"High school seniors are more liberal on gay issues than adults - much more," says Hamilton College sociology professor Dennis Gilbert. "National surveys show adults split one-third/two-thirds against legalization of gay marriage. Our survey showed high school seniors split two-thirds/one-third in favor of legalization." Gilbert bases his opinions on a survey of 1,000 high school seniors he and his students conducted two years ago.
In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in the Lawrence v. Texas sodomy case, gay issues are front page news. The Episcopal Church has been debating the ordination of a gay bishop, Pentagon lawyers are reexamining the military's ban on openly gay service members, and the President says he wants to "codify" heterosexual marriage. However these matters play out in coming months, "these attitudes of young Americans now reaching adulthood all but guarantee that the national culture will continue its long-term move toward greater tolerance of gays and lesbians," says Gilbert.
"Legalization of gay marriage epitomizes the generation gap on gay issues. Today's high school seniors were born more than a decade after the beginning of gay rights movement. They grew up with increasingly positive images of gays in the popular culture and have had gay peers who were open about their sexual orientation. Their liberal opinions on gay issues will shape national opinion for decades to come."
Hamilton College Gay Issues Poll may be found at: http://www.hamilton.edu/news/gayissuespoll/
Hamilton College sociology professor and department chair Dennis Gilbert has been involved in public opinion polling for years. As part of a course he teaches on polling, he has conducted in collaboration with his students a series of widely reported national surveys examining the views of high school students on topics such as gun control, gay rights, Muslims in America and, most recently, patriotism. Since 1990, he served as research director to the successful congressional campaign of Bernard Sanders (independent-Vermont).
Gilbert earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University. His primary research interests are Latin American and American class system. He is the author of Sandistas: the Party and the Revolution (1988) and The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality (1998).
Dennis Gilbert may be contacted dgilbert@hamilton.edu
