Saturday, July 19, 2008

Proposition 8

The results of a Field Poll on the initiative to ban gay marriage in California was published yesterday in the Bee. For people outside California who haven't been following this issue as closely as those of us here, this initiative might, or might not, overturn the decision of California's Supreme Court that determined that denying gay and lesbian Californians the right to marry was not constitutionally permissible--in other words, legalizing gay marriage. Proposition 8 would essentially overturn that decision and reinstate the ban on gay marriage. Now it's possible that the Supreme Court would overturn the initiative once it passed, but that's not a given.

What J and I both noted was that the age grade most opposed to Proposition 8 was made up of people between 50 and 64. Younger people were more likely to support the ban, although the 18 to 29 age sample was too small to give a definitive result. Earlier surveys had shown that older people opposed gay marriage in larger numbers than younger people. If this is true, I want to know something--what's with these young fogies?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could be just that 50-64 is the Woodstock generation.

Nancy Irving

PeonInChief said...

That was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the poll. But why? is the interesting question.