Iowans Rate Politicians Debating Freedom to Marry as Least of Their Concerns

Des Moines Register
February 8, 2010
A majority of Iowans think the issue of marriage equality doesn’t deserve lawmakers’ limited time. Among six hot-button topics, a new Iowa Poll shows questioning the freedom to marry ranks as the least important issue to a majority of Iowans. [Link]

Majorities polled in D.C. back Freedom to Marry

The Washington Post
February 7, 2010
A new poll shows District of Columbia residents are generally supportive of the progressive, activist social agenda being pursued by the D.C. Council, putting their stamp of approval on efforts by government leaders to enact policies like the freedom to marry while Democrats control Congress. [Link]

Does the gender of parents really matter?

Psychology Today
February 1, 2010
The assumption that children need both a mother and a father has been used by proponents of Proposition 8 to argue against the freedom to marry. To what extent does this assumption match the findings from scientific studies? In a new study, researchers found no evidence of gender-based parenting abilities, noting that very little about the gender of the parent has significance for children's psychological adjustment and social success. [Link]

Increased support for LGBT equality in Utah

The Salt Lake Tribune
January 30, 2010
A new Salt Lake Tribune poll says that support for LGBT equality increased by 11 percent over the past year among Utah residents, and 10 percent among Mormons. Poll respondent Jania Evans, a 69-year-old Mormon who lives in Draper, says knowing people who are gay has changed her opinions over time. [Link]

Concerns about gay couples raising kids still main argument of freedom to marry opponents after fourteen years

The Sacramento Bee
January 30, 2010
The Prop 8 trial ended its witness testimony in San Francisco this week. The defense argued that even if Proposition 8 harms gays and lesbians and any children they may have, voters had a right to exclude gays from marriage because of concerns, despite numerous studies to the contrary, that children are best raised by their biological mothers and fathers. "Fourteen years later [than the 1996 Hawaii freedom to marry case] and tens of millions of dollars later, they [the opposition] haven't come up with anything else," said Evan Wolfson of the group Freedom to Marry. [Link]

Marriage for Same-Sex Couples: A Conversation

Columbia Law School Magazine
January 7, 2010
Following the many developments regarding the freedom to marry in 2009, Columbia Law School Magazine approached four professors of varying backgrounds to document their thoughts on marriage for same-sex couples in a series of back-and-forth emails—no moderator, no referee. [Link]

Freedom to Marry Ban Comes at What Cost?

The Wall Street Journal
January 28, 2010
The Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy's Stephen Levy says that estimates by economists on the economic toll of Proposition 8 "miss the big picture" and that the greatest potential cost the California marriage ban has is on the state's reputation as a haven for a diverse group of workers. [Link]

Protect the Children (and mean it)

Waking Up Now
January 24, 2010
The Prop 8 trial has showcased the anti-gay opposition repeating lies about the LGBT community being more likely to molest children. But the best cure for dishonesty is truth. We all need to be able to debunk these lies. Watch the video below citing studies and experts on the subject of child abuse: [Link]

Gay couples can be effective parents, researchers find

USA Today
January 21, 2010
An international research review by sociologists at NYU and USC has found that children of gay couples do as well as those raised by heterosexual couples. Their review, which will be published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, concludes: "No research supports the widely held conviction that the gender of parents matters for child well-being." [Link]

Professor Testifies Gays Are Politically Unpopular

The Associated Press
January 20, 2010
Stanford University Professor Gary M. Segura testified at the Proposition 8 trial on Wednesday. Segura said that gay people do not have a meaningful degree of political power -- as evidenced by, among other things, hate crime statistics, relatively low numbers of gay office holders, and the success rate of anti-gay ballot measures. [Link]

Divorce Rates Higher in States with Freedom to Marry Bans

FiveThirtyEight
January 12, 2010
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight finds that since 2003, the decline in divorce rates has been generally confined to states that have not passed state constitutional bans on marriage for same-sex couples. [Link]

Poll: U.S. Evenly Divided on Marriage Equality

Strange Bedfellows (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
December 17, 2009
On an issue where survey results once registered lopsided disapproval, the American public is now almost evenly divided on same sex marriage—according to a new Angus Reid Poll. The survey found that 43 percent favor same-sex marriage while 46 percent remain opposed. [Link]

Study Estimates that Extending Marriage to Same-Sex Couples in New Jersey Would Boost State Economy by $200 Million; Create over 1,400 Jobs

The Williams Institute
December 15, 2009
This week the Williams Institute released a new study estimating the impact of New Jersey extending marriage to same-sex couples. The report estimates that the freedom to marry would boost the New Jersey economy by almost $200 million during the next three years, creating approximately 1,400 jobs and generating over $15 million in revenues for the state budget. [Link]

New Report Documents ‘Decade of Progress’ on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality in America

Movement Advancement Project and the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr., Fund
December 16, 2009

Study points to dramatic gains between 2000 and 2009

SAN FRANCISCO – As the decade draws to a close, a new report shows the past 10 years have been a period of dramatic gains in equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in America. Two-thirds of the 36 statistical indicators compiled in A Decade of Progress on LGBT Rights showed significant advances, including sharp increases in the number of LGBT Americans protected by nondiscrimination and family recognition legislation at the state level.

Just over a quarter of the indicators were negative, and two showed mixed results. The report is a joint project of the LGBT Movement Advancement Project and the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr., Fund. The report is available at www.lgbtmap.org.

"The remarkable achievements toward LGBT equality tend to be obscured by day-to-day struggles, and overall progress often goes unnoticed nationally” said Linda Bush, Executive Director of the LGBT Movement Advancement Project (MAP). “By looking broadly at the last decade, this report gives a much fuller perspective on where we are today -- and how far we’ve come in just ten years."

"From over 50 years of supporting causes that help advance equality, we understand that making meaningful change requires time. But these facts make it clear that equal rights for gay people are advancing at an exceptional rate,” said Ira Hirschfield, President of the Haas, Jr. Fund. “Gay people and their families deserve equal rights and an equal opportunity to participate in their communities and the institutions that bring Americans together. We are committed to supporting work that brings our country closer to that goal.”

Matt Foreman, a longtime advocate for LGBT equality who now directs the Haas Jr. Fund’s gay and immigrant rights programs, said the Fund is excited by the accelerated rate of change. “While enormous and heart-wrenching inequities remain, progress over the last ten years has been extraordinary.”

Among the report’s key measures of progress:
• Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation: The number of states outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation increased 83 percent, from 12 to 22, between 2000 and 2009. The percentage of the U.S. population living in states banning discrimination based on sexual orientation soared from 24.5 percent to 44.1 percent, an 80 percent increase. In other words, today 134 million Americans are now living in states where discrimination based on sexual orientation has been outlawed, an increase of 65 million over the decade. (When local nondiscrimination laws passed by cities without statewide protections are included, the figure is over 50 percent of the U.S. population.) Fortune 500 companies that protect workers based on sexual orientation grew from 51 percent to 88 percent.
• Discrimination Based on Gender Identity: There was an even more remarkable increase in states outlawing discrimination based on gender identity and expression, which rose from just 1state in the year 2000 to 14 states representing nearly 30 percent of the population in 2009. The percentage of Fortune 500 companies that protect workers based on gender identity jumped even more, from just 0.6
percent to 35 percent.
• Relationship Recognition: Similarly exceptional gains were made in the area of family recognition. In 2000, no state extended the freedom to marry to same-sex couples; one state gave broad recognition to same-sex relationships and one offered limited recognition. Now in 2009, five states extend marriage to same-sex couples (with New Jersey and the District of Columbia pending at press time), six offer broad
recognition, and seven offer more limited recognition. Overall, the number of Americans living in a state that offers some protections to same-sex couples nearly tripled, from 12.7 percent to 37.2 percent.
• Protection from Violence: The 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is the first federal law to specifically protect LGBT people.
• LGBT Elected Officials: The number of openly LGBT elected officials in America rose 73 percent between 2000 and 2009, from 257 to 445.
• Public Opinion: The percentage of the public supporting the right of openly gay and lesbian people to serve in the military grew from 62 percent to 75 percent. Support for marriage equality has grown from 35 percent in 2000 to 39 percent today; there has been an even larger increase in support for relationship recognition that involves many of the rights of marriage, from 45 to 57 percent.
• Safer Schools: In 2000, only one state had a safe school law that specifically cited sexual orientation and gender identity/expression for protection; by 2009 that rose to 13 states. The number of Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs in high schools grew from 700 to 4,700, a nearly six-fold increase. The report also includes data on areas with mixed or negative results.
• Marriage Opposition: In 2000, 5 states had blocked marriage equality through a statewide vote; today, 31 have done so, including 29 states amending their constitutions to prohibit the recognition of samesex marriages.
• Homophobia in schools: The percentage of LGBT students reporting hearing homophobic remarks in school has remained above 99 percent and LGBT students who report experiencing harassment in school edged up (up from 83.2 percent to 86.2 percent.)
• HIV/AIDS: New HIV infections among adolescent and adult men who have sex with men grew 10 percent, from 28,000 to 30,800, as did the percentage of new HIV infections overall that occurred among men who have sex with men, which rose from 51 percent to 53 percent.
• Military Service Ban: In spite of overwhelming public support for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the U.S. military continued to discharge hundreds of gay and lesbian service members, with the cumulative number of discharges under the 1993 policy nearly doubling during the past decade. The only “positive” note was that the number of annual discharges decreased from 1,241 in 2000 to 619 in 2008 (the most recent year for which data are available), apparently because of the urgent need for
soldiers to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002.

A more in-depth and longer term analysis of progress toward LGBT equality can be found in MAP’s “The Momentum Report – 2009 edition,” which is available at www.lgbtmap.org. MAP is a think tank founded in 2006 that produces and disseminates research aimed at helping speed advancement of equality for LGBT people.

The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund is a private family foundation created in 1953 which has awarded more than $364 million in grants to support fundamental rights and opportunities for all people. It has invested nearly $42 million in promoting equal rights and opportunities for gays and lesbians since 2002. [Link]

Charting a Decade of Progress in Gay Rights

San Francisco Chronicle
December 16, 2009
A study released by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and the Movement Advancement Project shows the LGBT equality movement has made remarkable progress in the past decade. [Link]

Poll of US-Born Hispanics Shows Changing Attitudes

The Associated Press
December 11, 2009
A study released Friday by the Pew Hispanic Center found that 40 percent of young Hispanic immigrants and second-generation Hispanics living in the U.S. say they favor marriage equality, compared to 52 percent of Hispanics from the third generation and higher. [Link]

Pollster on Marriage Equality: "Once the dam bursts, which is going to happen, it’s a process that won’t be stopped.”

POLITICO
December 9, 2009
Despite some conservatives' pronouncements of "denting" the marriage equality movement after recent defeats in Maine and New York, Freedom to Marry's Evan Wolfson states: "The fact of the matter is that in little more than a year we have multiplied the number of states with the freedom to marry by six. That’s a good year.” [Link]

Maine Revisited: Is There a Backlash Against Marriage Equality?

FiveThirtyEight
December 4, 2009
In light of the New York State Senate's decision on Wednesday to vote down the freedom to marry, Nate Silver rexamines what happened last month in Maine, where voters passed Question 1 -- reversing the state legislature's decision to embrace marriage equality -- by roughly a 5-point margin. [Link]

Op-Ed: Time to Stop the Lies

Center for American Progress
November 19, 2009
Recent and credible research has convincingly shown that Bishop Harry Jackson’s views of the “privileged" gay and lesbian community in Washington D.C. are completely untrue and inaccurate. Contrary to Jackson’s claims, yearly earnings of men in same-sex couples are actually lower than those of married men. Also, same-sex households have lower incomes than those headed by straight married parents. [Link]

Marriage And The Generations

The Atlantic
November 10, 2009

Here's a graph that puts the generational shift on marriage equality in stark relief. A clear majority of the under-30s favor marriage equality in all but 12 states. We're winning where it counts. And the future will arrive some day. [Link]