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Marriage

Explore Gallup's research.

Americans' lessened confidence in society's institutions and norms may affect society's ability to deal with crucial external and internal threats.

Despite declining fertility and marriage rates, Americans want to have children and to be married.

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.

Seventy-one percent of Americans think same-sex marriage should be legal, matching the high Gallup recorded in 2022.

Birth control and divorce remain the most morally acceptable of 19 issues measured, and extramarital affairs and cloning humans the most morally wrong.

Seventy-one percent of Americans say they support legal same-sex marriage, a new high in Gallup's trend.

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.

Social & Policy Issues

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.

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.

U.S. support for legal same-sex marriage continues to grow, now at 70% -- a new high in Gallup's trend dating to 1996.

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.

Amid the cascade of negative news, there are some positive notes from the American people.

Over the next week, Gallup will release a series of three articles providing insight into LGBT issues.

In 1981, Americans rated faithfulness as the top feature of a successful marriage. Political agreement and having the same social background ranked last.

In November 1936, a month before King Edward VIII of England abdicated to marry an American divorcee, a majority of Americans favored the union.

In 1952, Gallup asked Americans what kind of job or occupation would provide women the best chance of finding a husband. Office jobs came out on top.