Stephanie Slade:
According to the Pew Research Center, half of Americans think business owners should be required to provide their services for same-sex weddings even if doing so violates their religious beliefs. In a September poll from the group, respondents split down the middle on the following question:
If a business provides wedding services, such as catering or flowers, should it be allowed to refuse those services to a same-sex couple for religious reasons, or required to provide those services as it would to all other customers?
The number saying businesses should be required to provide such services included a majority of Catholics, noteworthy given Rome’s stance on “traditional” marriage. This all seems to suggest a large segment of the population is fine with the idea that people can be compelled to do a job even if they feel it goes against their beliefs.
Not so fast—issues like this are tricky to poll on. Even small, seemingly inconsequential tweaks to wording can completely upend the results of a question. Take for example the contraception mandate issue decided earlier this year by the Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell. In February 2012, a CBS News/New York Times poll asked the following question:
And what about for religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university—do you support or oppose a recent federal requirement that their health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control for their female employees?
The response was overwhelming—by a 2–1 margin, respondents supported the requirement. But when the same two outlets tweaked the question a month later, they got the opposite result. Worded as follows, a full majority—57 percent—said the employer should not have to cover contraception:
What about for religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university? Do you think their health insurance plans should have to cover the full costs of birth control for their female employees, or should they be allowed to opt out of covering that based on religious or moral objections?
By explicitly noting that the employers have religious or moral grounds for objecting to the mandate, the question elicits a radically different response.