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: "Rights" issues

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

If you get to gloss over the entire Catholic Church's component of the pro-life movement, I get to gloss over the Evangelical one.

Sauce for the goose...

Re: "Rights" issues

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Catholic Church's opposing wars and the death penalty hasn't seemed to attract as much focus from Catholics here as its opposition to abortion. I wonder why that is?

Re: "Rights" issues

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

As far as the death penalty is concerned vs. abortion, I would probably contend the volume of one compared to the other probably can account for the difference in attention, and domestic issues usually garner more attention in general than foreign affairs.

You'd have to poll opinions amongst Catholics and canvas questions over the variety of life related issues to get a clearer picture.

But that's against your methods, which are to take personal impression and blunt force 'gut' feelings as gospel.

Seeing an apparent (and unexamined) discrepancy as proof-positive your broad-ranging assertions are worth having and sharing is taking a page from truther logic 101.