New Hampshire against gay marriage
The majority of New Hampshire is against same-sex marriage, according to a recent poll conducted by Research 2000 for the Concord Monitor.
Out of the six hundred people polled, fifty-five percent said they were against gays marrying, while thirty-five percent were for it, and ten percent were not certain how they felt about it.
Forty-four percent of people were for civil unions, however. On that issue, forty percent were against it and sixteen percent were uncertain.
Those results are not all that different from the ones found in Vermont polls before that state allowed civil unions, as Del Ali, a pollster, told the Monitor.
The New Hampshire poll is timely partly because “two proposals for the legislative session that begins next week would extend the legal rights that married couples have to gay couples in civil unions,” as the Associated Press reports.
Portsmouth Representative James Splaine is a sponsor of one of the bills.
According to the AP, Splaine says he ultimately wants to have the unions “recognised as marriages, but he does not think the state or the Legislature would support that now.” Splaine also told the AP that the poll came at a significant point in history, after the historic Massachusetts same-sex marriage ruling, which Splaine pointed out did not have any of the bad after effects opponents of it had predicted.
Concord Representative James MacKay is pro-civil union and says he believes the bills could pass. “It seems to me that everybody who’s in a committed, dedicated relationship [should] have the same rights as health insurance and protection of property and certain issues around death that are pretty complicated,” the AP quoted him as saying.
The poll, which questioned New Hampshire registered voters, took place December 18th to the 20th
There was a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points in the poll, according to the AP.
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