Gay Marriage Updates Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan

In the last two days Andrew Sullivan, our favorite Daily Dish-er, has linked to a couple of interesting tidbits regarding gay marriage including:

• Statistician Nate Silver notes some surprising results coming out of the last week's Value Voters' summit. Abortion ranked first among issues of concern to straw-poll voters, getting 41 percent of the vote, with protection of religious liberty second with 18 percent and opposition to same-sex marriage coming in a distant third at 7 percent. Silver reminds us that "these are not the tea-partiers, who have a libertarian bent. This is a forum, rather, sponsored by the Family Research Council, an organization which continues to insist that homosexuality is curable and to link it to pedophilia. But the actual attendees at the forum -- religious conservative activists from around the country -- just don't seem to be all that riled up about the prospect of two men getting married." While we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that any of these people actually support our right to legally wed, it should be noted that the last time this poll was conducted, in October 2007, gay marriage was the top choice of 20 percent of the attendees.

• According to a new poll by the Des Moine Register, 92 percent of Iowans say that gay marriage "has brought no real change to their lives."

So while we're not there quite yet (and NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg recently remarked that there is no chance of gay marriage being legalized in New York in 2009), the more time passes, the more public opinion seems to be shifting and people begin to realize that allowing gay nuptials won't cause an outbreak of marriages to goats or refrigerators or any of the other ridiculous mistruths anti-gay folks have been spewing.

Previously > Chatter: Charlize Theron on Gay Marriage