriage

FIELD POLL FINDS YOUNG VOTERS DRIVING A SHIFT IN ATTITUDES

SACRAMENTO - For the first time ever, a statewide survey reports a majority of California voters favor gay marriage - a finding that pollsters describe as a milestone driven by younger people.

The Field Poll result, released today, shows the highest level of support in more than three decades of polling Californians on the hot-button issue of same-sex marriage laws. The poll found 51 percent of registered voters favor the idea of allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed, while 42 percent disapprove.

An almost identical result was recorded in the random survey of whether voters favor an amendment to the state constitution that will likely appear on the November ballot, which seeks to define marriage as between a man and a woman: Fifty-one percent opposed that proposal, the survey reported, while 43 percent approved of the restrictive amendment.

"I would characterize it as a historic poll," said Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo, noting that a marked number of young voters - more than two of every three - supported permitting same-sex nuptials. DiCamillo called the result one of the rare issues "where public tolerance I would say is generationally induced."

The random-sample survey went into circulation May 17 - just two days after the California Supreme Court's landmark ruling that struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, a decision that opponents would like voters to overturn through the proposed amendment. Gay marriages are likely

to begin this summer, unless the state court agrees to reconsider its ruling or delay its taking effect until after the November election.
The poll of 1,052 registered voters has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points, and the results, while notable, show the public clearly divided on the issue. When voters were asked about the ruling, the results were nearly even: 48 percent supporting the court ruling permitting same-sex marriage, and 46 percent opposed.

Divisions evident

The Field findings were released less than a week after another statewide survey, the Los Angeles Times/KTLA Poll, showed a different outcome of the divided population: 41 percent of respondents said they approved of the Supreme Court's decision to allow same-sex marriage, and 52 percent said they disapproved.

"Either way you look at it, they're close," said Larry Gerston, a San Jose State University political scientist. "From a statistical point of view, they're not as far apart as people think."

While the Field Poll was conducted between May 17 and 26, the Times Poll was conducted May 20-21 and included 705 registered voters.

The Field Poll's results have come a long way since the poll

Click on image to enlarge. first asked the same-sex marriage question in 1977, when 59 percent of Californians disapproved and only 28 percent approved. Since then, support has increased steadily: 30 percent in 1985, for example, and 42 percent in 2003.
The changing attitude reflected through Field Polls, DiCamillo said, can be attributed to a "generational replacement" that has resulted in younger Californians being more sympathetic to providing equal protection of the laws to gays and lesbians. The shift, he added, is akin to the public's attitudes on race that changed after the civil rights movement.

Age differences

Jesse Guerrero, a 71-year-old retired vinyl floor installer from San Jose, says he can attest to the generational divide - 55 percent of voters age 65 or older disapprove of gay marriage.

"My daughter is 37, she's pretty liberal, more liberal than I am, and it doesn't bother her. She says let people live the way they want," said Guerrero, who participated in the Field Poll. "But I'm of the belief that men and women were put on this Earth for procreation," Guerrero said, "and they certainly cannot get procreation out of two men married."

Another Field Poll respondent, Ursula Cabalzar, 59, of Santa Clara, formed a pro-gay-marriage attitude after growing up in Switzerland.

"I do not understand what the difference is, if as a heterosexual you have about a 50 percent failure rate, yet, how can we say that we value the institution of marriage - and we want to deny it to other people that love one another?"

The poll found support for same-sex marriage strongest in the state's second-largest urban center, the Bay Area. But in the more conservative Central Valley, and counties outside Los Angeles, more voters disapprove than approve.

Democrats approve permitting gay marriage 65 percent to 29 percent, and independents favored the idea 61 percent to 27 percent, the poll found. Republicans surveyed opposed the measure 69 percent to 25 percent.
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