Andrew Sullivan knows less about how people feel about homosexuality than I do (and I'm nobody and straight and don't care): In recent debate that included Pat Buchanan, Andrew Sullivan said that the culture war that Pat talks about exists only among the Baby Boomers--generation Xers have all agreed that abortion and gay marriage are just fine. Well, Andy needs to broaden his circle (how big can the gay neo-con circle be?).
Here's a comparison of Boomers and Xers on the percent who believe in abortion on demand and who feel that homosexuality is not wrong:
Abortion on demand
Boomers 47.1%
Xers 35.5
Homosexuality okay
Boomers 35.5%
Xers 32.1
Xers are more conservative, not less, on these key cultural issues, and they are obviously just as divided as Boomers. It's humorous just how often pundits are full of it.
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Another "children learn everything from their parents" canard bites the dust.
ReplyDeleteI'm new here so maybe this is in the FAQ, but...where does this data come from?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: Welcome. Unless I say otherwise, I am analyzing data from the General Social Survey.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure where this data comes from. The GenX people I know are more tolorant of gays than the boomers.
ReplyDeleteI am in definite agreement that Andrew Sullivan wears his homosexuality on his sleeve. It is his all-consuming passion.
Kurt,
ReplyDeleteYou live in Portland, Oregon, which is a bubble within a bubble. The gay marriage ban passed even in Oregon while failing only in Multnomah and Benton counties (the urban area of Portland and the college town area of Corvallis).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Ballot_Measure_36_(2004)
For a measure of the bubble, compare the best sellers on Amazon.com to the best sellers on Powells.com. You will see that a certain sector of opinion is missing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/homepage.html/002-5011956-3536043
http://www.powells.com/
I know the gay marriage ban passed in Oregon as well. What I ment is that most GenXers I know are accepting of gays and lesbians, in general. I have no idea what their oppinion is about gay marraige. It may well be possible than most Gen Xers do not think that gays should be able to get "married".
ReplyDeleteIt gets down to if you consider marriage to be a negative or positive right. I consider marriage to be a positive right. Hense, opposing gay marriage does not necessarly mean that one is "anti-gay" in general.
kurt, you only probably only know college educated blue state gen-x people, certainly not a valid cross section of the entire generation.
ReplyDeletehalf sigma,
ReplyDeleteThat is certainly possible. You see, I lived in Japan and the rest of Asia from 1991 to 2001, then lived in Phoenix, AZ and Portland, OR; with little contact with Gen Xers during my time in the U.S.
So, my exposure to the Gen Xers was limited to the english teachers and professional expat in Asia, hardly a representative sample of GenX, given that they were all expats.
On the other hand, the english teachers were the slackers and the engineers, sales/marketing, and investment bankers were the yuppies. Both groups of people were quite liberal, with regards to social issues. Where they differed from each other was on economic issues: the slackers were greens and the yuppies were pro-freemarket capitalism.
I kind of figured that slackers and yuppies occupied opposite ends of the economic spectrum and that everyone else would fall in between them, in terms of tastes and attitudes.
This survey contradicts every other surveys and polls I've known.
ReplyDelete