The popular political narrative goes something like this; republicans are homophobic and democrats are tolerant. The popular religious narrative is that Christians (in particular, evangelicals) are homophobic and the unreligious are tolerant. Both of these narratives have merit from an 'averages' point of view but both strip away credit from many supporters. An important consideration is that even though a large category of the population does not support the practice on average. The minority of that category (like evangelicals and republicans) may, in fact, be a significant portion of supporters. Like most hot debate topics, the popular narrative covers the truth of reality.

Now that just over half of Americans support gay marriage, a fair question is; what does that portion of the population look like? This question is critically important because only by a slim margin does gay marriage enjoy majority support. Allowing the popular narrative to influence whom the public perceives to be in the coalition of supporters can be very misleading.

The following charts show a religious, racial and political breakdown of portions of supporters between 2003 and 2013. I used census population data, pew/gallop polls, the information from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey (referenced above) and some Bayesian analysis to produce the figures.