The Atlantic Report: Gay Marriage Support Dropping?

Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox have an amusing article with "Is Support for Gay Marriage Dropping? Don’t Count On It."

Why amusing? Because it attempts have it both ways--reassuring the mob that the march for marriage equality continues unabated while at the same time reminding them that powerful bigots still conspire against them.

Pew Research's polls show that gay marriage support has dropped by 5% from February to September, 54% in favor to 49% in favor. Less than 50%? Are the fascists taking over?

Considering that there's been no national controversy regarding the issue since February, my initial thought is that something was wrong with the polling. The sample may have been off, but, really, what does a single outlying poll matter?

Jones and Cox, who are respectively the CEO and research director for the Public Religion Research Institute, are awfully reassuring about the future of gay marriage for people claiming to be non-partisan.

I think the key to the polling numbers is in this:

In the 2014 surveys that show a dip in support for same-sex marriage, including the Pew survey and the two PRRI surveys, the dip is not mirrored by an equivalent increase in opposition, but there is a rise in non-response. The Pew survey, for example, showed a five-point drop in support between February 2014 and September 2014, but only a two-point increase in opposition of same-sex marriage. The portion of respondents who offered no opinion, however, increased by three percentage points to 10 percent.

Oh, it isn't that there are so many more opposed to gay marriage, it's that more people don't give a shit.

Why should they? That battle seems to have been won. All that's left is a handful of feeble state-by-state legal challenges, mostly by people who have a lot more faith in the court system than I do.

But we should know by now that the march of progress does not allow for apathy. If you aren't with them, you are against them. So, a decrease in potential zealots may be bad news, because evil is always plotting:

Opponents are often more politically active than supporters, and they tend to be geographically or culturally clustered in ways that give them outsized influence at the local level. 

I particularly like that last remark. There are still localities where 51%+ are against gay marriage! The battle rages on!

More disturbing is the sense that Jones and Cox take comfort in the deaths of the elderly:

By all current indicators, generational replacement is the slow-moving steamroller that will continue to pave a path toward greater support for same-sex marriage. 

... 

The incoming tide of support for same-sex marriage may ebb and flow, but it is unlikely to recede as the youngest generation replaces the eldest and as American attitudes across the board continue to shift.

 Those people who oppose us? Won't it be better if they were all dead?