That's the most interesting finding of a survey ComRes have conducted for the 'Catholic Voices' website into attitudes to same-sex marriage.
Their own presentation of the findings plucks out the anti-equality messages and spins them as best as it can against the tide of history - heavens! 26% of gays think civil partnerships are as good as marriage! we don't need to do anything then, and they just hope that no-one mentions the implied inverse figure of 74% having seen through 'separate and lesser is equal' in our stretched newsrooms. And only bisexual, lesbian and gay people are asked whether same-sex marriage is a good idea, perhaps for fear of finding that other people aren't that threatened by the issue after all.
But fair play to them, they include a reasonable amount of the analysis data. The most interesting bit for me is the page looking at bisexual, lesbian and gay people and asking - are you in a civil partnership, would you get married if it were an option?
This breaks down not by my first choice of sexuality identity but by geography. Would you get married?
South East 26%
Midlands 38%
Northern England 19%
South West & Wales 29%
Scotland 24%
I wonder if the numbers are big enough to have any statistical significance? Fun if they do - we've just found that Brummies are twice as likely to marry another woman or another man as Mancs and Scousers. It's queer up north, we're just not the marrying kind...
Read the stats here as a pdf. You're bound to find something interesting that I've missed :)
