Conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher
has credited reaction to anti-gay comments made by Duck Dynasty
patriarch Phil Robertson for a recent dip in support for gay
marriage.
A
Pew Forum poll released Monday showed support dipping below 50
percent. Forty-nine percent of 2,002 adults said they support
marriage equality, a 5 percent drop from a similar poll the
organization conducted in February.
While researchers said in publishing
their findings that it was too early to draw any conclusions,
Gallagher, writing at the National
Review Online, credited the “Carrie Effect,” a reference
to former Miss California beauty queen Carrie Prejean, who in 2009
became a Christian conservative celebrity after she said she does not
support giving gay couples the right to marry. Prejean withdrew a
lawsuit that alleged Christian bias against pageant officials, who
had stripped her of her Miss California crown, after she admitted she
had filmed a secret sex tape when she was a minor, tarnishing her
Christian conservative credentials.
Last year, Phil Robertson was briefly
suspended from the A&E reality show Duck Dynasty after
stating that gay sex is an illogical “sin.”
Noting declines in support among
Catholics and White Evangelicals, Gallagher rhetorically asked: “But
something happened over the last year to give traditional Christians
second thoughts about what gay marriage would mean. What could that
be?”
“The most likely candidate is A&E's
decision to suspend Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson,
after he expressed, rather colorfully, rather standard orthodox
Christian views on gay sex,” wrote Gallagher, who previously led
the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
“[I]f my analysis is right, the
future depends on two things: whether gay-marriage advocates continue
to press the idea that supporters of the Christian and traditional
understanding of marriage should be treated as bigots in the public
square – and whether stories of the oppression of opponents of gay
marriage 'break through' the media blockade,” she added.