A new study of "Generation Next" (aged 18 to 25) by the Pew Research Center shows that today's young adults are the most supportive of any generation on social and legal issues relating to gay people, and lead the way in their support for gay marriage:
Nearly six-in-ten (58%) say homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society. This compares with 50% of those over age 25. On balance, the public opposes allowing gays and lesbians to marry, but young people are evenly split on the issue. Nearly half of Gen Nexters (47%) favor gay marriage, and 46% are opposed to it....
The public is more open to the idea of gay people adopting children, and here too young people take a more liberal position. About six-in-ten Gen Nexters (61%) favor allowing gays and lesbians to adopt, compared with 44% of those over age 25.
Bad news for Republicans: 48% of Gen Nexters identified more with the Democratic Party, while just 35% affiliated more with the GOP. This makes Gen Next the least Republican generation according to Pew Research, and should serve as a wake up call for the party's hidebound leadership-that is, unless they want the GOP to end up marginalized as a party of elderly religious rightists.
35 Comments for “Equality and ‘Gen Next.’”
posted by Xeno on
Yet aren’t there statistics showing that elderly people are more likely to vote than the new generation, so why should the GOP care about them? They simply have a good and gullible base to pander at.
And didn’t Steven mention before that the newest generation was more libertarian as well? Perhaps the more libertarian party in the near future would be the democratic party.
posted by jomicur on
“…unless they want the GOP to end up marginalized as a party of elderly religious rightists.”
What do you think it is now, Steve? Did you miss the November elections?
posted by kittynboi on
“”Yet aren’t there statistics showing that elderly people are more likely to vote than the new generation, so why should the GOP care about them? “”
Because those older people are older people, and if the right can’t make enough inroads in to the younger generations before they die off, then they face a demographic crisis of sorts.
posted by Novaseeker on
The problem with this study is that it doesn’t account for the fact that people generally change attitudes as they age. It seems to want to imply (or some readers seem to want to imply from it) that these people will express these same attitudes 5 or 10 years from now … which is a big stretch. Most people display different attitudes towards a number of things if you compare them at, say, 31, with what they said when they were, say, 22. So I’m not sure that these views are that impressive or heartening.
posted by Carl on
Novaseeker, the problem is that younger voters were not identifying as heavily on the Democratic side in the past several years. So there has been movement away from the GOP. These people are realizing the GOP is basically destroying their future. How many young people are going to support this awful war at this point?
posted by Greg Capaldini on
I can’t help wondering if having a lot of “elderly religious rightists” in your party makes it politically feasible to enter into an ostensibly defensive but otherwise ill-advised war, while being in a war makes it feasible to bank on the support of “elderly religious rightists.” I suspect that someone in the GOP pointed out this expediency while behind closed doors.
posted by JC on
Anyone in favor of America becoming a one-party state? Only this time, that party would be the Democrats. To this liberal Canadian, that might not be the worst thing in the world.
posted by Novaseeker on
“the problem is that younger voters were not identifying as heavily on the Democratic side in the past several years. So there has been movement away from the GOP. These people are realizing the GOP is basically destroying their future. How many young people are going to support this awful war at this point?”
That’s true, but once the war ends, and they turn 30 and get married and have kids, their perspective changes. That’s my point. It’s not really easy to predict where these opinions will be in a few years, and generally over time people *do* tend to get more conservative politically as they marry and start families, all things being equal (which, of course, they are not when a war is going on).
posted by kittynboi on
Nova, is there any evidence that their opinions on these particular issues will undergo a dramatic shift? I don’t think there is. This study may not mean that they will remain the same, but I don’t think there is any reason to assume they will take on theocratic attitudes either.
Its not like the older, less gay friendly people were more accepting when they were younger. Considering the era they came from, they most likely weren’t, and its hardly unreasonable to assume that, even though some groups are less accepting of gay rights than others, that gay acceptance is still up across the board.
posted by Carl on
-That’s true, but once the war ends, and they turn 30 and get married and have kids, their perspective changes.-
I don’t have anywhere near as much confidence as you do that the war will be over soon. Even if it is, I think that the war on terror has caused more people, especially younger people, to realize there are far more serious issues than freaking out about someone being gay.
There will always be people who become more homophobic as they get older or get married, but what really happens is that people who have certain views see those views hardening as they age. Someone who is pro-gay now may be far more pro-gay later in life.
Usually, girls are more supportive of gays than boys are. As they age, they’re likely to keep being supportive, unless something really changes.
posted by raj on
I’m not sure I would put a lot of faith in Stephen’s apparent interpretation of the cited Pew study–that “Gen-Nexters” (apparently those who are currently 18-25 years old) are likely to be more Democratic as they grow older, or, apparently, that we are going to see much of a revolution in the electoral landscape as they get older.
While it is true that the Pew study, on page 28, does say what Stephen says it says (that “48% of young people identified themselves as Democrats or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while only 35% identified themselves as Republicans ? the lowest number recorded by Pew in its nearly 20-year trend”), the chart on the same page shows curves indicating that the Republican identification between 1987 and 2006 for those 18-25s not that much different than for those 26+, except for 1991 (or so), which appears to be an outlier. (Unfortunately, the Pew study does not provide a similar chart for Democratic identification over the same time period, so it is impossible to compare the two.) Irrespective of Republican or Democratic identification, it is pretty much the case that, during the same time period, and except for the presidential elections of 1992 and 1996, up until the congressional elections in 2006, the Republicans faired pretty well, even though they have pretty much consistently lost support among the 18-25 year olds since 1991.
Two more data regarding the Pew study:
(i) One-third of the 18-25 year olds still believe in creationism (table, page 23), which does not bode well for their intelligence; and
(ii) Among all respondents, some 70% have consistently claimed (1988-2004) to “always” or “nearly always” vote. I suppose that the “nearly always” might be a fudge factor, but since reports have indicated that voter turnout is far lower, I would tend to question the results of the study.
Long and short: I wouldn’t be as confident as Stephen is that the study shows that 18-25 year olds will be substantially different in political outlook than their elders.
posted by Bobby on
Oh so Gen Next is more liberal, big deal. Everyone knows young people don’t vote and don’t make a difference.
Remember the Vote or Die campaign? Sure, universities may be politically correct and biased to the left, Michael Moore may be treated like a hero, but in the end, their young fans don’t show up to vote.
I’m 31, I don’t take young people seriously, I went to college, I know what they are like.
posted by ETJB on
Universities are hardly biased to the political left or right. If you go to any major college or University you will see active clubs and organizations from all possible political causes and viewpoints.
The question becomes; will these young, socially liberal Americans vote before they reach 25 or will they keep these values when they get older?
posted by Marc on
I agree, Nova, that attitudes do change as you get older, but they have a tendency to settle more in the center. What I did find curious about this survey is the equal split among respondents on gay marriage. While the survey doesn’t ask why, I was rather shocked at the closeness of this number. I had always assumed that younger people were overwhelmingly more supportive of gay marriage, simply because they grew up in an era of knowing gay people. Is it their religious influences that caused almost half to find gay marriage unacceptable? That doesn’t seem to bode with the religious aspect of this survey. I would be curious to know where younger people are influenced by thinking marriage is still between a man and a woman.
posted by Randy on
This month’s Psychology Today published results of various studies which show that whether you are liberal or conservative is usually set by childhood and rarely changes. In other words, if you are liberal in youth, your are likely to stay that way, ditto for conservatives.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that there are people who change. It just says it’s ‘unlikely’ that they will.
posted by Carl on
Marc, I’m not all that surprised at the closeness. The media and many politicians and preachers love to trash gays 24/7. It has an effect. Some young people are afraid to admit they support gay rights, because peer pressure says homosexuality is wrong.
I do wonder what happened in the 90’s to cause the huge shift in our favor.
Anyway, the gay marriage polls were taken in 2004, weren’t they? Opinion may have moved more on our side since then.
posted by Bobby on
“Universities are hardly biased to the political left or right.”
—Tell that to the minutemen who got forced out of stage while giving a speech at Columbia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=26393
posted by raj on
Bobby | January 12, 2007, 8:50am |
Poor stupid Bobby, unable to distinguish between Universities and some people who might be attending the Universities. And apparently, Bobby is unaware of the fact that the administration Columbia actually did take action to investigate the incident mentioned in his link to David Horowitz’s ridiculous publication.
It’s been a long time since I attended University, but I doubt that either mathematics, physics or engineering that I studied there would qualify as being biased to the political left or right. Actually, the closest that I came to left vs. right was being taught that the cross product of two vectors is a third vector whose direction is determined by the right-hand rule.
posted by Bobby on
“Columbia actually did take action to investigate the incident mentioned in his link to David Horowitz’s ridiculous publication.”
—After O’reilly beat them up for weeks, and in the end no one was punished. Now, imagine if Michael Moore had been physically attacked.
Poor stupid me. Maybe I should just accept that liberals never do anything wrong.
Isn’t it easy to be a liberal? All you have to do is believe Bush orchestrated 9/11, industry is responsible for all the evil in the world, Michael Moore is a hero, Cindy Sheehan a role model, and Castro and Chavez freedom fighters.
You’re such a liberal lover, you probably masturbate with pictures of Che Guevara while sticking Das Kapital up your ass.
Have a nice day.
posted by LeBain on
These numbers are practically useless for a couple of reasons:
1. Young people don’t vote at the same percentage as older folks.
2. Where the tracking data? How did the over 25 group respond when they were under 25? Surely every young person’s views change as they age. Who’s to say some of those who support gay rights at a young age don’t change their mind later in life.
posted by kittynboi on
“”You’re such a liberal lover, you probably masturbate with pictures of Che Guevara while sticking Das Kapital up your ass.
Have a nice day.””
You’re a never ending source of amusement.
posted by ColoradoPatriot on
What does Das Kapital have to do with liberalism? This comment proves that you are WAY out of your intellectual league here. Do you even know what Das Kapital is about? Bobby…your stupidity is showing.
posted by Shane on
Polling has established the fact that many prominent Universities have their Social Science, Humanities, and/or Arts & Letters programs dominated by left-leaning (or at least liberal Democrat-leaning) faculties. Perhaps not the “hard” sciences and mathematics, however. To wit, the very illiberal anti-enlightenment “speech codes” that many Universities have adopted.
Give Bobby a break. Just because he disagrees with you or expresses himself a bit crudely from time-to-time doesn’t mean he’s stupid. When one says things like that, it just makes you appear to be some arrogant, self-righteous Leftist.
posted by Northeast Libertarian on
Anyone in favor of America becoming a one-party state?
It already is. After the “great Democratic sweep” that was supposed to transform American foreign policy, America is sending 21,000 extra troops to Iraq (fully funding the additional deployment) and Democrats are explaining they “have to.”
The theater of war is widening, despite a general American sentiment to reduce it, with bombings in Somalia and talk of war with Iran and Syria.
All this is happening with Democrats in charge.
Democrats now control the domestic and foreign policy budgets, but have announced that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; anti-gay immigration laws; and anti-marriage laws all will remain as solidly on the books as they would under a 100% Republican government.
Sure, some Democratic apologists will come in to provide 1,000 lame excuses about why the comments about the total lack of change are accurate but “unfair.” The reality is that the Democrats benefit from the same policies as the GOP, have the same major corporate donors, and even employ the same strategists (such as Clinton administration guru Dick Morris, who hops between parties like an alcoholic hops between bars).
If you judge the old parties on their actual records, rather than their rhetoric, there’s no significant policy difference on foreign policy (war without end, military bases around the world and endless interference in other countries’ affairs); domestic policy (big and ever-growing government with new social programs every year); tax policy (increases either directly through tax hikes, or indirectly through inflation and deficit spending); and gay rights (continued strong support for government micromanaging individuals’ private lives and ensuring that gay families are at a permanent disadvantage).
posted by dalea on
Marx and Englels wrote Capital in English. It only became influential in its German form Das Capital.
It is perhaps of interest that this work popularized the idea that cost is something determined by production, a real cost theory, so beloved by the posters here. Instead of the counter conception that price determines cost.
posted by raj on
Bobby | January 12, 2007, 1:08pm |
Poor, uninformed Bobby.
“Columbia actually did take action to investigate the incident mentioned in his link to David Horowitz’s ridiculous publication.”
—After O’reilly beat them up for weeks, and in the end no one was punished.
I suppose that Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, was lying in his email, which is undated, but was obviously sent out after the end of the Fall 2006 term, in which he stated
(emphasis added)
One, from the italicized portion of the first paragraph, it is obvious that the university began an investigation before the clown O’Reilly could have gotten involved. Two, from the italicized, but not bolded, portion of the second paragraph, it is obvious that the university has notified students that they were being subjected to university discipline. (Any criminal charges would have to be brought by the civil authorities, not the university.) And further, from the bolded portion of the second paragraph it is obvious that you will never find out from the university just who was disciplined or what the discipline was. In the unlikely event that you will find that out, you will find it out from the disciplined individuals themselves, and they probably have little incentive to make their discipline public.
posted by raj on
Shane | January 12, 2007, 7:36pm |
Give Bobby a break. Just because he disagrees with you or expresses himself a bit crudely from time-to-time doesn’t mean he’s stupid.
The problem that I have with Bobby isn’t that he disagrees with me, it’s that he oftentimes makes assertions of fact which do not hold up under scrutiny–which a little investigation would show–and that he reaches oftentimes rather outlandish conclusions based on those assertion of fact.
posted by Bobby on
” it is obvious that the university began an investigation before the clown O’Reilly could have gotten involved. ”
—Anyone can begin an investigation, Raj. But when a campus fraternity threw a “Halloween in the Hood” party that offended ultra-sensitive minorities, sanctions were given immediately. Proving that to the campus gestapo, it’s free speech as long as the views are liberal.
“it’s that he oftentimes makes assertions of fact which do not hold up under scrutiny”
—Oh please, if I had no life, I could go on the web, find a newspaper article or evidence that agrees with me, and post it. You may be better at it because you’re a lawyer, and lawyers are excelent at distorting the truth and manipulating people. Remember the sodomy laws? Remember the arguments in favor and against?
You believe what you want to believe, I’ve never seen you admit being wrong on anything, and if you ever meet any view that disagrees with you, you’ll just spin it, ignore it, deny it. You’re the perfect ideologue.
posted by kittynboi on
“”””Give Bobby a break. Just because he disagrees with you or expresses himself a bit crudely from time-to-time doesn’t mean he’s stupid.””””
I think telling someone to use Das Kapital as a rectal probe is a bit more than just expressing himself “curdely”.
posted by Bobby on
I was being sarcastic about das kapital. Besides, kittynboi, if you can dish it, you can take it.
posted by raj on
Bobby | January 13, 2007, 10:49am |
Feel free to believe whatever fantasies you want to believe. You should, however, expect to be called on the carpet when you make outlandish assertions of fact that you can’t back up, and more than a few of the rather (what I consider to be silly) conclusions or obvious inferences that you sometimes draw from them.
If your track record was a little better in either regard, I might be less sarcastic.
Note on Das Kapital, it had about as much to do with communism as it developed in the USSR and the PRC as works of Edmund Burke and the other British conservative philosophers have to do with modern day conservatism in the US.
posted by Craig2 on
You’re forgetting one thing- institutional replenishment. Fundies have a range of pseudo-
‘universities,’ media companies and public policy institutions of their own, so they can reproduce (albeit through…
proselytising…)in the United States.
However, in Britain and New Zealand, that problem for LGBTs doesn’t exist, given the stunted
state of their private training
organisations and bible colleges,
secularised higher education,
absence of free to air national television networks, and ageing public policy organisations.
As a result, there’s not much of our Christian Right left, and they should become almost totally extinct within the next decade. What’s their situation in Canada?
Craig2
Wellington, New Zealand
posted by Northeast Libertarian on
this work popularized the idea that cost is something determined by production, a real cost theory
Actually, that was invented and popularized, quite profitably, by British merchants who invented the earliest assembly lines for industrial goods and weapons, and had them up and running profitably over a century before Marx was even born.
posted by ETJB on
America is not going to become a one-party state. At the federal level, the Democrats margin of power is slim and their are enough moderate and conservative Democrats that nothing to left-wing is going to happen.
The key factor to remember is that in America, the political parties have fewer means of controlling ‘party disipline’ then in other developed democratic nations such as the UK.
Several of the new federal Democrats that got elected are much more moderate or even conservative in their politics on issues such as immigration, abortion, and gay rights.
In terms of gay rights two decent bills have a shot at getting passed; federal hate crimes law and the employment anti-discrimination law. The Federal Marriage Amendment is almost certainly not going to go anywhere.
What about third political parties? Well they are not viable choices under our current two-party system in large part due to unfair ballot access laws and how federal districts are drawn up.
We have two Independents in the US Senate (a moderate and a Socialist) and Ron Paul is the pro-life, pro-sodomy laws Libertarian from Texas.
posted by ETJB on
Steve
I am formally suggesting that Bobby be removed from this message board or at least reminded about basic standards of civility.
Graphic & sexually charged language about his desire to stick books up his rear end are not necessary, crude and totally inappropriate.
How can he expect his conservative buddies to be treated with respect, when he does not seem to want to practice what he preaches?
For the record; I do not believe that Bush orchestrated 9/11, I do not believe that America or the private sector is responsible for all the evil in the world, Michael Moore sometimes says some intelligent stuff, sometimes he says funny stuff (I am sure Rush Limbaugh does as well).
Cindy Sheehan lost her son to a war. She is entitled to say whatever she wants to say about the war. So can any other American (until the First Amendment is repealed).
I do not believe that Castro or Chavez are heroes, but then again neither was the government that they replaced. They are not freedom fighters anymore then the Iraqi insurgency.
“you probably masturbate with pictures of Che Guevara while sticking Das Kapital up your ass.”
Karl Marx and Adam Smith said things that are indeed still very relevant to our lives. However, as a historian I know that they were speaking about social, political and economic institutions that are very different from our own.
Blind worship of Karl Marx is as silly as blind worship of Adam Smith.
Again, this is not the type of language we need to have. Let us show a little bit of civility and respect.