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Comment by Liquix | Hacker News Reader

"A recent Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans – an all-time high – support extending the same rights and privileges to same-sex marriages as traditional ones."

only 60% of US citizens support same-sex marraige? in my area it is more like 90-95%, this was surprising and sad for me to hear

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When you say "in my area it is more like 90-95%" are you referring to your perceived thoughts on what the rate would be, or are you referring to an actual poll?

If the former, than your area is probably not 90-95%, your social community is 90-95%. People tend to surround themselves with people with similar views. So it seems like in your town everyone is for gay marriage, when in fact it's the people in your town that you interact with that are for gay marriage. You don't know the opinion of those in your town who you don't associate with.

For example, if you asked me what percentage of the population smoked cigarettes, I would say 5-10%. That's because very few people I hang out with smoke cigarettes. If I were to walk into a bar (well... outside the bar) in a different neighbourhood, I might be surprised to see that 90% of people there are smoking.

Absolutely - and this trend is only accelerating... as Americans, we're surrounding ourselves more and more with people of a similar world view. I can see how it happens (and I'm the same, with the vast majority of my friends and social circle university-educated, reasonably progressive, etc.) but it does distort our ability to imagine what the rest of the society's thinking.

An additional factor is that opposition to gay marriage is heavily skewed toward the elderly. I doubt the OP has a large social circle among the medicare crowd, but that is where the pool of opposition remains the strongest. We are just going to have to wait for them to die off.

Because you can choose read/watch/work/live that is agreeable to your preference, yes one's perception can be very skewed.

Visit some parts of US and it's not 90-95%. And I think some that say they support it but privately they don't care or don't actually agree. It's not cool to oppose SSM in certain industry, age group, etc etc.

The other 40% are not necessarily against it completely - they may want gay marriage but want to call it civil unions.

Honestly, without knowing the exact question it's hard to predict what the numbers will be. For example, there used to be a ~15% spread between people who supported gays and lesbians in the military vs. homosexuals in the military. [With another ~15% gap between 'serve in the military' vs. 'serve openly in the military'. The things we choose to care about...]

There is almost certainly a question phrasing that would yield something similar to your general sense of people's opinions (once you adjust for the fact you do not interact with randomly selected people, and tend to discuss the issue only with those who feel safe sharing their opinion with you).

It's statistics, it's as accurate as a national weather report. Correct for the most part, wrong in some areas.

Depends on the questions but I'm willing to bet a large majority of that 40 percent could care less either way and therefore don't show up as "supporting" the idea.

Regardless, getting a large number of people like this to change their viewpoint on an ingrained ideology within a generation's time is impressive.

But look at the rate of increase.

It's only in the recent past that it broke the 50% barrier.

The trend is upwards - 60% is not the end point.

Culturally, rural areas tend to be quite a bit more...backwards. And I say this as someone who grew up in a farm house.

It's hardly a new concept, either. In fact, the root of the latin word "pagan" just means "rustic villager in the country". When Christianity became en vogue in the Roman Empire, it was the rednecks out in the country who were resistant to it, so the word "pagan" became synonymous with "heathen".

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