More On the HRC survey

As promised, I looked at the survey a little more closely.

As my previous post indicates, the Holy Terrors' efforts to slam gay people in general for Mark Foley's sins doesn't seem to be working.

However, the rest of the poll has some other interesting data. I need to point out that I'm no sociologist, and I barely passed Statistics way back when we still did our homework by using chisels to carve marks into stone slabs. So my "analysis" is no more scientific than anyone who, say, appears on Fox News. Still, I did find some interesting stuff.

First, the survey asked people to rate the importance of the following two questions:

"Making Sure that gays and lesbians receive the same rights and protections under the laws as other Americans," and "Protecting our traditional family values from teh gay lifestyle." Those polled were asked to rate the issues' importance in one of five categories, either "Very Important," "Fairly Important," "Only Somewhat Important," "Not Important," or "Not Sure." The figures compared peoples' answers from October 2006 to those of April 2006 and July 2003.

What's interesting is the fact that over the course of time, it appears the Holy Terrors' push to deprive gays of equal protection isn't working.

In October 2006, the percentage of those polled who thought it was either "very important" or "fairly important" to ensure gays and lesbians receive equal protection was 64% in July '03, 61% in April '06, and 61% in October, '06.

The percentage of people who felt it was either "very" or "fairly" important that we needed "protection from the gay lifestyle" was 57% in July '03, and then the numbers dropped to 48% in April '06 and 51% in October '06.

The margin of error is somewhere between three and four percent.

Another survey question asked whether gay people should either have the rights to marry or to have some sort of rights to civil unions, or to no legal recognition rights at all. Again, survey results were compared with other results taken in April 2006, September 2004, and May 2004.

The percentage of people who thought gays should have some relationship rights numbered 66% in 10/06, 65% in 4/06, 61% in 9/04, and 61% in 5/04. The percentage of people who thought gays should have no relationship rights for those same time periods were 31%, 33%, 35%, and 36%.

A third survey question that got my interest was the question, "From what you know about gay and lesbian people, do you think that gay and lesbian people choose to be gay or are born gay?

In May 1993, 46% of those polled believed people choose to be gay, dropping to 44% in May 2000, 35% in April 2006, down to 33% in October 2006. Over that same time period, the percentages of people who believe people are born gay were 33%, 34%, 42%, and 45%.

What does all this mean?

I'm no expert, but it appears to me that over the course of time, the Holy Terrors' anti-gay campaign isn't working at all. In fact, it appears that all this discussion of gay rights is having the opposite effect. It appears people are becoming more tolerant of the gay "lifestyle" and gay rights, not less.

Just thought I'd share.