Gallup’s poll on the morally objectionable
posted at 8:52 pm on July 7, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly
Gallup apparently got the idea to conduct this survey from the Mark Sanford mess, but beyond that, the data presents some interesting comparisons. Are there any taboos left in American life on which we can have broad agreement? Yes there are, although surprisingly few. Here are the taboos still getting majority agreement:
- Married men and women having affairs: 92%
- Polygamy: 91%
- Cloning humans: 88%
- Suicide: 80%
- Cloning animals: 63%
- Abortion: 56%
Compare the above list to those issues that are no longer considered taboos by the majority. Sex between unmarried adults only gets 40% support as a taboo, but gay or lesbian relations are 47% taboo, with 49% calling them morally acceptable, the only statistical tie on the list. Bearing children outside of marriage is narrowly considered morally acceptable, 51%-45%. Of all the choices, divorce and the death penalty have the least amount of support for being taboo, only 30%. Gambling and wearing fur are more taboo, as is medical research on animals.
On affairs, the polling on that is remarkably consistent across time and political viewpoints. The number calling it a taboo has increased over the last eight years, from 89% to 92%. Republicans oppose it more than Democrats, but the difference is hardly remarkable (97% and 89%, respectively). Clearly, politicians expecting a long and successful career could hardly do worse than to get caught in an extramarital affair in either party. They’d be better off being polygamists, except for the legal bills.
What got left off the list entirely is also interesting. Gallup didn’t ask about incest, pedophilia/pederasty, murder, or theft. Apparently (and thankfully), those are such universally-accepted taboos that Gallup didn’t feel the need to ask. Let’s hope that continues. (via US News)
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2
By that standard, every act of spousal abuse is an argument against marriage. Perhaps even dating.
The problems that you list come from Islam and it’s rules, it has nothing to do with polygamy itself.
MarkTheGreat on July 8, 2009 at 9:07 AM
Alright, DoktH! You RickRolled me on DAT one! But I had in mind ANOTHER taboo, one more insidious than even Mister Astley!
ExpressoBold on July 8, 2009 at 9:08 AM
Why would you want to blame the kids for something the parents did to them.
The blame rests completely on the father and mother, not the child.
MarkTheGreat on July 8, 2009 at 9:09 AM
I often called my kids that and my wife and I were married before they were born.
Jeff from WI on July 8, 2009 at 9:19 AM
Can we be sure? Without a poll, what do we know? Some of the things which came out as a plurality would be universally-accepted taboos as well just a few years ago.
unclesmrgol on July 8, 2009 at 10:22 AM
Isn’t the only immoral thing about cloning humans the possibility of murdering them to harvest body parts?
Is creating a child that just happens to be genetically identical to someone else really considered immoral by itself?
Count to 10 on July 8, 2009 at 11:01 AM
If children are considered to be the legitimate fruit of a particular kind of relationship then yes, cloning would be immoral.
However the bigger argument, I think, is not so much that something is or is not immoral when it happens as a one-off, but the implications of shifting boundaries which really don’t need to be shifted. These social and biological experiments always create new conundrums that our society is ill-equipped to handle.
The social changes already made (more divorces, more children out of wedlock, more casual sex) are already having seriously bad effects on large sections of society … why add to that mess just to satisfy a very small number of people.
“Everything is permissible, but not everything is constructive.”
YiZhangZhe on July 8, 2009 at 11:33 AM
Society has reached a low point and no one wants to admit fault.
Connie on July 8, 2009 at 12:07 PM
The purpose of polls isn’t to measure public opinion but to mold it, shape it and, of course, to fufill the purpose of those commissioning the polls.
As Chruchill noted – “There is no such thing ‘public opinion’ – there is only published opinion.”
harry flashman on July 8, 2009 at 1:41 PM
Wrong.
You need to understand the difference between policy and abuse of policy.
atheling on July 8, 2009 at 1:55 PM
Your position demonstrates an appalling ignorance of history and human nature.
That alone disqualifies your opinion.
atheling on July 8, 2009 at 1:57 PM
Ah, yes, the pesky & idiotic 5% of persons polled who believe premarital sex is only taboo if you actually give birth to the baby you create.
cackcon on July 8, 2009 at 4:01 PM
So 1% would go for a polygamous arrangement as long as their spouses didn’t cheat with someone outside the group?
cackcon on July 8, 2009 at 4:03 PM
Give it time. Weighing in on the other side of these debates, respectively, are NAMBLA (with Justice Ginsburg concurring), jihadis (along with their attorneys at DOJ), and the Democratic Party (see, e.g., the Generational Theft Act of 2009, Government Motors & Chrysler, and well, pretty much the entire platform of the party).
Either relativism will run its course to the most logical conclusion, or we’ll double back and restore some sense of decency in this world. I’m not placing any bets….
cackcon on July 8, 2009 at 4:10 PM
Concerning polygamy: As I said earlier, the New Testament specifies marriage between one man and one woman (see I Timothy 3); in Ephesians 5, that arrangement is compared to the Messiah and His Church — “the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body…Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.”
In a polygamous marriage, one man has multiple wives; that reduces the number of available women in the area, and that means that a lot of young men won’t be able to marry (unless they move away). The men who have the most wealth will be able to marry (and support) lots of women, and those men are likely to be comparatively old (because they’ve been around long enough to sock away a lot of money). It seems to me that if there are a number of polygamous marriages in the area, young men who aren’t wealthy won’t have much of a chance at marriage.
Concerning illegitimate children: Some years ago, I read an article by one of the former editors of the old Rampart magazine, a leftie-hippie magazine of the ’60s. Having grown up, he admitted that “free love” ends up being very hard on children — once society removes the stigma from bastardy, society ends up with a lot more bastard children, who suffer from not having parents who are married to each other. Being called a bastard certainly hurts, but as he pointed out, the stigma benefitted society as a whole. Today, some 20 years after I read that article, we now have about one in three (maybe more?) American children born illegitimate (the root of the word is “lex, legit” — law). When I was a teenager in the 60s, I knew of only one girl my age who had an illegitimate child. Just one. Now look around.
KyMouse on July 8, 2009 at 5:33 PM
Make that “lex, legis” I think — I haven’t taken Latin for about 40 years. Sorry.
KyMouse on July 8, 2009 at 5:39 PM
Barack Obama’s dad was a Muslim Polygamist.
You think I’m kidding, but I’m not.
scotash on July 8, 2009 at 10:25 PM
Comment pages: « Previous 1 2