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talkpolitics2011-09-01 04:59 pm
badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com) wrote in talkpolitics2011-09-01 04:59 pm
Entry tags:
Trends
An interesting finding in recent polling on social issues. I'll let this piece give the details:
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?
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?
no subject
You can take that or leave it. If you want to talk to me, be nice. Give me a change to explain myself if I say something that you think is offensive rather than just jumping to conclusions about how I think. Try not to unleash all your RAEG on me when you don't really know much at all about the kind of person I am and how I see things. I get the feeling you and I could read totally different things into a statement spoken by someone entirely different. We just see things very differently. I'm not a rape-apologist, woman-hater, or slut-shamer. I'm just not. You are convinced that I am because of a single conversation over the internet (in which you took much of what I said in a completely different way than I meant it). You don't get to decide what I meant by what I say. You hardly know anything about me, yet are extremely judgmental.
Okay, I kind of went off on a rant there, I admit it. I just find the way you treat me to be very upsetting. So if you're going to continue along the path of "I am right, the end, your are wrong and evil and hateful because I said so," then I. do. not. want. to. talk. to. you.
tl;dr have an open mind; listen to me when I say I didn't mean something the way you took it, and respect that (and I will in turn respect you when you say the its common for people to interpret something a certain way when maybe I didn't know that); and don't lash out at the slightest provocation - or don't talk to me at all.