Nov 9th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Same Sex Marriage By Age and State
Lisa Wade shows us the shape of things to come:
This makes the triumph of marriage equality look fairly inevitable, but also frustratingly far off.
55 Responses to “Same Sex Marriage By Age and State”
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November 9th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
We got to this point very quickly, though. Essentially no one favored same-sex marriage 10 years ago. The issue wasn’t even on the table. In the 2004 election, gay marriage was a major boogey man. Now you’ve got legal gay marriage in a number of states and support in the high 40s across the country.
In 10 years there will be no more gay marriage debate any more than we currently have a miscegenation debate. Within 5 years you will probably have legal gay marriage everywhere outside of the deep south and Utah.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Note that this is explicit support. The numbers with explicit support + “don’t care” (i.e., wouldn’t put up a fuss if someone were really pushing for gay marriage), would make the triumph of marriage equality look a lot closer. Though, of course, 4-6 years could still be called “frustratingly far off”.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Kotter! Do the same graph for pot!
November 9th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Within 5 years you will probably have legal gay marriage everywhere outside of the deep south and Utah.
Really? It seems to me outside of NJ/NY you probably won’t have more than a couple states legalize it in the next couple years. Then I’d imagine there will be 2012 referendums in CA and Maine, both of which should succeed with Obama turnout, and after that things slowly progress over the next 5-10 years across the midwest.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
What, no breakdown by race? How disappointing…
November 9th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I would temper the optimism by noting that the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws did not have to survive public referendum. The “don’t cares” are not going to show up at the polls to protect marriage equality.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
It seems like the underlying point here relies on the idea that young people of today will retain their relatively tolerant attitudes as they get older.
But isn’t it, in fact, pretty common for young people to move to the right as they age? Ex-hippies today are all over the political spectrum, aren’t they?
ISTM that just because young people are iconoclastic rebels on issue X doesn’t necessarily mean that the consensus of issue X will shift in the future. We’re still starting all kinds of foreign wars notwithstanding the Vietnam protesters.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
DC is forgotten, as usual, even though we may have marriage equality within the next couple of months.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
But isn’t it, in fact, pretty common for young people to move to the right as they age? Ex-hippies today are all over the political spectrum, aren’t they?
While I wouldn’t say this never happens, generational effects seem to be greater, overall, than age effects. The folks who came to maturity during the Depression continued to vote Democrat their whole lives. The hippies are, no doubt, more conservative than they were in the 60s, but the Kennedy-Johnson cohort still supports Dems more than, say, Generation X does.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
If it happens five minutes from now, Yglesias would still say it was frustratingly far off.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
As with other civil rights movements, gay marriage is inevitable. Barely anyone anywhere disputes that. A strong leader could help make it happen sooner than later. That same leader would be rewarded with political capital in addition to a positive legacy of championing equality. If only there were a charismatic leader who could take up this challenge.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Chris – People move to the right on certain issues but mainly on issues of self interest. There’s good psycholoy writing on how the proximity of death causes survival instinct to kick in and people shift right in ways that defend their self interest. Morality and social issues people don’t shift so much on, and can drift towards greater tolerance too.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Sure, but the definition of what “right” is changes as some issues are laid to rest and new issues enter the conversation. Although there are lots of small battles left, the principles of racial and gender equality are generally accepted, and it’s only very rare ex-hippies (like maybe David Horowitz) who would disagree on these things. Drawing on the lessons of the Baby Boomers, I’d expect the youngster to slowly drift away from their peace-loving ways and their willingness to share the fruits of their labor, but I can’t imagine we’d see much movement the general acceptance of different sexual orientations.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
People’s views can change with age due to a host of reasons. Is there evidence to suggest that views on gay marriage are immune to this? The above graph may lean less conservative in future years, but not as much if people tend to get more conservative on this issue as they age. In that case, the wait may be even longer…
November 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
“If it happens five minutes from now, Yglesias would still say it was frustratingly far off.”
Yes, because it’s long overdue; what’s your point?
November 9th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Baby Boomers as a cohort remained socially liberal as they aged. They were never as economically liberal as the Silent Generation and became much more economically conservative once they made some money. Their children will likely follow the same pattern.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
People shifting more conservative as they age is a bit of a myth. Its more that specific events can change your views on certain issues: having a child, going up in income brackets, getting close to retirement age, and so on. Nate Silver has several posts on this: people don’t change their voting patterns much as they age.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
We need to spam the top five or seven states with pro-legalization ballot initiatives every cycle, and be prepared to lose 80% of them. Less the out-of-state funds, the measures in both Maine and CA would have succeeded– if we can regionalize, rather than nationalize, the issue in several states at a time, we can overwhelm that (largely fixed) funding source.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
But isn’t it, in fact, pretty common for young people to move to the right as they age? Ex-hippies today are all over the political spectrum, aren’t they?
The boomers are all over the place, as they were 40 years ago. The actual ex-hippies are still pretty reliably liberal.
As has been pointed out, you could have generated a pretty similar chart about civil rights in the early 60’s. That era’s 18-29 year olds haven’t reverted to their grandparent’s views over time.
November 9th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
It’s a matter of exposure to gays as ordinary people that began in the 60’s. Just like segregation it took people a few decades to wonder what all the fuss was about working with people of color, women, disabled, etc.
My mother loves her gay nephews and nieces, but never knew an openly gay person until she was 50.
The sad fact is that we have to wait for the Greatest Generation to die so major social changes can finally be legislated.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
This comment, “Essentially no one favored same-sex marriage 10 years ago.”
and
this one, “Yes, because it’s long overdue”
Honest question, when exactly should we have legalized gay marriage?
November 9th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
That’s on economic issues, not cultural ones. Culturally, people migrate to the majority. As more people come of age accepting gay marriage, more people who currently oppose it will either stop caring or even support it.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Why should they have been illegal in the first place?
November 9th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
When Zigfreid met Roy. When one gay lion tamer meets another, I call that divine approval.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
This comment, “Essentially no one favored same-sex marriage 10 years ago.”
and
this one, “Yes, because it’s long overdue”
Honest question, when exactly should we have legalized gay marriage?
Huh? There are plenty of things that should have been done long before there was much support for them. Ending slavery is one example.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
when exactly should we have legalized gay marriage?
When should we have allowed women to vote and own property? When should we have abolished slavery?
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize an injustice as being such rather than as part of the natural order of things, but there is no “right time” to end an injustice.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
This comment, “Essentially no one favored same-sex marriage 10 years ago.”
and
this one, “Yes, because it’s long overdue”
Honest question, when exactly should we have legalized gay marriage?
At the risk of overdramatizing, when the Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was published in 1688, the abolition of slavery was a fringe position even among Quakers, but that didn’t mean slavery wasn’t overdue for abolition. There’s a similar situation here — twenty years ago, legalized gay marriage would have been unimaginable, but that’s not the same thing as saying it wouldn’t have been ethical.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
It’s definiteliy flawed to think of everyones opinions as fixed. Do you really think that 10% of 40-year-olds in Alabama were in favor of same sex marriage 25 years ago? For that matter for 35% of 40-year-olds in Massachusetts in favor 25 years ago? There are two effects going on. Younger people are proportionally more in favor and proportion WITHIN each generational cohort is also shifting towards being in favor. Ignoring the second factor makes things seem a bit farther off than reality.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
There’s a strange data glitch about Utah in the chart. Every single demographic category in Utah shows lower support than OK and AR, but the average is higher. How is this possible? Maybe the age 0-17 set is extra-opinionated there?
November 9th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I always find these data on the aggregate racism/traditionalism of the Olds a bit jarring since every single older person I know is a screaming social leftist. Availability bias I guess, as my social contacts, old and young, usually hail from educated urban populations. Jeez my mom is >80 and no racist bone in her, and though I’ve never discussed it with her, I can’t imagine her batting an eye at Mr.-Mr. or Ms.-Ms. marital pairings.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
wahoofive: Utah is on average younger than Oklahoma, (in fact, Utah is one of the youngest states period) so the 0-17 year olds comprise a higher percentage of the population than they do in Oklahoma, which skews the average. Actually that sort of thing is a fairly well known phenomena in Statistics called Simpson’s Paradox.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Uh, it should never have been illegal. To the extent it was, I suppose one nanosecond after it was illegalized would have been the right time, give or take one nanosecond.
Maybe I don’t understand the philosophical point here. No civil rights advance should ever have been delayed, or indeed should ever have been necessary in the first place.
November 9th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
wahoofive #29,
There’s a name for that statistical effect — it pops up in baseball stats, too. Basically one cohort (in this case the most liberal one) is much larger than the other three, so it has a disproportionate influence on the mean.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
UserGoogol, I think you meant 18-29 rather than 0-17.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
KCinDC: Ah, yes. I was copying wahoofive’s phrase without realizing the context it was being used in.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Every single demographic category in Utah shows lower support than OK and AR, but the average is higher. How is this possible?
It’s possible if there are a lot more 18-25 year-olds in Utah than in the other two states. And Mormons tend to have huge families, so that explanation makes sense.
Same thing is true for Alaska and the few states below that, though I’m guessing that that’s more of a lack of over-65s in Alaska than a surfeit of 18-25s; doesn’t seem like many people retire to Alaska.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Simpson’s Paradox.
November 9th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Well, everyone else beat me to that. But note also Michigan-Florida and Minnesota-Pennsylvania, where you get that reversal because Florida and Pennsylvania are the two oldest states (so overall support is lower than you’d think it would be, looking at the individual demographic categories).
November 9th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Except that gay marriage is 0 for 31 when voters actually get to vote on it.
Of course, the will of the people, majority rule, democracy, all those outdated notions mean nothing, so, yes, gay marriage is inevitable in the long run because elites want it in order to piss off the public.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Re: Ex-hippies today are all over the political spectrum, aren’t they?
Right. But how many ex-hippies are campaigning to reverse the civil rights revolution or make birth control illegal again? From freedom of religion down through the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and the social reforms of the 1960s once achieved politically, expansions of rights are never rolled back, nor is there any vast groundswell of opinion clamoring to do so. Within a generation the reform, which once looked radical, becomes the norm, and both parties and ideologies sing its praises.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Re: Honest question, when exactly should we have legalized gay marriage?
If you want an honest answer, when we realized that homosexuality wasn’t a choice, and when we legalized no-fault divorce thanks to Saint Ronnie of Bakersfield, both of which (I think) happened in the ’60s sometime. Since about 1970 it’s not been possible to make the case that civil marriage in the United States is fundamentally about procreation and gender complementarity (even though I think that’s what marriage _should_ be about, at least in a Christian sense).
JonF,
The right to abortion will be rolled back someday, God willing, and we’ll be better off for it.
In a broader sense, many countries have reverted from liberal democracy to authoritarian government, Russia being only one recent example, so it clearly isn’t true that the expansion of political rights is always a one-way process.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Re: It’s possible if there are a lot more 18-25 year-olds in Utah than in the other two states. And Mormons tend to have huge families, so that explanation makes sense.
I suspect it’s also because Arkansas has a lot of older people (people go there to retire) and because younger people tend to leave Oklahoma and other Great-Plains states.
Michigan will probably legalize same-sex marriage in 5-10 years, I suspect (support for them is already around 45% now). I suspect that the recent decision of the ELCA to legalize same-sex partnerships will be a big boost to gay marriage movements across the midwest- the ELCA after all is the quintessential upper midwestern church.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
The most conservative young people (Alabama) are still more liberal than the most liberal old people (Massachusetts). Probably within the margin of error, but still, pretty striking.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Funny how states line up almost exactly with regions with below average education, or as I like to call them, ‘DumbF_ckIstan‘
November 9th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Yeah, lets superimpose educational statistics of each state on top of this… It looks like it would correlate well.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
This is rather sad, because it seems to suggest people cannot learn.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
After same-sex marriage and widespread IVF/donor-conception, you better get ready for the next big civil rights issue: children’s rights.
Do children have the right to be raised by their own biological mum and dad?
Do we have the right to intentionally deprive them of that opportunity?
Do adults have a “right” to have children? (Maybe like a man used to have a right of ownership over his wife, or over a slave…?)
Donor-conceived children are growing up. They’re getting mad. They’re saying: who gave you the right to do this to me? Check it out: http://www.tangledwebs.org.au and http://www.tangledwebs.org.uk
November 10th, 2009 at 12:43 am
But isn’t it, in fact, pretty common for young people to move to the right as they age? Ex-hippies today are all over the political spectrum, aren’t they?
Chris, you forget that when former hippies were growing up that segregation was the norm in the south, gays had absolutely no rights and were systematically persecuted and women were treated like second class citizens.
Despite all of the most retrograde fringe conservatives out there, there aren’t many people in the political middle who would support such things. People might get more conservative as they age, but they are seldom as or more conservatives as their parent’s generation.
In twenty years I think that people coming of age will scratch their heads over why LGBT rights was such an issue in our times right now.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:57 am
As someone in the 45-64 group, I am a little surprised to see the gap between that group and our elders; and not surprising at all to behold the substantial stride that our children have taken. You can parse this however you like, but the big picture is promising.
November 10th, 2009 at 1:50 am
“Do children have the right to be raised by their own biological mum and dad?”
The broader issues would be; Do children have the right to choose who raises them? Can a child legally disassociate themselves from their legal (bio or not) parents?
November 10th, 2009 at 6:41 am
rE: In a broader sense, many countries have reverted from liberal democracy to authoritarian government, Russia being only one recent example, so it clearly isn’t true that the expansion of political rights is always a one-way process.
My comment assumed the democratic proess remains intact, as indeed it has in this country for 200+ years.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
rE: In a broader sense, many countries have reverted from liberal democracy to authoritarian government, Russia being only one recent example, so it clearly isn’t true that the expansion of political rights is always a one-way process.
That’s comparing apples to oranges if you’re going to cite Russia. Russia hasn’t ever had any kind of functional civil society with people having garuntees on basic rights. Russia had a chance to establish one during the Yeltsen years, but it seems that freedom there is stillborn.
And the whole narrative that Russia made some strives towards democracy in the Yetlsen years is dubious, during this time the russians leveled Grozny in the first Chechen War and Yelten also shelled the russian White House. Putin isn’t so much as rolling back freedoms, he’s consolidating power.
November 13th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
[...] From here. [...]
November 13th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
If the older generation is generally more conservative on issues that the younger generation, what are the issues for which today’s young generation will be seen as conservative relative to *their* children?
November 14th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
“what are the issues for which today’s young generation will be seen as conservative relative to *their* children?”
Transgender issues are next imho.