Supreme Court To Hear Marriage Equality Cases This Week

(This image is from the website Every Day, Another Song.)

You may have noticed that I have been posting about same-sex marriage quite a bit recently. There are two reasons for that. First, I believe in equal rights for ALL Americans without exception, and second, this is the week that the Supreme Court will finally hear the cases on marriage equality -- and hopefully will issue a decision in a couple of months that will outlaw all state bans on same-sex marriage.

I believe the court will decide in favor of equal rights, and outlaw the remaining state bans. But even if they don't, this is an issue that has already been decided by the American public. Poll after poll has shown that a significant (and growing) percentage of Americans are now in favor of legalizing same-sex marriages. Let me add one more poll to that list (see below) -- the Quinnipiac University Poll (done between April 16th and 21st of a random national sample of 1,353 registered voters, with a 2.7 point margin of error).

This latest survey shows that at least 58% of American favor legalizing same-sex marriages, while only 34% oppose that -- a whopping 24 point gap in favor of equality! Only one group has a majority in opposition -- Republicans. But other gender, age, and political groups show significant support.

This poses a dilemma for Republican candidates running for president. They must run in the whole nation (not in some safe district or state), and the quickly changing attitude of most Americans toward same-sex marriage has them worried. Their religious bigotry may serve them well in the GOP primaries, but it's not going to help in the general election -- it's going to hurt them, and they know it.

It will be interesting to see what these candidates do in the coming months. Some will undoubtably stick to their bigotry (trying to win the GOP primaries by appealing to evangelicals), while others will probably try to avoid the issue. I suspect that latter group is hoping the Supreme Court settles the matter and the controversy dies down before they have to face the voters.