Rhetoric Race and Religion
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two widely anticipated landmark rulings that were victories for gay rights advocates: striking down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that banned federal benefits to same-sex couples who are legally married in their state and declining to rule on California’s Proposition 8, which moves California into position to join the ranks of the 12 other states plus the District of Columbia where same-sex marriage is legal.
Clearly, the rapidly shifting public opinion on same-sex marriage influenced the decisions (even as the public is evenly divided about whether the court should take public opinion in to account). Yesterday’s rulings would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. While the general population trends have been well covered, the way those trends have altered the American religious landscape has received less attention.
If we rewind the clock back to 2006—two years after the nation witnessed 12 states banning same-sex marriage in a single election cycle—the debate seemed destined to remain one between secular Americas who supported same-sex marriage and religious Americans who did not. More than six-in-10 (63 percent) religiously unaffiliated Americans supported same-sex marriage, but not a single major religious group approached majority support. Among religious Americans, support ranged from a high of 41 percent among white mainline Protestants, to a low of only 12 percent among white evangelical Protestants (Pew Research Center, 2006).
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