A majority of self-identified liberals find hot button issues, such as abortion, sex changes, and pornography, “morally acceptable,” a Gallup Poll released Friday revealed.
The Gallup survey found Americans are ideologically driven when it comes to issues they find morally acceptable or unacceptable.
“Perspectives on morality are strongly related to (and perhaps influenced by) their own political ideology,” the survey found, examining a range of issues:
There are significant ideological differences on all issues but medical testing on animals. Even so, majorities of liberals and conservatives are on the same side of the issue in 10 of 20 cases. On almost all of the rest, liberals find the practice morally acceptable, while Republicans disagree.
For example, over three-quarters of liberals, 78 percent, view changing one’s gender as morally acceptable, compared to just 23 percent of conservatives who say the same, representing a 55 percent gap.
Other issues those on the left find “morally acceptable” include:
- Abortion: 73 percent
- Gay or lesbian relations: 91 percent
- Medical research using human embryonic stem cells: 80 percent
- Doctor-assisted suicide: 74 percent
- Sex between teenagers: 62 percent
- Having a baby outside of marriage: 84 percent
- Pornography: 58 percent
- Sex between an unmarried man and woman: 86 percent
- Divorce: 96 percent
- Cloning animals: 51 percent
- Gambling: 73 percent
- Birth control: 95 percent
- Medical testing on animals: 53 percent
There is, however, some cross over with conservatives on several issues:
The issues with majority-level agreement on moral acceptability among liberals and conservatives are: birth control, divorce, gambling, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and medical testing on animals. Majorities of liberals and conservatives also agree that several behaviors are morally wrong — extramarital affairs, cloning animals or humans, suicide, polygamy and pornography.
Overall, the survey found Americans, as a whole, have shifted “significantly toward more permissive attitudes” over the years.
Birth control and divorce continue to be the most morally acceptable to society and extramarital affairs, and cloning humans the most morally wrong. The new addition to the list, changing one’s gender, is nearly as divisive as abortion, which has typically been the most contentious issue. And the ideological divide on these two issues is the greatest seen in the poll. Transgender issues only recently emerged as a prominent topic in society, and it remains to be seen whether the public’s views about changing one’s gender will evolve in the way that their opinions of gays and lesbians did, or if they stay as polarized as abortion.
The survey, taken May 3-18, 2021, among 1,016 adults, has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.