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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Top Gay Blog Laments: ‘WE ALWAYS LOSE’ When Voters Decide on Marriage

By Kathleen Gilbert

A prominent online gay publication has admitted the existence of a little-known but persistent obstacle to legalizing same-sex “marriage”: American voters.

A post on the Queerty blog Monday concluded that President Obama’s silence on gay “marriage” results from a recognition that most American voters oppose it.

“Even LGBT organizers agree that they’d rather pass marriage equality by legislature than at the ballot because at the ballot WE ALWAYS LOSE,” wrote Queerty’s Daniel Villarreal.

“People who oppose the ballot also like saying that if America voted on interracial marriage in the 60s, that still might be illegal too. But is that really our only defense against the ballot argument?” he continued. “If so, it’s no wonder that Obama hasn’t articulated a reason to support marriage that doesn’t fly in the face of the democratic process that had denied us our rights.”

Before New York legislators passed a same-sex “marriage” bill earlier this month, a poll by QEV Analytics found that 57 percent of voters in the state supported marriage as “only” between a man and a woman. The same poll, commissioned by the National Organization for Marriage, found that 59 percent favored putting the question on the ballot instead of leaving it to legislators.

When put to voters, measures to enshrine true marriage into law or a state constitution have won majority approval in all of the 30-plus states where they have been proposed.

Poll data on the issue have been found to be routinely misleading: a September 2008 survey found that lead-up polls on average vastly underestimated actual support for traditional marriage at the voting booth.
 
 

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