Gay Marriage Opponents Think Most Americans Dislike Equality As Much As They Do

Opponents of marriage equality may think they
have God on their side, but it seems what they’ve really got
working for them is delusion. A new survey from the Public Religion
Research Institute finds that
despite their now-minority status, most U.S. opponents of same-sex
marriage think that the bulk of their fellow Americans
stand with them.

These days, only 41 percent of Americans oppose same-sex
marriage. Yet two-thirds of this vocal minority erroneously believe
that most Americans oppose same-sex marriage. And only 20
percent realize that the majority of Americans now support it.

Wait—aren’t opponents of marriage equality (and gay rights in
general) always crowing about how they’re being oppressed? Are
religious conservatives a beleaguered minority (war on Christmas,

SB 1062, etc.) or the stalwart voice of a silent majority? I
guess it depends on which persona is politically convenient at the
time. 

Of course, public opinion in general tends to skew inaccurate.
Heck, one
in ten Americans think HTML is a sexually-transmitted
disease. And 35 percent think
that at least a quarter of people are homosexual.
Interestingly, even same-sex marriage supporters seem to perceive
less support for it than actually exists. Only 34 percent of
Americans overall said that the majority of their peers support gay
marriage.

As
Wonkblog’s Christopher Ingraham notes, “this is at least partly
a function of how rapidly public opinion has shifted. Ten years
ago, only 32 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage,
compared to 53 percent in favor today—a 21-point shift.” But
there’s also probably some epistemic closure at work. Though
Ingraham cites it as the prerogative of religious conservatives and
Mitt Romney 2012 supporters, epistemic closure (or “confirmation
bias,” or the “false consensus effect,” or whatever you want to
call it) infects people of all ideological stripes.

In the case of same-sex marriage, however, religious folks were
especially likely to fall victim. Regular churchgoers tended to
overestimate fellow congregants’ opposition to marriage equality by
20 percentage points or more. About 59 percent of white mainline
Protestants said most of their fellow churchgoers oppose gays
marrying, though a majority (57 percent) actually support it. And
nearly three-quarters of Catholics think most people at their
church oppose marriage equality, while about half are actually in
favor.