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Equality Ohio wrote Organization takes the pulse of Ohio voters on a variety of issues
Columbus, OH, March 7, 2007
Today, Equality Ohio Education Fund, a statewide, equal-rights education and advocacy organization, released the results of a survey commissioned to determine where voters really stand on issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Ohio.
The end of year survey, conducted by The Glengariff Group, Inc., polled 800 registered Ohio voters, and asked questions on a variety of topics including hospital visitation, workplace discrimination and same-sex marriage.
Overall, a majority of Ohioans support most equal rights and protections for LGBT individuals and families. The most significant research result indicates 91% support for legislation giving same-sex couples the guaranteed right to visit their partner in the hospital, should s/he become ill.
“This is an exceptional response to such an important issue facing many LGBT Ohioans,” said Lynne Bowman, Executive Director of Equality Ohio Education Fund. “Everyone should have the guaranteed right to visit their sick or dying partner. Hospital visitation is an issue on which almost all Ohio voters can agree.”
According to the research, more than two thirds of Ohio voters support legislation to protect people from discrimination in the workplace based on their sexual orientation. When polled, 68% of respondents said they would support a law making it illegal to fire or deny housing to an individual based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Current Ohio law falls short of protecting all Ohioans from discrimination by excluding sexual orientation and gender identity as fundamental human characteristics deserving of protection.
Not surprisingly, when Ohio voters were asked about their stance regarding same-sex marriage, only 34% of those who responded stated that they were in support of the legalization of marriage between two people of the same gender. This result closely mirrors the outcome of the 2004 November election where Ohioans voted to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage.
“We are working for an inclusive Ohio where equality and diversity are valued and protected by law,” Bowman said. “This is not about special rights. This is about every Ohioan deserving equal rights and protections. Most Ohio voters understand and support that.”
More Info Available at On the web at EqualityOhio.org.
As promising as this article is, “800 Ohio voters” hardly seems like it would have been a representative sample of the entire population of the state…
Well, you can’t really poll all 11 million of us. I’m wondering how these statisics broke down by urban, suburban, and rural areas of the state.
Of course you’re right. 800 just seemed like a small sample size for any level of confidence for the population of a state. Turns out, though, that, as populations increase, sample sizes become more and more irrelevant when figuring out a margin of error. I thought that 800 wouldn’t be large enough to ensure a reasonable margin of error, but that’s not the case. Even still, depending upon the sampling method, the statistics in the article may not be worthwhile.
In any case, I agree with you. I’d like to see the demographic and geographic breakdown of the sample, as well. The results just don’t seem correct to me, for some reason.
Hmm if the majority of those polled support some GLBT rights, then why does Ohio ranks last after South Carolina, Wyoming and Utah in providing equality laws and protections for LGBT Citizens?
http://www.equalityohio.org/deadlast.htm
There seems to be a disconnect between the politicians and the voting public.. And a lot of complacency among many of my fellow LGBT residents here.. =(
Actually, 800 is considered a very good sample size; many polls that poll the entire country use little more than 1000. Once you get to a certain critical mass (which is surprisingly low, actually often in the neighborhood of 30), the vast majority of statistical variation has been accounted for; what can poison a study from that point on is not the sample size but other elements of the design (selection bias or question bias, for example … for example, polling only City of Columbus residents and saying that it was a poll of 800 “central Ohioans,” or 800 residents of the Short North and calling it a survey of “Columbus residents”).
I would like to see the breakdown concerning a free thinking demographic concerning any of these studies.
Critical mass?
I always thought those were the ones held at Christmas and Easter, and perhaps Ash Wednesday, also.
I’m not surprised really. There’s a map which shows which parts of Columbus had the greatest opposition to issue 1 in 2004.
http://copperas.com/fcelection/
Urban areas like German Village & Victorian Village were included as were the suburbs of Bexley & Grandview, both of which are more urban in their layout which includes a downtown. I think that when you’re in an area where you will run into all sorts of different people that are different from you in a more sociable environment it’s much harder to isolate yourself from reality.
Um the hospital issue is a nonissue, no one cares what your relationship is with a person in the hospital as long as that person wants to see you. Friends and family are treated the same.
I think the same sex marriage is also a bad question. They should ask if people support “civil unions”, the term marriage should be left to religions and their cerimonies, where it originated.
Exactly. When you step out of your Dominion bubble and actually meet a gay person, you realize that they actually ARE humans.
I agree. On paper (and in this survery) it should be referred to as a civil union. But people are going to call it marriage if they want to, and if it’s a more popular term (as it seems to be right now) that’s how the majority of the population will refer to it.
Exactly. When you step out of your Dominion bubble and actually meet a gay person, you realize that they actually ARE humans.
LOL. Exactly.
Dominion bubble. I’ll remember that one.
I agree. On paper (and in this survery) it should be referred to as a civil union. But people are going to call it marriage if they want to, and if it’s a more popular term (as it seems to be right now) that’s how the majority of the population will refer to it.
I think the civil union term would have worked better, also.
Lots of straights “shack up”, too, FWIW and one seems to mind.
Then the religious right could call their movement the “anti-fornication movement” instead.
But like politicians, that would probably hit too close to home for a good deal of them…..
But it’s a thought. :wink:
What Ohio needs is something like what they are doing in Washington state:
[url]http://www.wa-doma.org/[/url]
The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.
Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitutional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.
Initiative 957
If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:
* add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another†to the legal definition of marriage;
* require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
* require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;â€Â
* establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
* make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m way off base with regard to the same-sex marriage issue, but, really isn’t it sort of a religious issue? Regardless, marriage has become much more of a sociocultural institution than a religious one. Think about it: how many atheists/agnostics do you know who have gotten married? I know quite a few. I also, personally, believe that there is an issue with gay marriage– that is, whether homosexual couples should have the right to a marriage. Homosexuality doesn’t preclude religion, so there can’t be any shortage of homosexual people who want to get married in the religious sense and not just have a “civil union”.