Support For Gays In The Military Depends On How You Ask The Question

CBS News released an interesting poll last week. In it, they polled two groups of people and asked the same question, "Do you favor or oppose BLANK serving in the military?" With one group, they used the term "homosexuals", and with the other, they used the term "gay men and lesbians". The results were fascinating. When using the term "gay men and lesbians" people were more likely to say favor or strongly favor. Take a look at the results:



They also asked, "Do you favor or oppose BLANK being allowed to serve openly?" Here is what they found:



Why the difference? Some think ingrained prejudice. Years of church sermons have given people a prejudice toward the word "homosexual" that they normally wouldn't have toward "gay" or "lesbian". Homosexual, then, becomes a more negative sounding word.

I remember growing up, being told by my mother never to use the gay or lesbian, because "those are the words they want to be called". "God calls them homosexuals. That's what you call them." I never had the balls to tell my mom that God didn't speak Latin, so for all we know he could have called them cantaloupes using that line of thinking.

What about you? Think about it. Do you support homosexuals in the military? Or gays and lesbians in the military? Or both?