Virginians are almost evenly split on gay marriage, Post poll finds

Source: The Washington Post

Virginians are closely divided over whether gay marriage should be legal, according to a new Washington Post poll, a striking result in a state that overwhelmingly agreed to amend its constitution to ban gay marriage just five years ago.

Forty-seven percent of Virginians say gay couples should be allowed to legally wed and 43 percent are opposed, according to the poll. Fifty-five percent of Virginians say gay couples should be able to legally adopt children.

The results mirror a dramatic and rapid shift in national public opinion about gay rights in recent years. The evolving public opinion could create a challenge in the key political battleground for the commonwealth’s Republicans, who are almost universally opposed to gay marriage, if voters think the GOP is falling out of sync with the electorate. But the results also present complications for Virginia Democrats, who have moved more slowly than their national counterparts to embrace liberal social stands for fear of alienating independent voters.

In 2006, 57 percent of voters agreed that Virginia should add language to the state constitution prohibiting marriage — or any approximation of the institution, including civil unions — between same-sex couples.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/politics/virginians_are_almost_evenly_split_on_gay_marriage_post_poll_finds/2011/05/06/AFFtojcG_singlePage.html

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Keep in mind the social conservative and evangelical Christian influence in and by Virginia such as Brent Bozell's Media Research Center and Parents Television Council, the Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University, the Pat Robertson-founded Regent University, Patrick Henry College that was founded specifically to serve Christian homeschooled students, and how the governor of Virginia wrote a thesis for Regent advocating regressively traditional values.

On the brighter side, Virginia went blue in Election 2008 after having been a red state 1968-2004.

and any other "blue" enclaves I'm leaving out.

but the massive outlying suburbs were more right-leaning.

I'm pleased to see these results. VA has a weird left-right thing going, and I love it when it swings left :)

That's in the Constitution.

In fact, I don't remember marriage anywhere in the Constitution being mentioned as a right. Can you point me out to the part of the Constitution that talks about marriage as a right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

If you allow people to marry in your state, you can't carve out exclusions.

as the other poster noted back in the late 60s a Sup. Ct. case where the Va. govt. was defendant, and last year in Perry v. Schwarzenegger in Northern California district court the California Proposition 8, putting a ban on same sex marriage in California constitution, was ruled to have violated Equal Protection Clause: "No State shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."