The Pew Research Center reported this week that fewer than half of Americans are opposed to same-sex marriage, the first time opposition has dipped below 50% since Pew began polling on the issue 15 years ago.

Opposition to marriage equality still edges out support, with 48% opposed and 42% in favor, but Pew’s data show’s a clear and steady trend toward acceptance of equal rights for gays and lesbians. And take a look at this chart showing how support breaks down among different age groups. The trend is remarkable:

In August, People For’s president, Michael Keegan, wrote in the Huffington Post, “The Right has won many important battles against gay rights, but they are losing the war…and they know it”:

For years, the Right has watched its anti-gay agenda lose credibility as public acceptance of gays and lesbians has steadily grown and intolerance has declined. And that trend is going strong, as young people of all political stripes are more likely to know gay people and more willing to grant them equal rights and opportunities, including the right to marriage. A CNN poll this month found that a majority of Americans think gays and lesbians should have the right to marry–the first time gay marriage dissenters had slipped solidly into the minority in a national poll. Even in California, where Proposition 8 passed on the ballot in 2008, a poll earlier this year found a majority now support same sex marriage rights. Indeed, this change is even visible on the Right, where the fight against equality is being waged by an increasingly marginalized movement. Who would have ever thought that Ann Coulter would be booted from a right-wing conference for being “too gay friendly”?

Of course, basic human rights should never be decided by majority vote–they are guaranteed by the Constitution. But, on the issue of gay rights, the Right Wing now finds itself up against both the Constitution and the will of a steadily increasing majority.

This isn’t to say that the Right Wing has been taking the hint that an anti-gay agenda might be a losing proposition in the long run. Rather, prominent figures on the Right seem to be trying to revel in homophobia as much as possible before the issue becomes marginalized. Opposition to the “homosexual agenda” was a major theme of last month’s “Values Voter Summit,” which drew GOP leaders (and aspiring GOP leaders) like Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Bob McDonnell. And even Glenn Beck, who drew flack from the far right for saying that gay marriage wouldn’t be a threat to the country, regularly invites pseudohistorian and professional homophobe David Barton—who recently opined that gay people were such a threat to the country that gay sex should be regulated—to lend his expertise to his program.

Maybe the most stunning thing about the Right’s commitment to anti-gay politics is the continuing opposition to allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Pew found that Americans support allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly by a 2-1 margin—yet the Republican Party continues to side with a small minority of right-wing extremists dedicated to preserving Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.