Heather, Esther Kraft and Kathryn Kraft / photo Heather Kraft
Two stories today made me firm up my view of what the magic number of support is. If we can get 2 out 3 people to solidly support marriage equality I think that two-thirds support is when social change has been achieved. Most politicians would be thrilled with 55% support, but then they don’t tend to last more than a few years. We want equality to last forever, and we want it to be very hard to undo.
2/3, 67% tends to be the special majority parliaments and organisations need to change their constitution. It also means one has at least twice as many supporters as opponents.
Which stories made me think of this? News that 67% of Irish people support marriage equality (a huge turnaround for a long heavily Catholic country) and the news that 68% of Americans think that gays and lesbians can form families or that a same sex couple is a family (sadly 30% includes pets but not gays in their definition of family)
Tags: gay and lesbian families, Gay families, gay marriage, Ireland gay marriage, lesbian families, marriage equality, same sex marriage
