June 7, 2024 - 10:00am

A new poll from Ipsos has found that support for same-sex marriage among Americans has fallen to just 51% approval.

The finding marks an eight-point drop since a peak for support in 2021, part of a steady decline following the rapid rise in approval around the time the US recognised same-sex marriage nationwide. When asked their opinion on same-sex couples in the new poll, 51% of Americans supported legal marriage, 14% supported some form of legal recognition besides marriage, and 18% supported no legal recognition.

The decline in support since 2021 is a major reversal from the years prior, when approval was consistently growing. In 2014, 46% of Ipsos respondents believed gay couples should be allowed to marry. That climbed to 59% by 2021, then dropped to 54% in 2023 and decreased a further three points this year. The post-2021 decline in support has been smaller than the pre-2021 rise, but it has occurred at a much faster rate.

During the 2010s, there was a rapid change in public policy and opinion on the issue. The US had a patchwork of laws alternately recognising and banning same-sex marriage at state level until 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled that states were required to recognise and license same-sex marriages. Approval rapidly rose afterwards.

But just a few years earlier, same-sex marriage was unpopular with American voters, including many Democrats. For example, in deep-blue California voters passed a ballot measure officially banning same-sex marriage in 2008 — the same year the state voted for Barack Obama by a 24-percentage-point margin. Obama himself had campaigned against same-sex marriage.

Following a years-long rise in support for gay marriage, a groundswell of anti-woke sentiment emerged around 2021, much of it directed at LGBT activism as parents gained a new window into their children’s curriculum when schooling went remote during the Covid-19 pandemic. Elected Republicans at state level enacted a wave of legislation restricting child gender transitions and school curricula on gender and sexuality.

Gay rights have since been lumped in with trans rights in the popular imagination, which may have chipped away some public support for gay marriage at the margins. Indeed, Gallup polling from last year found that the decline could mostly be attributed to Republicans, whose support for same-sex marriage fell from 56% to 41% between 2022 and 2023.

Bev Jackson, co-founder of the LGB Alliance, said the decline in support for same-sex marriage had causes on both the Left and the Right. “Blame for the fall in US support for gay marriage lies partly with the homophobic religious Right. But equally to blame are treacherous organisations like GLAAD and the ACLU which promote insane, deeply unpopular concepts such as gender self-ID and child ‘transition’,” she said. “Gender identity ideologues have been riding on LGB’s coattails for too long, and they’re helping to destroy support for the rights we fought for decades to win.”


is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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