USA Africa Dialogue Series - UK: Three in five voters back gay marriage, new poll shows

Three in five voters back gay marriage, new poll shows

Survey finds growing support for same-sex marriage, a day after
coalition proposals were criticised by Catholic archbishop

Tom Clark and Andrew Sparrow
The Guardian, Wednesday 26 December 2012 17.07 GMT


More than three in five voters support David Cameron's wish to
introduce gay marriage, according to a poll conducted for the
Guardian. The strong backing for a change in the law comes after the
archbishop of Westminster queried the democratic legitimacy of the
coalition plans.

Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic church in England and
Wales, used a strident Christmas Day message to blast the "shambolic"
process that could soon put provision for same-sex weddings on the
statute book. "There was no announcement in any party manifesto;
there's been no green paper; there's been no statement in the Queen's
speech. And yet here we are on the verge of primary legislation,"
Nichols told the BBC.

The plans also came under fire from a high court judge, who said the
government should instead be looking at the "crisis of family
breakdown". Sir Paul Coleridge said too much time and energy had been
put into the debate on gay marriage for "0.1% of the population".

The ICM poll conducted just before Christmas found 62% of voters now
support the proposals, with half this number – 31% – opposed. Most
previous polls have found opinion leaning the same way, although the
two-to-one margin revealed on Wednesday is particularly emphatic. An
ICM online survey for the Sunday Telegraph in March asked the
identical question – which expressly reminds people that the option of
civil partnerships already exists for gay couples – and established a
45%-36% lead for the reformers.

That significant hardening of opinion during the year will encourage
Cameron, whose embrace of gay marriage has proved controversial, not
only with religious leaders but also with the Tory backbench. And the
new poll reveals a particularly significant swing towards the reform
among the Tory base.

Although Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters remain more likely to
support gay marriage, with respective majorities of 67% and 71%, there
is now also a majority among Conservative supporters. Among those who
voted Tory in 2010, gay marriage now enjoys 52%-42% backing, a big
turnaround from ICM's survey in March, which recorded 50%-35%
opposition from 2010 Conservative voters.

Both men and women support gay marriage, although the majority is
bigger among female voters, 65% of whom support gay marriage, compared
with 58% of men. Gay marriage is backed by 60%+ majorities across
every nation and region, the 74% majority recorded in Wales being the
most emphatic. There is a pro-gay-marriage majority, too, in every
social class – although the majority is somewhat smaller in the DE
class, which contains the lowest occupational grades. Fifty-one per
cent of this group is in favour of the change, as opposed to 68% in
the C1 clerical grade, which emerges as the most enthusiastic.

Sharper differences emerge when the results are analysed across the
age ranges. The over-65s resist the proposal, by 58% to 37%, but
support is progressively stronger in younger age groups. The pro-
reform majority is 64% among 35-64s, 75% among 25-34s, and an
overwhelming 77% among 18-24s.

The results will encourage the view of Cameron and the deputy prime
minister, Nick Clegg, who has also set significant store by the
proposal, that they are on the right side of history. But with opinion
moving so fast in favour of gay marriage, enthusiasts on Wednesday
demanded to know why the government had provided for such sweeping
exemptions for religious groups. Among other things these provide for
a wholesale exemption for the Church of England, such that – were the
currently opposed C of E to embrace gay marriage at some later date –
fresh legislation would be required to extend the reform to it.

As the Guardian poll findings were released, the Liberal Democrat
minister Lynne Featherstone said that Roman Catholic leaders who were
attacking the government's gay marriage plans were being "shameful".

In a Boxing Day post on her blog, she singled out comments from
Nichols and from the Rt Rev Mark Davies, the Roman Catholic bishop of
Shrewsbury, and said they wrong to suggest that churches would be
forced to conduct gay weddings and wrong to dismiss the policy as
illegitimate on the grounds that the coalition did not have a mandate
for it.

"It is very disappointing that religious leaders who object so
forcefully to equal marriage seem to have so little faith in their own
beliefs," said Featherstone, an international development minister who
used to be minister for equalities.

"If their religious beliefs are that marriage can only be between a
man and a woman – they should have the confidence in their flocks to
believe that too. And if it is their own flocks' potential for
disagreeing with them that is their real fear – then that is a matter
for religious leaders and their congregations to sort out."

• ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,002 adults aged 18+ by
telephone on 19-23 December 2012. Interviews were conducted across the
country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all
adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by
its rules.

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