If you were to follow the polls put forth by most American media, you’d guess same-sex marriage divides the country wretchedly in half.
As it turns out, America is certainly divided. But a new national poll commissioned by iMediaEthics that accounted for intensity of opinion has found the issue decidedly less divisive than widely reported. The country may be split, the poll shows, but same-sex marriage is surprisingly a non-issue for many who are often said to oppose it.
While just more than half of Americans support gay marriage in a forced-choice question, the poll found, the proportion of Americans who tolerate it is above 70 percent. When iMediaEthics broke from the either/or question format, it found that 47 percent of respondents — a dominant plurality — didn’t really care one way or another, suggesting that the narrative of same-sex marriage as a wedge issue either has been overblown or has played itself out in the American public sphere.
