New Yorkers favor gay marriage law,
but also Bloomberg's legal appeal
By AP from Newsday.com from the Web, March 3, 2005
NEW YORK -- A majority of New York City voters would support a law allowing gay marriage, according to a poll released Thursday.
But by a slim margin, they also back Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to appeal a recent court ruling supporting same-sex unions, the Quinnipiac University Poll found.
In the poll, 51 percent of respondents said they favored legalizing gay marriage, while 40 percent were opposed.
White voters were much more likely to back the law than black voters -- 61 percent of whites wanted the law, compared with just 36 percent of blacks.
"There's a big split between black and white voters over gay marriage," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
By a margin of 49 to 44 percent, voters said they agreed with Bloomberg's strategy of appealing a state Supreme Court decision last month that the state's refusal to grant marriage licenses to gays was unconstitutional.
Bloomberg has said he personally supports gay marriage but wants to test the court ruling to avoid the "chaos" San Francisco experienced last year when it issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The marriages were later ruled invalid.
The poll surveyed 1,435 New York City registered voters between February 22 and March 1.
It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
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