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America’s Socially Liberal Future

Social conservatism in retreat on all fronts, says Gallup poll
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Well, this Gallup survey is not good news for Rick Santorum, the latest entrant into the crowded 2016 Republican presidential field:

Americans are more likely now than in the early 2000s to find a variety of behaviors morally acceptable, including gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage and sex between an unmarried man and woman. Moral acceptability of many of these issues is now at a record-high level.

The details:

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More details, from Gallup’s press release:

The substantial increase in Americans’ views that gay and lesbian relations are morally acceptable coincide with a record-high level of support for same-sex marriage and views that being gay or lesbian is something a person is born with, rather than due to one’s upbringing or environment.

The public is now more accepting of sexual relations outside of marriage in general than at any point in the history of tracking these measures, including a 16-percentage-point increase in those saying that having a baby outside of marriage is morally acceptable, and a 15-point increase in the acceptability of sex between an unmarried man and woman. Clear majorities of Americans now say both are acceptable.

Acceptance of divorce and human embryo medical research are also up 12 points each since 2001 and 2002, respectively.

Polygamy and cloning humans have also seen significant upshifts in moral acceptability — but even with these increases, the public largely perceives them as morally wrong, with only 16% and 15% of Americans, respectively, considering them morally acceptable.

Post-Christian America. It’s the philosophical corollary to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD): Autonomous Eroticized Individualism. We should call it AEI. Oh, wait…

Meanwhile, for the orthodox churches, this Benedict Option-y advice from an old but increasingly relevant book:

“I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. ‘Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.”

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