Another Tough Day for Bigots

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll has found that 59% of US respondents now believe that same-sex couples have a right to marry. Even in states with bans on same-sex marriage, 53% of respondents support overturning the bans and allowing the legalization of same-sex marriage. And 50% of respondents now say there is a Constitutional right to same-sex marriage equality.

At this point, we're basically just waiting for legislators to catch the fuck the up.

(Which, as we recently saw in Indiana, as but one example, still demands an awful lot of time and money and energy and action. Progress happens because people advocate for it. It's work. Work that isn't finished.)

There was even more significant support for nondiscrimination in business and for gay parenting:

According to the poll, public opinion is more unified on recent proposals that would allow businesses to refuse serving gays and others based on the religious convictions of the business owner. Nearly seven in 10 respondents say businesses should not be allowed to refuse service to gays. On this question, majorities across partisan lines said businesses should not be allowed to deny service.

...The shifting attitudes extend beyond issues of marital rights to more basic beliefs about the nature of homosexuality and its implications for child rearing. Nearly eight in 10 say that gays can parent as well as straight people, up from just below six in 10 in a 1996 Newsweek survey.

Sixty-one percent support allowing gays to adopt a child, up from 49 percent in 2006 and 29 percent in a 1992 poll by Time magazine and CNN.

...Support for same-sex marriage has changed more rapidly than almost any social issue in the past decade. In a Post-ABC poll in March 2004, 38 percent said same-sex marriage should be legal, while 59 percent said it should not, the same percentage now in favor of allowing gays to marry.

Social conservatives are fighting a number of losing battles, but none so losery as this one.