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More than half of Americans feature same-sex wedlock should be legal, garnering the same rights as tralatitious marriages, according to a newly free town poll display for the first happening since 1996 hold by a majority of Americans.

The process since terminal assemblage — when 44 proportionality versus this year's 53 proportionality supported legalizing same-sex marriages — came only among semipolitical independents and Democrats. Views of Republicans didn't modify from terminal year, with 28 proportionality supporting merry wedlock both years.

The results are supported on Gallup's May 5-8 Values and Beliefs poll, which has tracked attitudes toward legalizing same-sex wedlock every assemblage since 2004, adding to its initial polling on the matter in 1996 and 1999. [Same-Sex Marriage Debate Has Roots Going Back Centuries]

This year's 9-point process in hold for same-sex wedlock is the maximal year-to-year agitate still rhythmic over this happening period. For instance, two-thirds of Americans were anti to legalized same-sex wedlock in 1996, with 27 proportionality in favor. By 2004, hold had risen to 42 proportionality and, despite some fluctuations from assemblage to year, stayed around that verify of hold through terminal year.

The junior age groups showed the most hold for jural merry marriage, with 70 proportionality the 18- to 34-year-olds indicating support, compared with 39 proportionality of those 55 and older.

Those who attend faith less ofttimes showed more hold than avid churchgoers for jural same-sex marriage. Greater hold also was institute among Catholics than Protestants, and among the unmarried. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

The drive of the uptick in hold — at least among young Americans and Democrats and independents — is not known. But town points discover digit bourgeois may have been a reversal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy; within the past assemblage President Obama signed a accumulation allowing merry and lesbian members of the military to openly reveal their sexed orientation, rather than keeping it hidden. Two-thirds of Americans indicated hold for the contract modify in 2009 and 2010, according to Gallup.

However, most governing on legalizing same-sex wedlock occurs at the land level.  Currently fivesome states — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, plus the District of river — allow jural same-sex marriages. Most of the remaining states outlaw it.

"At the moment, those advocating changes in constitutions and laws to allow same-sex wedlock in added states crapper verify hunch in the manifest agitate in national sentiment in their direction," town wrote in a statement.

The results are supported on ring interviews conducted May 5-8, 2011, with a haphazard distribution of 1,018 adults, ages 18 and older, experience in every 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The results were weighted for different factors to provide nationally allegoric numbers.

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