While 48 percent of southerners now favor same-sex marriage, only 37 percent of southerners say sex between two adults of the same gender is morally acceptable. To put it bluntly, support for the legality of same-sex marriage outpaces moral approval of same-gender sex by double-digit numbers.There follows a fair bit of discussion about it in the comments that follow.
The article also notes the (well known) incredible divide between young folk and old folk on the issue. I do not really know that anyone has convincingly pointed out the cultural reason as to why this happened amongst younger people, so quickly.
3 comments:
One explanation re young people is that they are the first generation in the West who were exposed to homosexuals in the general culture as being acceptable so they are more ready to accept homosexual marriage. A related case is that of racism, some studies indicate that if as a child a person spends time with people from different cultures they are much less likely to develop racist attitudes towards peoples from those cultures.
Yes, I guess so. It's still pretty easy to get through life without having a close relative or friend who is gay, though. I have noted before that in my very large extended family I know of no openly gay relative, and as the population of self identifying gay or bisexual might only be around 3% (see my previous post in December about it, and in comments http://opiniondominion.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/counting-men.html ) this is not really so surprising.
Part of the explanation is self-censorship. When the dominant culture is bigoted, people who are not may well hide their tolerance lest they feel the wrath of the majority. Only when a critical mass is achieved do they feel safe enough to report their true feelings, causing an apparent surge.
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