Gay rights in the states: more statistics

Expanding from the marriage issue, FiveThirtyEight highlights a study examining a variety of GLBT issues in the states including marriage, civil unions, adoption, and non-discrimination. Discussion of the statistics and links in the thread here and on the original author's site here. Click on the image to open a bigger version of the graph in your browser or you can get aPDF version.

As noted in this and other posts at FiveThirtyEight, in the few states where support for marriage equality exceeds 50%, there is good correlation with it being legal (filled red circle). Curiously, however, although support for civil unions/domestic partnerships exceeds 50% in about half of states, many of those states do not allow it (compare the filled blue to open blue circles). And it's even more striking for other issues. Interestingly, well over 50% of people in nearly all of the states support non-discrimination policies for housing and jobs, hate crimes legislation, and access to health care benefits, although large numbers of states have no legal policies supporting those.

We have a long way to go before this country treats its gay citizens as, well, citizens.

Update: the study can now be found here. Upcoming in Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness
Jeffrey R. Lax and Justin H. Phillips Columbia Univ. American Political Science Review, Vol. 103 (3), 2009