The United States Supreme Court's recent announcement that it will review the constitutionality of requiring states to recognize same-sex marriage invites review of the attitudes toward same-sex unions from the most recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll  – which found attitudes largely divided along partisan lines.

Yet a closer look at the two different ways we assessed attitudes on gay marriage among randomly selected halves of our 1200 respondents suggests that a large share of Texans are more willing to accept civil unions for same sex couples than are willing to accept requiring states to recognize these unions explicitly as marriages.

The random half of respondents who were given the binary choice of supporting or opposing gay marriage was closely divided, with a majority opposing allowing same-sex marriages, as the chart below illustrates.

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Not surprisingly, when broken down by party identification, a large majority of Democrats supported same-sex marriage, and a larger majority of Republicans opposed it.

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We get a different perspective when we look at the responses to the question we began asking on the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll in 2009, in which respondents were offered the option of approving same-sex civil unions but NOT gay marriage.  The public discussion of same-sex marriage has become much more binary since that time – that is, "gay marriage, yes or no" – though it’s possible, maybe even likely, that the Supreme Court could find a way to reintroduce gray areas in their discussion of the states’ obligations to extend legal recognition to same-sex unions. 

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These results, which illustrate that only a minority of Texans (albeit a decent sized one) would prohibit either kind of publicly sanctioned same-sex union, fell on the trend line of results that we and others had commented on over the past five years of polling. Texas appears to be part of the national trend of rapid and growing acceptance of same-sex unions.  However, comparing the partisan responses to the two different ways of asking about sanctioning same-sex unions suggests that the notably high level of Republican approval of civil unions does not extend to marriage.

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If the Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage provides for a form of same-sex partnerships with a secular connotation such as civil unions, reactions among Republicans may be more muted than if their decision requires recognition of same-sex unions sanctioned as marriage.  As is typically the case, the public reactions of partisan opinion leaders will provide the cues that will shape the broader public's response.  In the Democratic Party, there are few signs of significant divisions on the issue; gay marriage now falls within the modern party's embrace of civil rights as a core commitment. But in the Republican Party, gay marriage is one of a growing number of areas in which divisions among both elites and the broader public guarantee a mixed response to any decision the Court hands down.  Should the Court issue a decision that seems to sanction same-sex marriage just at the GOP is entering a wide open presidential primary, it will provide fodder for conservative candidates to draw contrasts between themselves and rivals less willing to condemn the Court and the growing acceptance of same sex relationships in the U.S.  In Texas, a Supreme Court decision sanctioning gay marriage might privately be seen by GOP leaders as the best of both worlds: yet another reason to hurl invective at coastal elites in Washington, DC who are out of touch with Texas values during GOP primaries, but a development that also removes an issue that could be internally divisive and, in the long term, a negative in general elections, from the agenda of state policy.