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

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

That isn't a universal view. Some people assign the rights of personhood to a person at any stage of development, whether it's sentient or not.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

If you can name a single jurisdiction that assigns legal and civil rights to the pre-born, I'd be interested in knowing that.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

So that means 100% of people believe it?

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

People believe in all sorts of wack-ass shit, polling consistently shows that a solid 20% of the population will go along with anything from 9/11 being pre-planned by the W administration to faked moon landings.

It doesn't matter what some rube believes but instead it is the accumulated body of western law dating all the way back to the Code of Hammurabi that establishes rights for born, living humans.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter what some rube believes but instead it is the accumulated body of western law dating all the way back to the Code of Hammurabi that establishes rights for born, living humans. -- o_O WTF are you smoking?

For future reference, we're talking about an issue pertaining to the United States in the year 2011. Meanwhile, you're talking about something from the 16th century written in a DEAD language.

People believe in all sorts of wack-ass shit... -- Yes, you do.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

For future reference, this entire comment of yours suffers from major historical fail. Maybe you should check your shit before accusing me of hitting the pipe.

1792 B.C., making you only off by about 3400 years or so

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

The Code of Hammurabi is considered the basis for several systems of laws developed throughout the history of Western civilization. Many of the laws in the Code of Hammurabi were reflected in later Hebrew law. The Code of Hammurabi also has been linked to the legal systems of ancient Greece and Rome, and to English Common Law, which is the basis of the legal system in the United States.

Re: 1792 B.C., making you only off by about 3400 years or so

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

First of all, your icon is incredibly offensive and insensitive. Secondly, why don't you explain what the Code of Hammurabi has to do with the ability for people to express their personal opinion? I believe that's what raichu100 was referring to in the comment you replied to.

Re: 1792 B.C., making you only off by about 3400 years or so

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Secondly, why don't you explain what the Code of Hammurabi has to do with the ability for people to express their personal opinion?

No, because that's an incredibly stupid and irrelevant question. Listen if you don't understand the difference between individual opinion and the consistent ruling of judicial bodies throughout western history, then you're missing the point. Raichu wasn't debating that either.

Re: 1792 B.C., making you only off by about 3400 years or so

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Opinion has nothing to do with the law. Sorry, sugar.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually that code was in many ways more merciful than the similar tribal legal system of the Benei Yisraelim that inspires evangelicals to spread God's mercy and love via backing death camps in other countries.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-crazification.html

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Then we're getting into the argument of whether the law grants rights or merely observes pre-existing ones, but if its the former, then it leaves unanswered the question of the basis for which rights are observed/not-observed, and that seems to be the foundation upon which the disagreement rests. At least, it's a position that insists that one basis is unassailable on the grounds that the basis is the status quo.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I'd need some evidence if someone wanted to argue the position that there's any kind of pre-existing rights.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

So, it wasn't that slaves deserved rights that were being denied them, it was out of the kindness and benevolence of the government that they let them in on the game at all.

You don't deserve something that's given or granted. Ergo, unless it's granted, it isn't deserved or to be expected.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Plenty of fine upstanding Northerners of the Civil War and all white Southerners would have agreed with this proposition. It was blacks who demanded rights and the ability to wear the Blue that gained their freedom, and all of Latin America save Haiti emancipated slaves without killing over half a million people to do that.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Which part? I'm portraying two views of the nature of rights. Which one are you postulating were held by white southerners and 'upstanding' northerners?

I'm never sure whether you're agreeing with me or disagreeing.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That blacks weren't human beings and their rights were not worth protecting. Horatio Seymour, Clement Vallandigham, and Alexander Stephens all agreed that slavery was God-ordained and abolition sought to make equal what the Almighty made unequal.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Excepting felons on death row and soldiers in time of war.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I'm against those too.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Good for you. The ones who bomb abortion clinics by virtue of taking the ideology very seriously indeed do not.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

What are the statistics on those anyway? I don't exactly find many other bombers in my pro-life clique.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They aren't very numerous, terrorists never are. They, like all extremists with moderate fellow-travelers are never denounced by said fellow-travelers.

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Then there are always those who like to play up their significance for their own ends or to justify their own beliefs, of course, like the last administration, and a few others whose notoriety only extends to LJ discussions...

Re: Perhaps you may should call abortion a Human Rights issue

[raichu100.livejournal.com]

"They, like all extremists with moderate fellow-travelers are never denounced by said fellow-travelers."

I'm going to take the liberty of calling complete bullshit on this.