Trends

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

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?

Comments

[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.

[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.

[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.

[bex.livejournal.com]

Not much at all, for fear of the blowback. One of my professors just shared this article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson/dirty-dancing-remake_b_943715.html?ref=fb&src=sp) the other day - it highlights how the movie Dirty Dancing might be seen today, given that much of the story centered around an unintended pregnancy and an abortion. Can you imagine the scandal today?

[medea34.livejournal.com]

I have frankly mentioned that having an abortion was the best descision my 17 year old self made (when the debate comes up). I have never regretted it. I am a happy, capable parent in my 30s now who is grateful for the choice I had the opportunity to make then.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

And that's impressive as hell, considering what a difficult process that can be. It speaks well of you that you're able to speak out on it, but it's also no slight against those women who don't feel as free to do so (and there are many of them).