Yesterday the Associated Press reported "Maryland gay marriage bill dies with no final vote." The article begins:
A bill to legalize gay marriage in Maryland fell short Friday after supporters failed to find enough votes to overcome Republican opposition and misgivings by some Democrats in the deeply Catholic state.
Just in case any readers missed the point, seven paragraphs later:
Some predicted that, if passed, the measure would have been petitioned to referendum in the deeply Catholic state.
Message received. But why does the AP writer characterize Maryland as deeply Catholic?
In 2009, the Gallup Organization produced an analysis of religious identity based on more than 170,000 interviews conducted earlier in the year. 24.3% of adult Americans identified themselves as Catholics. In Maryland, it was 21.9%, less than the national average. The Free State's percentage of Protestants and other Christians is 54.9, more than double that of Catholics. Overall, more than half the states have a greater percentage of Catholics than Maryland does.
Same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. According to Gallup, each of those states has a higher percentage of Catholics than "deeply Catholic" Maryland. Yet that's not mentioned. Perhaps it's because that fact doesn't fit in with the preferred mainstream media narrative.
