Opposition leader says he 'misspoke' on poll findings

A poll touted by gay marriage opponents Wednesday as showing clear public support for their position actually showed Massachusetts voters deeply divided on whether to ban same-sex marriage.

Ronald A. Crews, a spokesman for the Coalition for Marriage, acknowledged that his group did not release the full survey results and apologized for downplaying the omitted questions as irrelevant.

"I want to apologize," Crews, a former Georgia state lawmaker, told a Globe reporter yesterday. "I misspoke. I mispoke primarily out of ignorance, but that does not excuse misspeaking. There were other questions, and we are in a press release today going to release those other questions."

During a press conference Wednesday, the Coalition for Marriage released the wording and summary of responses to seven questions in the poll it commissioned from Zogby International Inc. But there were 20 questions posed to the 601 likely Massachusetts voters surveyed. The Globe obtained a copy of the poll from Zogby International, which is based in Utica, N.Y.

When first asked Wednesday, Crews said that the seven questions he released were the only ones with valuable polling data and that the others were demographic in nature. He also pointed to the released data as definitive, especially results that showed that 69 percent of those polled said Massachusetts voters should have the opportunity to weigh in at the ballot box on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Another question he released that day showed that 52 percent said that "only marriage between one man and one woman should be legal," with 42 percent disagreeing.

But the full survey paints something of a different picture. Among the questions Crews's group did not release: The poll found that Massachusetts voters surveyed were virtually evenly divided when asked about the primary goal of the Coalition for Marriage, amending the constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Forty-eight percent of those polled agreed with the idea that "marriage is such an important institution that it should be defined in our constitution as the union of a man and a woman." Forty-nine percent disagreed.

That level of opposition was similar to a Globe/WBZ-TV poll taken after the court ruling, which found 53 percent of those polled in opposition to "an amendment to the state constitution that would establish marriage solely as the union of a man and a woman, effectively banning gay marriage." Support for the amendment in that poll, however, rested at 36 percent. A Boston Herald poll taken at the same time found that 54 percent of respondents opposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, with 36 percent in support.

Another question that Crews's group did not release, on whether lawmakers should take action to prevent the Supreme Judicial Court's landmark ruling from going into effect in May, also found voters evenly divided. Forty-six percent felt that lawmakers should prevent the ruling, while 48 percent disagreed. Six percent were unsure.

In addition, an unreleased question found that likely Bay State voters hold a favorable opinion of the Supreme Judicial Court by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, or 36 percent to 20 percent. Just as telling, perhaps, is that 40 percent said they were unfamiliar with the state's high court, whose Nov. 18 ruling sent shock waves to the White House, Vatican City, and beyond.

And 72 percent of those polled disagreed with the idea of impeaching the SJC's chief justice, Margaret Marshall, who wrote the majority opinion in the case. Twenty percent were in favor of impeachment. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

John Zogby, the pollster, said in an interview yesterday that it is standard practice for advocacy groups to issue entire polls for the public's examination. "All of the questions are important," he said.

Zogby's Utica, N.Y., firm is nationally renowned in its field. He said the survey suggests that there is no clear majority among Massachusetts voters on either side of the gay-marriage issue.

"It reveals where the Massachusetts mind is, which is split," Zogby said.

Along with the results, Zogby provided the Coalition for Marriage an analysis highlighting the lines of argument that the group could employ to gain public support. The group, Zogby wrote, "needs to focus its arguments on maintaining the definition of `traditional marriage,' rather than attacking individuals it opposes."

Arline Isaacson, spokeswoman for MassEquality, a coalition of groups supporting gay marriage, said the omission of the other questions was "clearly tailored to obfuscate, to hide the fact that they, too, found large support for gay civil marriage." "We readily acknowledge that the poll results are very different in Massachusetts than many other states," she said, pointing to recent New York Times and USA Today polls showing strong opposition to gay marriage in the nation as a whole. "Massachusetts appears to be more tolerant and more oriented toward fairness and equality . . . but that's not surprising. It's something to be very proud of."