Support For Same-Sex Marriage Drops In The US After Years Of Growth

Support for same-sex marriage and broader LGBTQIA+ acceptance in the United States has declined slightly after several years of relative stability, according to a new Gallup poll.

The poll found that 65% of US adults say same-sex marriage should be legal, down from 71% in 2022 and 2023. The results indicate a modest shift following a longer-term trend of increasing support that began in the late 1990s.

The data shows differences across political groups. Most of the change is due to dropping acceptance among Republicans. In the new survey, which was conducted in May, only 37% of Republicans say same-sex marriage should be legally valid, while 35% say gay and lesbian relations are “morally acceptable”. In contrast, Democratic and independent responses were reported as largely unchanged compared with previous years.

Gallup trend data included in the report shows that support for same-sex marriage increased from 27% in 1996 to around 70% in the early 2020s, before stabilising and then declining slightly in the most recent survey period.

Same-sex marriage has been recognised nationally since a 2015 supreme court ruling. In 2025 there were more than 800,000 married same-sex couples, according to data compiled by the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law.

In recent years, Republican lawmakers in some states have called for the Supreme Court to reconsider its landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, which guaranteed same-sex marriage nationwide. A number of GOP senators in 2022 voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which protects same-sex and interracial marriages.

The poll also measured attitudes toward gender identity and transgender-related issues. It found that “about 4 in 10 Americans view changing one’s gender as morally acceptable,” down from nearly half in 2021, indicating a decrease in reported acceptance compared with earlier polling.

The survey was conducted through telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,001 US adults between May 1 and May 17, 2026. The margin of sampling error for the full sample was plus or minus 4 percentage points.