New Poll Shows how the coming out of gays is changing people’s mind

                                                                         

     

Do closeted gays know what solid universal difference they make when they come out?  I really don’t think that a lot of the ones in their 30-50 years olds now realize how important it is. To eliminate any doubts of the truth of such statement there is a new survey that has just come out. It shows that Americans are almost twice as much in supporting gay marriage if they know someone who is gay. 

(after 50 if still closeted you politicly missed the Ferry boat)

Most of us have known this fact without the new survey but what this survey does is put a seal of approval on such a statement. 

  

The findings, from pollsters the Marist Institute for US media group McClatchy, also showed the vast majority of young people favoured legislating for same-sex marriage.

“It is a sea change in attitude,” said Marist Institute Director, Lee Miringoff.

“You’d be hard-pressed to find an issue that has had a bigger shift in public opinion.”

The number of American adults who said they know someone who is gay has risen from 39 per cent in 1999 to 71 per cent today, while 52 per cent said they now know more gay people than a decade ago.

Among those who know a gay person, 61 per cent were in favour of same-sex marriage, but among those who didn’t have any personal experience of gay people support plummeted to just 36 per cent.

Young people between 18 and 29 were the most enthusiastic proponents of marriage equality with three quarters approving the move.

Overall, the survey of 1035 people found some 54 per cent of Americans now believed same-sex couples should be allowed to wed.

More important for this poll is that it shows that no matter what issues come up and go, either affecting LGBT or the populace at large this group does not change. The numbers are expected to go even higher as gays become more visual but everything of coarse hinges on the numbers of gays that will come out. This is why I wrote at the beginning of this news story that is universally important for gays to come out. 

                                                                       

Just imagine what would happen if we had more people getting to know gays. All the lies and misrepresentations, all the myths that the politicians have used to reinforce the myth notion that they and the voters needed to stick by family values by voting against anything that allow gays any rights. They were actually saying that gays come from nowhere. Straights are either magically transformed into gays or gays automatically appeared in the landscape like they had no family and came from no families. 

By the gay movement making the fundamental right decision of attacking the biggest two issues in the political arena (keeping in mine that political means laws because it is politicians the ones that institute either good and fair laws or bad unfair ones). The two issues  are gays in the military and the biggest of them all, same sex marriage. Why is this? It is simply because the two issues are based on laws that clearly discriminates gay people. On the DADT on the military it said to the world but more importantly to the american voter that gays are not complete people. They are so damaged goods that they cannot even serve their country unless they hid who they they are because they should be ashamed. This is enormous and the law was overturned. What is bigger than this? Gay marriage. When the politicians figured out that there was nothing on the constitution to keep any class of people from marrying. The Republican party and the church (Catholics, Evangelicals and Mormons mainly) went state to state pumping money to the local politicians to enact discriminatory laws that banned gays from  getting married and the furthermore it prohibits the states from enacting laws that would change that. 

As gays got energized and realized that it was now or never for this particular generation, they started coming out in droves. These made the percentage of americans (71% from 39% in 1999) that got to know gays now, to support them.

No magic, just common sense and numbers that don’t lie. Gays being like any other in the land let themselves be discovered and ultimately be recognized as such. 

Now as courts strike down those discriminatory laws banning gays from marriage, we await the big kahuna. The Supreme Court. We expect  them any time now to decide to take one or more of the cases before them or make a ruling in the gay ban cases on appeal and settled to issue in this generation. As it is hoped and expected they will rule against discrimination like they did on Prop 8 in California and overturned the law that would not allow same sex marriage there.

It is not sufficient that states permit same sex marriage even if we had most the states approving such thing. It is not sufficient because most of the benefits attached to marriage comes from the Federal government.  In order for gays to be equal in site of their government, they need all the rights that straight couples have when they get married. 

This is not going to make homophobes and bigots change their mind just like the civil rights laws of the 60’s and the emancipation of the slaves did not make all the bigots convert to regular human beings;  You still had whites lynching blacks, white/ black water fountains, segregated schools, public transportation and housing. The thing is that once there is a law and gays start getting married you brake the cycle. The fountain of discrimination is cracked and eventually all that muddy water leaks out so the fountain once emptied and fixed can be replaced with drinkable water.

Adam Gonzalez, Publisher