As Judge Vaughn Walker prepares to issue a verdict in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the landmark case against California’s Proposition 8, a new poll released last week by Public Religion Research Institute finds that a significant percentage of Californians, including people of faith across the California religious landscape, “say they have become increasingly supportive of gay rights over the last five years”:

– Only one-in-five (22%) Californians believe the passage of Proposition 8 was a “good thing” for the state.

– One-in-four Californians report that their views on rights for gay and lesbian people has become more supportive over the last five years, compared to only 8% who say they have become more opposed.

– If another vote similar to Proposition 8 were held tomorrow, a majority (51%) say they would vote to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, compared to 45% who say they would vote to keep same sex marriage illegal.

– An overwhelming majority of Californians say they favor laws that would protect gay and lesbian people from job discrimination and favor allowing gay and lesbian people to serve only in the military (75% and 69% respectively). A majority (56%) favors adoption rights for same-sex couples.

Interestingly, the poll also found that “although concerns about the impact of legalizing same-sex marriage on children figured prominently in arguments by Proposition 8 supporters during the 2008 campaigns, few Californians view this as a concern.” Sixty percent actually “disagree that children would be more likely to experiment with homosexuality if same-sex marriage were legal.”

Californians were also more willing to support marriage if reassured that “no church or congregation would be required to perform marriages for gay couples” and that the law “only provided for civil marriages like you get at city hall.” When these assurances were made, support for marriage increased by a 12 to 19 points. The poll also found a correlation between how Californians saw God and support for same-sex marriage. Californians who say they are extremely likely to identify with specific images of God as judge, father, or liberator are more likely than those who less strongly identify with these specific images of God to say they would vote to keep same-sex marriage illegal.” Similarly, Californians “who believe the Bible is a book written by men and is not the word of God” were more likely to support rights for gays and lesbians.

A Field Poll released a day before the Public Religion Research Institute survey also found that “if a vote was held on Proposition 8 now, 51 percent of all Californians would vote it down.”

A graduate student in Georgia is suing Augusta State University for threatening “to dismiss her from its counseling program when she refused to participate in a remediation plan to increase her tolerance” towards gays and lesbians. The student, Jennifer Keeton — who says that her views against homosexuality are motivated by her Christian beliefs — is charging that ASU violated her “constitutional rights of speech, belief, and religious exercise” by forcing her to participate in the course.

“While I want to stay in the school counseling program, I know that I can’t honestly complete the remediation plan knowing that I would have to alter my beliefs,” Keeton said. “I’m not willing to and I know I can’t change my Biblical views.” According to the lawsuit, Keeton had said both in class and in writing assignments that “she believes sexual behavior is the result of accountable personal choice” and “faculty have also received unsolicited reports from another student that [Miss Keeton] has relayed her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations.”

The Alliance Defense Fund, which is backing Keeton’s lawsuit, is claiming that the counseling department is “ruthlessly attempting to cleanse Christian belief from its students,” but during a segment this afternoon on CNN, Gregg Nevins of Lambda Legal explained that ASU had to ensure that Keeton met the state’s accreditation standards and was simply requiring her to set aside her personal religious beliefs in the interest of the client:

DAVID FRENCH (ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND): You have a counseling department that is ruthlessly attempting to cleanse Christian belief from its students….This counseling department has imposed its values, violating its own code of ethics on these students, telling them they have to change their religious beliefs, that their religious beliefs are wrong.

GREG NEVINS (LAMBDA LEGAL): That’s ridiculous. Is there any evidence that Augusta State is it taking a different position towards an anti-gay person who is not basing it on their religious beliefs? Because that would be religious discrimination if she were being singled out, but somebody else said ‘I don’t want to deal with gay people because I think they’re awful and it has nothing to do with my religion’ that would be religious discrimination. [...] Even Augusta State is a public institution, they are trying to train people for professional accreditation. They have a responsibility and it’s been upheld by the courts including a case that you lost on Monday in Michigan that’s been held that they have a responsibility to train people properly to be good counselors.

Watch it:

Indeed, ADL lost a very similar case against Eastern Michigan University “where a graduate student said she was kicked out of a master’s program after refusing to counsel a homosexual client.” In that case, U.S. District Judge George Steeh ruled that, “Plaintiff was not required to change her views or religious beliefs; she was required to set them aside in the counselor-client relationship — a neutral, generally applicable expectation of all counselors-to-be under the ACA (American Counseling Association) standard.”

The university “had a right and duty to enforce compliance” with professional ethics rules barring counselors from being intolerant or engaging in discrimination, and no reasonable person could conclude that a counseling program’s requirement that students comply with such rules “conveys a message endorsing or disapproving of religion,” the judge wrote.