Acceptance of same-sex marriage and relationships in the U.S. has flattened after more than two decades of steadily increasing support, with an ongoing decline among Republicans, according to a new Gallup poll.
About 65% of U.S. adults believe same-sex marriage should be legal, down slightly from 71% in 2022 and 2023.
Most of the change is due to dropping acceptance among Republicans. In the new survey, which was conducted in May, only 37% of Republicans say same-sex marriage should be legally valid, while 35% say gay and lesbian relations are “morally acceptable.”
The views of Democrats and independents are largely stable in the findings released on June 3, with most in both groups saying same-sex marriage should be legal and that gay or lesbian relations are moral.
The widening partisan divide is also reflected in policy around LGBTQ+ issues across the U.S., particularly regarding transgender people, and a rising push in some states to ban same-sex marriage.
The timing of these polling shifts has coincided with a Republican political strategy that increasingly places LGBTQ+ issues, particularly transgender rights, at the center of the nation’s culture wars.
Since Donald Trump’s rise to political dominance, toxic debates over gender identity, school policies, athletic participation, and LGBTQ+ protections have moved from the margins of conservative politics to become a defining feature of Republican campaigns, legislation, and right-wing media messaging.
What was once a political movement largely focused on opposition to same-sex marriage has increasingly redirected its attention toward transgender Americans. Through discriminatory legislation, campaign rhetoric, and sustained propaganda campaigns, transgender people have become one of the primary targets in a broader effort to mobilize voters around cultural grievances and social anxieties.
As transgender issues became a dominant political battleground, they also became increasingly intertwined with broader public attitudes toward LGBTQ+ people, contributing to a decline in social acceptance that polling now suggests extends beyond transgender Americans alone.
RECENT SHIFTS HAVE BEEN SUBTLE AND PARTISAN
The downtick in support for same-sex marriage, while slight, is still striking because of how dramatically American views on the issue have shifted over the past few decades.
According to Gallup’s trend data, only 27% of U.S. adults supported legal same-sex marriage in 1996. Since then, support for same-sex marriage rose steadily until a few years ago, when it peaked with around 7 in 10 U.S. adults saying same-sex marriage should be legal.
Opinion about the morality of same-sex relationships followed the same pattern. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults said same-sex relations were morally acceptable in 2001. That increased nearly 30 percentage points over the next two decades.
Over the past few years, Gallup’s data has shown signs of a shift in the other direction. In addition to the slight decline on same-sex marriage, the new poll also found that 62% of U.S. adults view gay and lesbian relations as morally acceptable, down from 71% in 2022.
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE REMAINS RECOGNIZED NATIONWIDE
Same-sex marriage has been recognized nationally since a 2015 Supreme Court ruling. That case capped a 12-year run in which court rulings and state laws recognized it in most states.
By last year, there were more than 800,000 married same-sex couples, according to data compiled by the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law.
The pushback has never stopped, though. A call to overturn the 2015 reached the Supreme Court last year, invoking the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has called for undoing it. The court turned away the appeal without comment.
Last year, the Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly called for reversing the ruling that led to nationwide marriage recognition and imposing a ban.
Lawmakers in at least 11 states introduced legislation for their current or most recent sessions calling on a ban on same-sex marriage, according to an Associated Press analysis of bills compiled by the legislation tracking service Plural.
Most didn’t pick up momentum. But the Tennessee House passed a measure to allow private citizens and organizations not to recognize the unions; Idaho’s House passed a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to undo the 2015 decision.
A similar number of states have had measures aimed at protecting same-sex marriage introduced recently.
ACCEPTANCE OF TRANSGENDER PEOPLE IS ALSO DOWN
In a sign that views of LGBTQ+ issues may be shifting more broadly, the new Gallup poll found that about 4 in 10 Americans view changing one’s gender as morally acceptable, down from nearly half in 2021.
The rights of transgender people have been a hot-button political issue this decade.
Most Republican-controlled states have adopted laws in the last five years to bar gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors, restrict which school bathrooms transgender people may use and bar transgender girls and women from some sports competitions.
Trump has signed executive orders seeking some of the same policies on a federal level. In June, one of those policies suffered a blow when a court ruled that the military illegally banned transgender troops.
