New poll shows downtick in support for same-sex marriage and trans people in the US

Participants carry a large pride flag during the World Pride parade with the US Capitol in the background, on 7 June 2025 in Washington DC. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP View image in fullscreen Participants carry a large pride flag during the World Pride parade with the US Capitol in the background, on 7 June 2025 in Washington DC. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP New US poll shows downtick in support for same-sex marriage and trans people New Gallup poll finds support for same-sex marriage and relationships in the US has stopped rising after two decades Acceptance of same-sex marriage and relationships in the US has flattened after more than two decades of steadily increasing support, with an ongoing decline among Republicans, according to a new Gallup poll. About 65% of US adults believe same-sex marriage should be legal, down slightly from 71% in 2022 and 2023. Most of the change is due to dropping acceptance among Republicans. In the new survey, which was conducted in May, only 37% of Republicans say same-sex marriage should be legally valid, while 35% say gay and lesbian relations are “morally acceptable”. The views of Democrats and independents are largely stable in the findings released Wednesday, with most in both groups saying same-sex marriage should be legal and that gay or lesbian relations are moral. The widening partisan divide is also reflected in policy around LGBTQ+ issues across the US, particularly regarding transgender people, and a rising push in some states to ban same-sex marriage. The downtick in support for same-sex marriage, while slight, is still striking because of how dramatically US views on the issue have shifted over the past few decades. According to Gallup’s trend data, only 27% of US adults supported legal same-sex marriage in 1996. Since then, support for same-sex marriage rose steadily until a few years ago, when it peaked with about seven in 10 US adults saying same-sex marriage should be legal. Opinion about the morality of same-sex relationships followed the same pattern. About four in 10 US adults said same-sex relations were morally acceptable in 2001. That increased nearly 30 percentage points over the next two decades. Over the past few years, Gallup’s data has shown signs of a shift in the other direction. In addition to the slight decline on same-sex marriage, the new poll also found that 62% of US adults view gay and lesbian relations as morally acceptable, down from 71% in 2022. Same-sex marriage has been recognized nationally since a 2015 supreme court ruling. That case capped a 12-year run in which court rulings and state laws recognized it in most states. By last year, there were more than 800,000 married same-sex couples, according to data compiled by the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law. The pushback has never stopped, though. A call to overturn the 2015 ruling reached the supreme court last year, invoking the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who