That FoxNews Poll, And Gay Marriage

Underscoring this, now that I think about it. (See question 35, near the very end of the poll.)

If 60% of the country really does support either gay marriage (FoxNews says 30%) or a legal arrangement with all the benefits of gay marriage, but not called gay marriage (another 30%), why aren't almost all Democrats actively running on this popular issue?

A 60/40 issue is a winning won -- and a strongly winning one. That's not just edging your opponents; that's beating them handily. That's better than the level of support tax cuts usually have, and they're fairly popular.

So if FoxNews is right -- America is queer for gay marriage -- why don't politicians capitalize on this?

Why do they obfuscate their views, and leave it up to the politically-insulated courts to impose gay marriage and/or gay marriage in all but name on states?

Why do amendments forbidding gay marriage consistently win?

In only one state -- New Jersey -- have the voters actually endorsed civiil unions (short of marriage). Even in New Jersey, the split is about 50/50 on the courts' fresh demand for either gay marriage or gay marriage by a different name than "marriage."

So, even if this FoxNews poll polled liberal-on-gay-marriage New Jersey about this issue, it would still have oversampled liberals on this issue by around ten raw percentage points.

How did this happen, exactly?

Either there's suddenly a surge in the popularity of gay marriage, to the extent it's now a winning issue to actively campaign on, or FoxNews ran into the usual problem of simply being able to reach far more liberal Democrats than Republican.

Doesn't this mean the poll overstates liberals' numbers by somewhere around ten full points, perhaps a point or two more or less?

I wonder what looking at this question, or similar questions (for which we think we know, ballpark, about the true public split on the issue), would show a similar skew towards liberals on other polls. All the polls, in fact.

"Queer for:" This is a favorite throwback expression of mine. I don't think that when it was popular it had any connotation with homosexuality. I think it's a twenties-ism, and just means "goofy for, crazy for."

So I use it in that sense frequently. Here, of course, I'm also using it as a pun, as I'm talking about gay marriage.

Another "queer" expression I like is "queered," as in "screwed up, made chaotic." And "Queer Street," which is where you are after you've been socked in the jaw.

As in "If I find out you queered things between me and my girlfriend you're goinna be looking for your teeth three blocks north of Queer Street."

Anyway, I actually do like these non-queer uses of queer. It's actually a kind of cool word.

Just sayin'.

posted by Ace at 04:38 PM

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