With the issue of same-sex marriage poised to head to the Supreme Court (if the country’s highest court decides to take the case), it’s important to remember the changing landscape in this crucial debate. For example, the numbers clearly show that it’s anachronistic to assume that religious Americans uniformly oppose same-sex marriage. In fact, there are religious groups on either side of the same-sex marriage debate, and religious Americans are likely to play a vital role in the ongoing deliberations over whether gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to marry. At the Huffington Post, our CEO, Dr. Robert P. Jones, walks us through the numbers, explaining how religion has become a motivating force for Americans on both sides of the issue.

More significantly, a new exploration of 2011 polling by Public Religion Research Institute offers decisive evidence that the old assumptions about battle lines between secular proponents and religious foes no longer hold. Majorities of five major religious groups and the religiously unaffiliated favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, compared to three major religious groups who oppose same-sex marriage. On the side supporting same-sex marriage, the religiously unaffiliated (72 percent) are joined by majorities of Jews (76 percent), Americans affiliated with a non-Judeo-Christian religion (63 percent), white Catholics (56 percent), Hispanic Catholics (53 percent) and white mainline Protestants (52 percent). Together, these religious groups make up approximately 45 percent of the general population.

On the other hand, large majorities of white evangelical Protestants (75 percent), Mormons (75 percent) and black Protestants (63 percent) continue to oppose same-sex marriage. Opposition to same-sex marriage among these groups is intense: near-majorities of Mormons (48 percent) and evangelicals (46 percent) strongly oppose allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. Together, these groups comprise approximately 32 percent of the general population.

To read the rest of the post, head over to the Huffington Post’s Religion page.