talkpolitics | Trends

badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com posting in

An interesting finding in recent polling on social issues. I'll let this piece give the details:

Americans are now evenly split on same-sex marriage: 47 percent support marriage rights for gays and lesbians, and 47 percent oppose them. That stalemate won't last long—critics of gay unions are dying off. According to a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute, only 31 percent of Americans over age 65 support gays getting hitched, compared to 62 percent of Americans under 30.

But strong millennial support for gay marriage has not translated into an uptick in acceptance of other sexual freedoms, like the right to an abortion. The Public Religion Research Institute notes that popular support for keeping abortion legal has dipped a percentage point since 1999, and young Americans are not swelling the ranks of abortion rights supporters. Today, while 57 percent of people under 30 see gay sex as "morally acceptable," only 46 percent of them would say the same thing about having an abortion.

The institute calls this a "decoupling of attitudes." Support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights have traditionally gone hand-in-hand, and that's changing. Though young people today are "more educated, more liberal, and more likely to be religiously unaffiliated" than their parents—all factors traditionally correlated with support of abortion rights—they are not actually more likely to support abortion.

The article goes on to give some reasons as to why this decoupling is occurring, but I believe the issue is much more simple than that - gay marriage, as it is, has been a reality for millennials (folks ages 19-29) for most of their politically/socially aware lives now, and they see quite clearly how the issue really doesn't matter - gay people getting married doesn't impact their straight marriages, or their lives at all, really. There's no harm involved. The difference with abortion is that the harm involved remains self-evident - at the end of the day, we know how many abortions occur, and such "decoupling," as it were, likely reflects that difference. I also speculate that many do not see the abortion issue as one of "rights," but rather one of life. That those who self-identify as pro-life remains competitive ideologically with those who self-identify as pro-choice for the first time in a while may be a sign of that.

Why do you think these issues are separating? Should they truly be falling under the same social umbrella? What am I missing here?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

a-new-machine.livejournal.com

Should they truly be falling under the same social umbrella? What am I missing here?

The thing is that "social conservatism" is a nice, short-hand way of saying "religiousness" in modern America. Think about the big social issues: abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research, teaching evolution, abstinence-only sex education. Each of these is most loudly, vigorously, and reliably decried by religious individuals. So they get grouped together because the groups that are most visible are united on the issues in question.

So there's no reason why the two must be linked - there's nothing about one that implies the other, unless you're using the Bible as your source for social policy.

From:

badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com

I'm not a social conservative in any way shape or form, but I guess I'm missing what you're saying here - you've linked a bunch of issues under a "religiousness" umbrella (which I think is problematic on its own, but I'll run with it) but don't see why these two issues should be linked?

Or is it that there is a legitimate secular argument against abortion that you cannot come up with for gay marriage?

From:

a-new-machine.livejournal.com

I'm saying that the practical observation is that most groups that oppose gay marriage also oppose abortion and non-abstinent sex ed and all the rest. Thus, they have been traditionally grouped together, when there's nothing in the one issue that implies anything about the other. The only reason we should be surprised at this "de-coupling" is if we presume that the people who say "no" to both gay marriage and abortion are getting that response from the Bible. Otherwise, a secular disagreement with abortion and a secular disagreement with gay marriage might coexist, but there's no reason to think that they should. Nothing in any argument I've heard for the issues implies a stance on the other except if the argument references or draws moral support from the Bible or other religious texts that are read to be critical of both.

From:

soliloquy76.livejournal.com

One possibility: Abortion is already legal. That battle has already been fought and won, for the most part, and isn't in the forefront of social issues today like gay marriage is. Because of that, I think younger people have a better understanding of the arguments for and against gay marriage than for and against abortion.

Or not. These issues aren't really on my radar.

From:

box-in-the-box.livejournal.com

I think that's a very good point, Manservant Hecubus. Many young people see Roe v. Wade as a battle that's already been won, and while that clock is being rolled back on a lot of fronts, you do kind of have to be paying attention to realize that those freedoms are being snatched away from under your feet. If and when a lot of the more draconian anti-abortion laws are passed and have been in effect for a while, I suspect there's going to be an ugly wake-up call for a lot of young people who didn't realize that they could get prosecuted for having a miscarriage.

Also, while

badlydrawnjeff makes an excellent point here ...

[...] gay marriage, as it is, has been a reality for millennials (folks ages 19-29) for most of their politically/socially aware lives now [...]

... Precisely because it's what social conservatives always warned would happen if gays got too much positive, everyday visibility in society, I'd likewise note that slut-shaming has ALSO been a reality for folks of that generation, in some ways even MORE than it' was for my generation, Generation X, possibly because we didn't have the Internet when I was in high school to ensure that every sexually "questionable" move that a girl or woman made could follow them for the rest of their lives, like an online scarlet "A." Regardless of the cause, though, we've gotten a LOT more comfortable, as a society, with passing negative judgments on women's sex lives, with so-called "feminists," particularly among the Baby Boomers of my parents' generation, showing themselves to be some of the more grudgey judges.

From:

box-in-the-box.livejournal.com

In fact, now that I think about it,

badlydrawnjeff's quote is even more telling than I realized, because yes, in their families, their circles of friends, their places or work and worship, and the broader world of media representation, young people have seen, more and more and more, that gay people not only EXIST, but that they also run across so much of the full spectrum of humanity that, contrary to campy stereotypes of comic fabulousness in yesteryear, many gays are actually BORING, just as much as "straights" are. In many ways, that's the REAL triumph of Ellen DeGeneres — she was never an especially witty or insightful or distinctive comedienne, but she was NICE and she was ORDINARY, to a level so innately comforting that only the most virulent homophobes could think to try and demonize her for her sexuality. In that sense, it's kind of like the end of the Cold War, because once we started getting glimpses of the true Russia from behind the Iron Curtain, we didn't have the HEART to hate those people anymore, simply because their lives were so goddamned DULL. You can't build someone up as some sort of Lex Luthor in the Legion of Doom-type villain in your imagined "culture war" when they're so fucking BEIGE that they remind you of your Uncle Merle and Aunt Maxine living in the Great Lakes.

By contrast, how many women do we see or hear — among our families, friends, offices, churches or media — talking frankly about having had abortions? I'm gonna put that number at damn near next to ZERO for a lot of folks out there. For fuck's sake, for as much as abortion ISN'T mentioned as a possibility in mainstream TV or movie plotlines that include unplanned pregnancy, you'd think we were still living in the days of the Hays Code. Contrast that to the '80s, when movies and TV shows frequently confronted abortion issues head-on.

A place to discuss politics without egomaniacal mods.

Trends