Public attitudes towards gay rights and equality have evolved over the past several years, and for the first time a majority of Americans support allowing same sex couples to marry. A May Gallup poll finds that 53% of Americans believe marriages between same sex couples should be recognized by law with the same rights as traditional marriage, while only 45% believe it should not. This is a reversal from just one year ago, when 44% supported marriage equality and 53% did not - a figure that at the time represented growing support for marriage equality-as recently as 2004, Americans opposed gay marriage 2:1. CNN's April polling confirms a similar movement - 51% believe marriage between gay and lesbian couples should have the same legal rights as traditional marriage, up from 44% in 2009. Their poll also found that 55% of Independents support marriage equality. In fact, since March, all publicly-available polling on marriage equality has found that more than 50% of Americans now support marriage equality.

State by State Attitudes

With more states moving towards marriage equality legislation (and unfortunately some also moving towards bans), we were fascinated by Nate Silver's most recent analysis of states likely to pass their legislation. The Wall Street Journal put together a helpful map showing each state's laws with respect to this issue here. In states that have already passed marriage equality legislation, recent polling finds that people there support the law - 54% of New Yorkers support the law that just passed, and only 40% oppose. Among voters under 35, support is 70% - 26%; however, among seniors, a majority oppose it 57% - 37%, illustrating the substantial age divide that exists everywhere on this issue. In Rhode Island, whose legislature just passed civil union legislation, voters support it 50% - 41%. In Washington DC, support is 56% - 35%. Polling also finds movement towards support in states where marriage equality has not yet passed - Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.

Even states that repealed marriage equality legislation have shifted recently towards supporting marriage equality. In Maine, which passed Question 1 in 2009, 47% of voters now support marriage equality, while 45% oppose. In California, support appears to be growing: a March 2010 poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 50% of Californians support marriage equality. A poll by David Binder also finds that support for Prop 8, the law that Californians passed in 2008 to repeal the state's same sex marriage law, has decreased over the years, especially among minority communities (among African Americans, support dropped from 60% in 2009 to 53%. During the same time, it dropped from 51% to 47% among Latinos). 

Rise of LGBT presence in the media

Perhaps one explanation for the public's increased support for gay rights issues is the recent rise in LGBT media personalities, artists, and recurring characters on television shows. GLAAD's annual Where We Are on TV Report found that LGBT representations account for 3.9% of all scripted series regular characters on the major networks in the 2010-2011 broadcast year, up from 3.0% the previous year, and more than tripled since 2007, when only 1.1% of recurring characters were LGBT. Commercial successes like Glee and Modern Family also indicate that mainstream audiences are embracing gay characters.