About 70 percent of a small sampling of Pennsylvania voters surveyed in a recent poll support same-sex marriage or civil unions.

The Deliberative Poll, conducted Saturday at Carnegie Mellon University and three other schools in the state, found that 35 percent of the 250 participants supported same-sex marriage and 35 percent supported some version of civil unions.

Unlike other polls, the Deliberative Poll requires participants to read background information on the topic in advance and discuss it for a few hours with experts and others being polled before answering survey questions.

"Participating in the Deliberative Poll gives people an opportunity to reach beyond the divisive rhetoric that generally surrounds these sorts of contentious issues," said Robert Cavalier, co-director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Program for Deliberative Democracy, which co-sponsored the event. "The insights that people gain from their discussions are tremendously valuable in shaping a thoughtful, informed opinion."

Interestingly, the poll also showed that 50 percent of those surveyed support the Pennsylvania Marriage Protection Amendment, which would limit marriage to a union between a man and a woman and ban any same-sex legal equivalent, such as civil unions. The state Senate Bill promoting the Pennsylvania Marriage Protection Amendment has been tabled.

Dr. Cavalier admits the two results are contradictory.

"We really have to tease out the demographics and get a sense of how that arose," he said. "I believe that some people were concerned with the redefinition of marriage."

For example, some people may not have a problem with same-sex couples entering into some legal union, but they don't want it called marriage.

The survey also showed that 80 percent of the participants felt the topic of same-sex marriage is somewhat important or very important to the state and country.

"What impressed me was that you could get citizens to come together and talk about sex, religion and politics in a very civil way," he said. "A number of people here at the Carnegie Mellon University site were very impressed with the quality of the discussions and the positive feelings they had toward the process."

Other participating schools included Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania , Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania and Community College of Philadelphia.

Participants were randomly selected from voter registration records in counties surrounding the four colleges. The results represent only the 250 people surveyed and aren't representative of the state's entire voting population, Dr. Cavalier said.

Complete data from the 14-question survey will be available next month at caae.phil.cmu.edu/caae/dp.