- 59% of people find homosexual relations morally acceptable, up 19% since 2001.
- Compared to 2001, people are also significantly more likely to say they find sex outside of marriage, children outside of marriage, and divorce morally acceptable. It makes sense to me that views on those three topics would change in the same way.
- Compared to 2001, twice as many people find polygamy morally acceptable, although that still brings the number to only 14%. Doesn't really make sense to me.
- 42% of people find abortion morally acceptable, which is the exact same percentage as 2001. That is, it's as if views on abortion haven't shifted at all in the last 12 years. That's not entirely true--for example Gallup has had headlines like "The New Normal on Abortion: Americans More 'Pro-Life.'" (May 2010) and "'Pro-Choice' Americans at Record-Low 41%" (May 2012). However there doesn't appear to be a 1-to-1 connection between peoples' views on the morality of abortion and peoples' self-descriptions as either "pro-life" or "pro-choice."
- Strangely, 67% say "an unmarried woman having a baby" is morally acceptable, but only 60% say "having a baby outside of marriage" is morally acceptable. Guess it goes to show how much difference the wording of a polling question makes.
- More Americans think it's wrong for teenagers to have sex (63%) than think it's wrong to get an abortion (49%). I was surprised how many Americans think teenage sex is morally wrong, actually. I must just run in social circles where more people are defensive of teen sex.
Monday, May 20, 2013
No teen sex!
I love Gallup polls. Worth noting:
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ReplyDelete"Strangely, 67% say "an unmarried woman having a baby" is morally acceptable, but only 60% say "having a baby outside of marriage" is morally acceptable. Guess it goes to show how much difference the wording of a polling question makes."
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction as to the difference is that the former question implies that the act is already done, like how do you morally feel about a single mom who has a child, whereas the latter seems more to imply the actual morality of the act of having a baby outside marriage. At least that's my take.
"More Americans think it's wrong for teenagers to have sex (63%) than think it's wrong to get an abortion (49%). I was surprised how many Americans think teenage sex is morally wrong, actually. I must just run in social circles where more people are defensive of teen sex."
A lot of people seem to forget how they were as teenagers :P. I'd say we're defensive about people being raging hypocrites, especially in the face of the fact that teenage sex is probably the most longstanding teenage escapade in all of history. It's kinda how our species propagates.