Peter Sprigg of the Christian
conservative group Family Research Council is the latest gay rights
foe to suggest pollsters are biased in favor of gay marriage.
After six nationwide polls have shown a
majority of Americans narrowly support giving gay and lesbian couples
the right to marry, opponents of the institution have gone on the
defensive, claiming that either the pollsters are biased or
respondents have been bullied into silence.
A
poll released two weeks ago by Gallup found 53% percent of
Americans in support of the legalization of gay marriage, a 9-point
increase since last year's poll. Forty-five percent of Americans
remain opposed to marriage equality, including a large majority (72%)
of Republicans.
“Pollsters have actually changed the
wording of their polls on same-sex marriage in ways to make them most
likely to result in a favorable outcome for the other side,” Sprigg
claimed during a recent speech to Christian conservatives. “Several
years ago they replaced the neutral term 'homosexual' with the word
'gay,' which in and of itself tends to imply something which is
empirically false. Namely that there is such a thing as an intrinsic
gay identity which people are born with and can never change.”
Sprigg went on to state that the goal
of gay rights activists was to create a society in which “it is
unacceptable for anyone ever anywhere to say that homosexual conduct
is wrong or that homosexual relationships are anything other than
fully equal to heterosexual ones.” (The video is embedded in the
right panel of this page.)
In
an op-ed published Friday on Fox News, Penny Young Nance of the
socially conservative group Concerned Women for America suggested
Americans were browbeaten into supporting gay marriage.
“The supporters of same-sex marriage
will pull no punches when it comes to solidifying their agenda into
law,” Nance wrote. “The extent to which they harassed and
threatened the pro-Prop 8 supporters in California was just a taste
of the hatred they have for those of us who want marriage to remain
between one man and one woman.”
“So maybe it's possible that the
respondents to the Gallup poll did not want to voice their support
for traditional marriage for fear of being bullied and called a
bigot?”