Marriage
Explore Gallup's research.
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Gallup data show U.S. marriage rates have declined since 1980, especially among Democrats compared with Republicans.
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Americans remain largely supportive of the legalization of same-sex marriages, and a majority believe gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable.
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Married people are more likely to be thriving in their wellbeing than adults who have never married, are divorced or are living with a domestic partner.
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Americans' lessened confidence in society's institutions and norms may affect society's ability to deal with crucial external and internal threats.
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Despite declining fertility and marriage rates, Americans want to have children and to be married.
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Views on the morality of a variety of practices are largely stable, though fewer say same-sex relations are morally OK and more say the death penalty is.
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Seventy-one percent of Americans think same-sex marriage should be legal, matching the high Gallup recorded in 2022.
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Birth control and divorce remain the most morally acceptable of 19 issues measured, and extramarital affairs and cloning humans the most morally wrong.
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Seventy-one percent of Americans say they support legal same-sex marriage, a new high in Gallup's trend.
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Gallup finds that 10% of LGBT adults in the U.S. are married to a same-sex spouse, and another 6% live with a same-sex partner.
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Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults now approve of marriages between Black people and White people. Just 4% approved when Gallup first asked the question in 1958.
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Americans are divided in their views of the morality of changing one's gender, with 51% saying it is morally wrong and 46% saying it is morally acceptable.
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U.S. support for legal same-sex marriage continues to grow, now at 70% -- a new high in Gallup's trend dating to 1996.
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Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults say it is very important for a couple who has a child together to be married, down from 38% in 2013 and 49% in 2006.
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Amid the cascade of negative news, there are some positive notes from the American people.
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Over the next week, Gallup will release a series of three articles providing insight into LGBT issues.