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Support in the Republican party for same-sex “marriage” has dropped 14 percentage points over the past three years, according to a Gallup study released May 29.
In 2021 and 2022, 55% of GOP voters who responded to a poll of whether they “think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages” said they should be valid. This year, that portion now sits at 41% — the lowest level since the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2016.
Overall, 68% of Americans said in this year’s poll that the law should confer the same rights for same-sex “married” couples as for couples in “traditional marriages.” While independents have held firm at 76% and Democrats reached a record 88% this year, Republicans have steadily distanced themselves, contributing to the largest partisan split on the issue Gallup has recorded since it began tracking same-sex “marriage” attitudes in 1996.
Perceptions of morality are also diverging. Sixty-four percent of Americans say same-sex relationships are “morally acceptable,” according to Gallup’s Values and Beliefs Poll conducted May 1-18.
Yet again, Republicans are moving in the opposite direction: only 38% now affirm this, down from 56% in 2022. The portion of Democrats who endorse this notion has risen to a high of 86%, while the amount of Independents who say same-sex marriages should be “valid” under the law has remained comparatively stable, at 69%.
Religious practice appears to correlate with these trends. Americans who attend religious services weekly — who also skew Republican — are markedly less likely to support same-sex marriage or consider same-sex relations morally acceptable, according to the survey. Just one in three supports legal recognition of same-sex unions, and only 24% affirm the moral acceptability of such relationships.
