An ABC News/Washington Post poll reports, to my pleasant surprise (see here for my fears to the contrary), that the question “Would you support amending the U.S. Constitution to make it illegal for homosexual couples to get married anywhere in the U.S., or should each state make its own laws on homosexual marriage?” yields 38% in favor of amending the Constitution, and 58% against.
This is so even though the question “Do you think it should be legal or illegal for homosexual couples to get married?” yields 55% “illegal” and 41% “legal,” and a December 2003 CBSNews/New York Times poll question “Would you favor or oppose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow marriage ONLY between a man and a woman?” yielded 55% “favor” and 40% “oppose.” Nice to see that throwing in a focus on state-by-state decisionmaking seems to make a difference (I don’t think that the passage of time from December to January was the cause of the shift).
Incidentally, several law professors and I sent a letter to a Senate subcommittee last September, opposing the FMA on these very federalism grounds; the text of the letter is here.
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