Surprising new data from Gallup shows decreased support for gay marriage among Americans, with a six-percentage-point decline this year when compared to a high in 2022 and 2023.
“After two decades of rising support for LGBTQ+ issues, U.S. attitudes have plateaued and begun to slide back modestly,” a report from Gallup reads. “Approval of same-sex marriage, moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relations, and endorsement of gender changes are all down from peaks reached in the early 2020s.”
The biggest shifts emerged among Republicans, with a stunning 18% decrease in support for same-sex nuptials. In 2021 and 2022, 55% of Republicans supported gay marriage, but that statistic is now at just 37%. And among Independents, it is down six points, though 67% still favor it. Democrats remain at 87% and are essentially unchanged.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Christian organization, believes many people have shifted their opinions based on the realization that same-sex marriage has had a far more negative and massive impact than was initially assumed. At first, many proponents of gay marriage legalization said it wouldn’t affect anyone else’s marriages — or culture more broadly.
“I think most Americans are pretty much laissez-faire …’Just don’t bother me,’” Perkins said. “And they were sold that this was not going to affect them, that this was just about two people who loved each other being able to marry.”
He continued, “Well, here we are … about a little over a decade removed from that, and we realize it’s about much more. It’s about the policies that govern bathrooms all across America, it’s about what our children are being indoctrinated with in schools and the parents not being told about it.”
Perkins said he believes the decline in support is based on these factors — issues that have gone above and beyond what was pledged. The transgender issue, in particular, further complicated matters.
“I think that, in particular, is what has brought down the approval of all of this,” he said.
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While there’s evidence of increased spiritual interest and fervor in America today, Perkins said he believes the shifts, particularly among Republicans, are more rooted in a “pragmatic understanding of what these policies lead to,” including moral implications for families. Still, he’s hoping for a spiritual impact to follow as well.
“I’m hoping that maybe out of this, we rediscover that biblical worldview from a standpoint, when we deviate from God’s design, there are horrible consequences that follow, like our children being transed, and … our schools taken over by this agenda, and parents being locked out of the process,” Perkins said.
With biblical worldview statistics remaining dire and quite low, Perkins is hoping to see Christians do a better job of helping people understand the moral underpinnings of these important issues.
“One of the approaches I’m taking to even this polling data with the Gallup, where there has been a downturn in support for same-sex marriage among Republicans who are more open to transcendent truth and morality than the Democrats of today, is that we connect the dots,” he said. “That’s why I take it back to the redefinition of marriage. We wouldn’t be fighting over bathrooms had we not redefined marriage, we would not be having men in girls’ sports if we had not redefined marriage, we would not be trying to protect our children from having healthy body parts cut off had we not redefined marriage.”
Perkins continued, “And once you deviate from the biblical truth of marriage, human sexuality, and life, it leads down a very destructive path. So I’m hoping that we can kind of reverse-engineer where we are and show people how we got here so that we can go back in the right direction.”
Read all of Gallup’s data on gay marriage and LGBT issues here.
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