Americans Becoming More Socially Conservative?
Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey has some interesting results.
Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones (“Fewer in U.S. Say Same-Sex Relations Morally Acceptable“):
Americans’ views about the morality of a number of behaviors and practices are largely stable compared with a year ago. However, significantly fewer say same-sex relations are morally acceptable, and more say the death penalty is.
Americans are most likely to say birth control is morally acceptable, with 88% holding that view. At least seven in 10 say the same about divorce, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and having a baby outside of marriage. Same-sex relations and the death penalty are in the next group, along with gambling, stem cell research and wearing animal fur, with between 60% and 69% of Americans approving of those five issues from a moral perspective.
U.S. adults are least likely to condone married men and women having an affair, human cloning and suicide.
My initial instinct was that this is just a minor variation in sampling, falling within the margin of error (either +/-4 or +/-5 depending on the question). But the graphic shows a rather steady trend:
While the changes are mostly rather modest, they certainly seem to be almost entirely in a conservative/less tolerant direction.
These results are based on Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 1-24. Gallup previously reported other findings from this list, including that 52% of Americans find abortion to be morally acceptable, tying the high point in the trend, and 42% believe changing one’s gender is, showing a slight decline from 2021.
From a longer-term perspective, Americans’ opinions of most of these issues have trended in a more liberal direction in the 20-plus years Gallup has asked about them.
Which isn’t the least bit surprising. While Republicans are often quite effective at creating wedge issues out of these controversies, the general trend is toward greater tolerance. Indeed, Gallup doesn’t even bother to poll on interracial marriage.
That Jones focuses on same-sex relations in his headline isn’t surprising: it is the largest year-on-year change.
Last year, a record-high 71% of U.S. adults said gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable. The figure has fallen back this year to 64%, returning to a level last seen in 2019. Still, Americans are far more likely to consider same-sex relations as morally acceptable than in the past, including 38% in 2002 and 54% in 2012. The figure has been 60% or higher since 2015.
Gallup has been conducting this survey annually for two decades:
Two things are immediately obvious. First, the general trend is upwards. More than half again believe same-sex relations are morally acceptable now compared to 2001. Second, year on year, numbers rise and fall. Whether this is simply a function of natural variations in sampling, variations in what’s going on in the news, or some combination is impossible to say from a single company’s survey.
Still, Jones notes,
The decline in the percentage of Americans believing gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable is mainly a result of fewer Republicans holding that view — 41% do now, down from 56% a year ago. The current figure is the lowest Gallup has measured for Republicans since 2014 (39%). Between 2020 and 2022, majorities of Republicans approved of gay or lesbian relations.
Democrats (79%) and independents (73%) continue to be much more likely than Republicans to find gay or lesbian relations morally acceptable.
On the one hand, this isn’t super surprising. Fox and many prominent Republican politicians have been banging the drum hard on LGBTQ issues of late. Then again, there’s a modest drop even among Democrats year over year. And Republicans went up in 2022—when LGBTQ issues were arguably being hammered even harder—so much of this is likely sampling error. And note that the margin of error among sub-samples is going to be significantly higher than for the aggregated sample.
There were only 231 Republicans, 268 Independents, and 195 Democrats surveyed. This was adjusted modestly in the weighting. Those samples are just too small to be confident in the year over years.
Jones concludes:
Americans’ opinions on the morality of various issues have mostly become more liberal over the past two decades, but the two biggest changes this past year, on same-sex relations and the death penalty, have been in a more conservative direction. Still, Americans are less conservative on these two issues than they were 20 years ago. Republicans, who increasingly identify as conservative on social issues, are largely responsible for the changes this year.
I’m just not all that confident we can make much of this single survey, systematic though the overall process may be. I’m quite sure of the larger trends, which have been apparent throughout these polls and have been replicated b pretty much every legitimate polling outfit. But the year over year numbers—and especially at the subsample level—just don’t tell us much.
I think that last graph you show (same sex relations) explains it – Republican media and politicians like DeSantis are working hard recently energizing “Conservatives” about anti-LGBTQ+ thinking, and people who listen to them are responding.
It won’t last, young people are growing up watching very different entertainment than what the alte cockers grew up to – shows like “Euphoria” are way outside the alte cocker experience.
That Republicans have gotten crazier and less tolerant isn’t a surprise to me. They’re in a media bubble that is getting increasingly more fixated on these issues.
This isn’t “Americans” (general) becoming more socially conservative. It’s Republicans going way off the deep end–so much so that it’s impacting the results.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/rick-warren-southern-baptists-women-rcna88964?cid=eml_mda_20230616&user_email=935d501153a55b29694ff3adc666d3fde01740d0de807df1774a0209b685d405
There seems to be a split developing in the SBC over lady pastors, the main body moving towards rejecting.
It appears conservative Christianity is largely following the GOP in a patriarchal direction. Politics and religion/culture seem to be largely merging.
I wonder if this isn’t a Simpson’s paradox where the issue isn’t so much Republicans getting more anti-lgbt as it is more moderate Republicans no longer identifying as Republican
While I agree that a single survey of this size is not enough to draw conclusions I think the results are likely real and would hold up to more/larger surveys. Conservatives have made culture wars their focus and it’s largely on trans issues. Building hate and fear has always been a strength of the conservative movement, they are good at it. They have been especially effective at messaging on what is going on with minors while I think progressives have been weak on messaging in this area. It has carried over to affect gays also. As an example you have drag queen story hour. They have spread panic over this as many really believe this is a grooming effort. Clearly it is not and I guess I get why some gay people thought it was a good idea but how could you not expect pushback? I think even some people ordinarily inclined to support gays wonder why this needs to be aimed at kids.
Steve
I’m swimming against an ocean’s worth of tide here, but I object to “conservatism” being used in place of “revanchism”*. Discrimination and bigotry is not inherently conservative. And while conservatism is marked by a resistance to and suspicion of change, it also engenders encouraging the stability of marriage and family rather than the single life, so same sex marriage could fall on either side of that divide. And I would contend that after six or seven decades of women participating in all aspects of society rather than being bound to her parents or husbands home, the conservative position is one of acceptance and strengthening this, not seeking some mythical ideal of three quarters of a century ago.
*Revanchism: a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status – and I’m referencing the “status” part of this.
@steve:
T are a small group, and many people do not know any, thus the easiest target – good for building momentum before proceeding to target the rest of LGBTQ+. After LGBTQ+, other minorities –
(the jooz are evergreen, for example). This is basically a fascist movement, that’s how fascists do.
@MarkedMan:
I think it’s well understood, nothing new, that “conservative,” in American politics, is a label, not a description.
@steve:
Victim blaming. Look what you made me do.
@steve:
When Mrs. Doubtfire came out in 1993, was it an attempt to “groom kids”? How about when my kid brother wore a dress for the farce the school put on as the junior high play a few years later?
@charontwo:
While I agree this is true, it’s left us with no word to use when we actually mean “conservative” in the sense of one seeking to strengthen existing institutions and norms rather than discarding or radically changing them. And I realize this is a lost cause, just as we no longer have words for the traditional meanings of “literally” or “bimonthly”. The pedant in me literally sobs. Twice a month. Or every two months. One or the other.
@steve: I think a lot of this specific backlash could be mitigated with tactics. The sincere and real concerns for the safety of children, however misguided, should be acknowledged. The defense too often comes across as, “never mind the safety of the children, what about the safety of the drag queens?” I think a side stepping of the issue would be a better tactic. “Remember that drag queens are first and foremost performers, and their training and experience makes them captivating storytellers. As a library our goal here is to help create a love of books in children and at the earliest age that’s all about storytelling.” If it’s pressed further, it would be better to point out that all employees or volunteers who interact with children are thoroughly vetted.
I’d be more interested in what people actually do rather than what they say to a pollster. I find that divorce rates and suicide rates are not lower in conservative states. The current ideal of “conservative” ideas is on his third wife and was too impaired to serve in the military. Portland is one of the lowest church attending cities in the country; Portland, ME, that is not OR. https://www.barna.com/research/church-attendance-trends-around-country/
Answers to polling translates poorly into action. Isn’t Gallup rather famous for getting election results wrong?
Is there a geographical breakdown for any of this?
@MarkedMan: In many ways, I do not disagree, and have often tried to define these kinds of terms more precisely.
But I will say that American “conservative” politics, or perhaps the right-wing of American politics, or Republican voters in general, are becoming more reactionary in the aggregate.
@MarkedMan: I think the issue is one of what does “conservative politics” when in the general discourse, versus what the word means in a technical sense.
The reality is, for example, the members of the Soviet Politburo in 1985 were actually quite conservative in a technical sense. But try explaining that to an American in 1985.
One could even note that on things like Social Security and Medicare, Democrats have a conservative perspective.
But, again, that doesn’t sound right.
But, it is the case, that in 1985 a “conservative” Republican would have been extremely focused on tax, the size of the federal government, and national defense. These days they are more worried about wokeness, trans issues, and other cultural topics, as these surveys keep noting.
@Slugger:
Actually, no. It is generally considered one of the best polling firms.
(And the fact that people are often hypocritical is just true).
@MarkedMan:
Oh, but we’re too precious for tactics. All liberals and progressives need to do is announce what is right in a loud, insistent tone while demonizing anyone who raises questions. It’s a very WW1 approach: if our morale is strong and our cause is just and we are fired up with enthusiasm, hey, who cares about machine guns?
It is going to take us decades just to get back to where we were five years ago.
@Michael Reynolds:
With enough élan of course, the line or hill one just must take because it is the moral objective can of course overcome all, rolling barrage and Maxim be damned.
However, the US Left – or rather the Bobo Intello Left that is so very visible and online dominant – rather more makes one think of the late 20s-through-30s Left in Europe, in an approach on currently fashionable wedge issues (in this current era, cultural) in which any ‘right deviationist’ to use a 30s bolshy term is clearly indistinguishable from a proper card-carrying Fascist and thus to be vilified on such terms, and entirely be lumped in with said proper Fascists. And that it is quite ‘right deviationist’ to take any position other than the proper maximalist one.
So in party political terms I rather feel it is quite a sort of 1930s Left reversion.
(although equally I would say a certain frange of the Republican establishment rather shows signs of committing the same kinds of errors as the Junkers in respect to thinking that the vulgarian leaders of reactionary populism can be manipulated to one’s own benefit and are safer than the centre-Left)
All in all, it feels in ways not terribly encouraging vaguely 1930ish.
@Steven L. Taylor: Well, if a poll is bringing ideologically inconvenient statistical insights, one should rather shoot the messenger (or pollster), then reflect on the challenge.
Corey Robin argues that conservatism has always been reactionary. IMHO convincingly. See The Reactionary Mind; from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
As to what conservatism is, I’d apply American Pragmatism, the thing is defined by what it does. For all practical purposes, and at the present time, political conservative = Republican. I’d use the three bar defined as symbol if I knew how on my phone.
@Stormy Dragon: Probably, but that only shows how nefarious the metaphysical forces of evil in the universe are. Decades before, Charlie’s Aunt was grooming the parents of the grandparents of our current children to be amenable to the grooming from stories like Mrs. Doubtfire as “mere farce.”
@Michael Reynolds:
Yes, and it took five or so of them for conservative evangelicals to get back to where they had been. But this is the nature of pendulum swings. Get the kids ready for a long hard push. Y’all not gonna be able to authorship your way back. This isn’t TV and the problem isn’t going to be solved in a half hour.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Amen to that. The joke that “Republicans are against whatever Democrats are for, updated twice a day” is no longer broke. Even some of the most powerful Republican office holders gleefully explain their policy positions with “… and it will own the libs!”
The nearest analogue to American religious conservatives is pretty obviously Iranian religious conservatives. But don’t tell that to either side.
@Stormy Dragon:
Or when members of my high school’s football team wore tutus for a performance of “Swine Lake” in a spoof show?
Well, there’s a difference between “same sex relationships” and LGBTQ… Recently, I’ve seen Douglas Murray and Andrew Sullivan make statements pushing the differentiation of gay from trans. Johns Hopkins just defined lesbian, without women, just a “non-man”. Pushbacks are happening, but not from the right.
Everything (or most things) shifting in one direction suggests either a significant trend, or a weird sampling bias.
But there’s one oddball: support for extramarital affairs jumped from 9% to 12%. Not sure what to make of that.
But then I look at the weighting. They start with 391 men and 314 women, and then apply weighting to even things out. That’s a lot of weighting. And when you look at age, race, party id and political lean, the raw numbers are all more old, white, Republican, and conservative than expected by their models, so they are being weighed less. But much more college educated.
It’s a weird sample set. College educated, old, white Republicans.
I have no idea if they accounted correctly for it. They’re professionals, so they tried, and they likely did a pretty decent job of it, but it just takes a few wrong assumptions about party id to put a skew on it. Are more of the “republicans” that called themselves independent during the trump years using the “Republican” label now? Missing a trend there could skew everything.
I have more faith in this poll than the recent “America’s youth are becoming right-wing” poll. The changes here make some sense. But, I’m wary.
ETA: Is this what their raw sample set always looks like? Or is this the year of old, white, well-educated, conservative men making excuses for why they are cheating on their wives?
@JKB: The Log Cabin Republican types have always wanted to throw the visible queer people under the bus, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in Andrew Sullivan’s pronouncements about trans people as being representative of any major movement in the vanilla gay population.
The Andrew Sullivans of the world are mocked and reviled by literally everyone who isn’t a conservative gay (the people using them will do it quietly, while they are useful). A bunch of “pick me” queers who will be shocked when the leopard eats their faces.
And, the John’s Hopkins “non-men” is just twits trying to be inclusive and fumbling and being given a spotlight. It’s not part of a larger trend or movement, other than people fumble shit all the time.
With all caveats in place, my one take is that the overtness of the transgender community is dragging gay support down. To be clear, I support many (not all), of what TG people are seeking, but they lose me when they think it is okay to show your genitalia in an opposite sex bathroom before one has physically transgendered.
@Raoul:
What bathroom are you frequenting where people are showing each other their genitals?
This seems more to me a case of a lack of understanding of special cause variation.
The long-run trend of the graph is… Up, then down, then up again, then down again, then up yet again. It’s absolutely not news to say that 2023 was down. Down after an up would be … Exactly keeping with trend.
As with all situations where control charts are used, overreacting to one measurement not in line with trend is just as much an error as not responding to an actual issue. You first must rule out the possibility that the single measurement upon which all this assertion is based is itself an error.
It’s fun to watch the overtness of the bigoted conservative community drag conservative support down in real time. Keep bringing those red herring bad faith arguments – don’t worry, you’ll keep losing.
Time for conservatives to show proof that their Moralistic Crusade against all LGBTQ is any different than their campaigns against left-handedness 70,80 years ago. The same catchphrases and appeals to authority were used then as now.. It’s all the same hogwash recycled for a new batch of knuckle-draggers.
And even if we want to just talk about Data Presented In This Thread… 18-34 accepts LGBTQ at a 78% rate, and so the conclusion that should be drawn is that overall national acceptance of LGBTQ is unavoidable.
@Stormy Dragon: This (mocking) is the type of attitude that will not advance TG rights and create a backlash. Being a jerk is not the way to advance a cause.
@JKB:
Fool – all the movement in this is a reflection of the Overton Window being pushed further rightward by the bigots in MAGAdonia. It not just your weak ass homophobia, but almost every single issue. Christ…MAGA is even weakening child labor laws. Is nothing sacred? The MAGA goal is gunfights in the street and kids dying in sweatshops, or 13 year old kids giving birth.
Dude, it’s America…you can be a bigoted moron if you choose. It’s your right. Just how about having the balls to own it?
@Raoul: You made a claim about behavior, and that claim was questioned, how is that being mocked?
What is the basis of your claim?
@Stormy Dragon:
I don’t think the trans woman who went topless at the White House celebration did much good for the cause.
@Steven L. Taylor: The mocking part was personalizing the issue and saying “showing each other their genitals”. That’s not what was stated and at no time I claimed to be a witness. I’m surprised you see the statement as a good faith argument to be honest. The genesis of the claim was this website a few months ago where a TG activist claimed the right to do precisely that.
You can’t separate the possible blowback on gay/queer/trans visibility with the utter collapse of straight white Christianity in this country.
We’re told that traditional Christians are tired of normal limits being pushed and that’s why they’re voting for Donald Trump who boasted about how great it was to grab women by the pussy
To paraphrase Harrison Ford, you can type this stuff in the media, but you can’t say it to someone directly without being told to fuck off and rejected. And there’s just a deep connection between the culture war (which exists only in the media and in conservative minds) and the total rejection by anybody with agency of conservative culture. I think the reason so many of these chuds support Putin is that they support the idea of having the right to go after somebody who rejects you, which Ukraine did to Russia.
@Raoul: I’m baffled by this:
Where have you seen this argument made? I know several transgender people, and have literally never heard anything like this, in fact very much the opposite.
@Raoul:
I’ve been in a lot of public bathrooms in my life and I just don’t even know how this situation would even arise, unless it’s like the ultimate dive, where the toilets are just sitting there out in the open.
The idea that propaganda works, that large groups of people can have their opinions directed and shaped by media is disconcerting. We all like to imagine that our opinions are the result of objective abstract reasoning.
But the sobering truth is we know deep down this isn’t true. A massive media campaign of anti-LGBTQ propaganda is doing its work.
Think about that elderly couple the other day who started screming at that little 9 year old girl, saying she was trans. Or those Moms For Liberty people who show up screaming at school boards.
Were they doing this 2 years ago, 5 years ago?
No, of course not. They probably were never openly tolerant of LGBTQ people, but they were passive in their intolerance. Now, as a result of the conservative propaganda efforts, they are emboldened to become a mob.
@Raoul: @Steven L. Taylor:
As usual, I’m late, but I still want to put the issue my way: Would someone who is transgendered and can speak with some actual authority please address this issue. It think this is one of those examples of what we in the argument construction business refer to using the technical term “made up shit,” but I have no expertise from which to draw given that I don’t look at/study/evaluate the genitalia of other people in the restroom. (And for the record, unlike Stormy, I am quite deliberately mocking you. I should be sorry for it, but I just can’t manage to for some reason.)
@Raoul:
Looks like “distinction without a difference” from this perspective. Pick one?
ETA:
Cool. It’ll be easy for you to do the citation then.
“Raoul” is having a big sad that the details of this poll show 72% of age 18-34 support LGBTQ rights, and his repeated trolling on this thread represents “throwing something against the wall to see if it sticks.”
I am mocking him because he deserves to be mocked. He’s wrong, and he should feel bad. He won’t, but he should.
I don’t spend a lot of time in women’s bathrooms, but I have extensive, indeed worldwide experience of men’s rooms. I don’t recall any man ever showing me his dick. Now, maybe in the Lady’s they’re flashing their privates on the regular, but my strong impression is that, no, women do not show each other their vaginas.
@Raoul: Dude, you said
Granted, you didn’t say it was happening to you personally, but you did say that it was happening.
@Raoul:
WTF are you doing in the bathroom? Are you one of those guys who makes it a point to try to see everyone’s penis while at the trough? Weirdo…
Meanwhile here in reality unisex bathrooms work fine across this country..
In your world this person would be forced to use the female restroom..
https://preview.redd.it/biqnicbsur2y.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=2ca667260a57f6e2ecaf60a4f36c0e364aea66b7
@Raoul:
What where? I’m going to need a link citation cause something like that would of caught my attention.
@Michael Reynolds:
Ah yes, the old ‘I don’t actually hate nigras and f*gs, I’m just innocently asking questions.’
I’ve heard that one before. Trans women are being murdered at a record rate, but I weep for the suffering, demonized question-askers. Poor babies lol.
These radical right extremist bigots and their question-asking enablers don’t actually care about children. They are blocking sensible gun safety laws as mass shootings continue to take the lives of school children and as gun violence has become the number one killer of American kids.
11,000 new cases of child abuse in the Illinois Catholic Church were just uncovered with barely any coverage and conservative media comma and no protests or boycotts to speak of.
They’ve just latched onto bashing trans people and drag queens, and flipping out over rainbows, in the name of “the kids” because the right’s propaganda hate machine has told them to, to distract from the fact Republicans have no positive agenda for fixing the real issues in America, from climate change and unaffordable housing to gun violence and income stagnation. It’s not much more complicated than that.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is snark par excellence. Haaaa.
Unisex bathrooms work fine except when Republicans are running around trying to look at everyone’s genitals – both adults and children.
@Gavin:..except when Republicans are running around trying to look at everyone’s genitals…
I have often stated that Republican’s want an official government crotch inspector to make kids drop their pants so that Republican officials can see what the kids have between their legs before they enter a bathroom.
Oh, wait, Republicans already have an offical government genital examiner.
@CSK: My thoughts, exactly. There’s a time when it’s acceptable to flash your titties (Mardi Gras comes to mind), and a time when one should seriously reconsider flashing your titties (while attending any kind of celebration at the White House).
@Jax:
Exactly. I know precisely zero women who would go topless anywhere except maybe on a secluded beach that allowed nudity.
Doesn’t this fool prancing around barechested on the WH lawn know that there are people just waiting for her to do that so they can say: “See? All trans people are like that.”
@DK:
Yes, yes, yes, they are evil. Got it. Agree with it. Probably agreed with it before you were born. Yes, they do bad shit. Yes, they lie.
So fucking what?
They are not the only people with power and influence and responsibility. Jesus Christ, libs/progs are the creative community, we are the intellectuals, and we’re getting outplayed by cretins. At what point are you prepared to contemplate the possibility that the good guys have been somewhat less than brilliantly effective? That maybe, sometime between now and the opening of the first concentration camps, we might want to start learning some new tricks?
Michael, I’ve thought for some time that many libs/progs don’t want to [can’t?] accept the reality of the sociopathy of The Other Side.
Republicans are all about power – period dot. The acting of evil is good to them and theirs because it shows to their own that they’re supporting the side of the powerful. [And the nihilistic subtext: Power is morality. If those Democrats are so weak that they can’t stop what I’m doing.. Then they deserve to experience the evil that I’m doing to them, and therefore because they actually deserve it, I’m a positive moral agent.]
The libs/progs who are legitimately caring people can’t step outside their own frame to realize that simply (appropriately) declaring/identifying Republicans as evil liars not only doesn’t win the game…. that stuff is only namecalling and thus isn’t even in the game that they’re playing.
So, have to out-sociopath the sociopaths… or, to put it in military parlance, F the Fing Fers.
How? For that I’ve got nothing. But I fully recognize the enemy.
This poll shows that the support for married folks having affairs went up 33%.. the biggest change on the chart by my eyes. Conservative indeed!
@Kazzy:
Well, Trump has them, so I suppose that makes it not only okay, but commendable.
@Michael Reynolds:
When Republicans have won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections and 72% of the youth voters who will soon control the country and its politics oppose gay rights.
Since the opposite is true, at what point are you prepared to contemplate the possibility that the cons/regressives aren’t actually political geniuses who are winning everything everywhere everyday all the time?
When slactivist keyboard warriors actually offer some serious, workable ideas on what those new tricks should be instead of just offering empty sniping, whining, criticizing, crying, hot air, doom, gloom, pessimism, negativity, fearmongering, and complaining.
Monday morning quarterback critique is easy. Talk is cheap. If you know better, then do better. Where’s the plan and when will you start organizing to execute it?
@Gavin:
The repeated suggestion by Michael Reynolds and others that liberals aren’t carefully, thoughtfully strategizing or doing anything at all on LGBT rights — or any issue of importance — besides calling Republicans evil is horseshit. A fake news bold faced lie worthy of Trump.
And a shamefully dismissive slap in face to tireless, dedicated grassroots organizers, staffers, and donors around the country.
May shock the extremely online to hear, but there are liberals who do more than tweet and comment on blogs.
@Michael Reynolds: The only time the left has actually managed to have a coordinated plan for something was the Montgomery Bus Boycott — and that was just a small segment of the left, under extreme oppression.
The left is about personal freedom, and given the space to actually have that freedom, the result is going to be a bit messy and not perfect. You’re going to have some moron flashing their titties at the White House and some other moron coming up with non-men because you have countless people trying to do the right thing, having the ability to do things, and inevitably some of those people are morons at that moment.
“Why doesn’t the left stop doing that?” is kind of a pointless complaint. You’re focusing on the thing that cannot change as if that’s going to change it.
“How does the left get a general message across, over the noise of a few idiots?” would be a more useful question and might lead to better rants.
——
“Those damned kids are on my lawn again!”
“Dude, that’s a park, not your lawn.”
@Stormy Dragon: I honestly think half of the angst over transwomen in bathrooms is that men don’t understand that women’s bathrooms don’t have urinals.
@Michael Reynolds: The re-replication of the attitude, approach of the montagnards in imagining or self-deceiving a concetrated geographically bourgeouis base is one that is broad seems rather deeply rooted.
Of course the activist élan shall triumph over any grinding electoral geographical entrenchement, it is a slap in the face and right deviationism to think otherwise.
@Gavin: it is typically useful and productive to not fall into the Intello habit of reification of abstractions, nor to believe one’s own ideological posturing. The rather ancient political maxim divide et impera really is quite useful…. your opposition has a rather better conception of using it, “wedge issues” as you call them. Of course this is “sociopathy” to you so it does rather seem you that glorious morally correct failure staking out the positions one must properly command, properly supported by activist élan rather than cold tactic, is broadly preferred.
@Gavin: Or when the reality of broad culture outside of intello bobo circles or the simple difference mechanics of bathroom and sanitry logistics intervene.
It is a fine illustration of utlimate and unnecessary blindness though, handing the very cudgel one later ascribes to the evil nature of the opposition.
I am 75. I live with old people, most of whom are pretty clueless about trans, nonbinary, etc, issues. But with so many out gay people, most have figured out that they have gay friends and family, and most are ok with it. In the meantime, as a volunteer mentor to high school kids, I spend a lot of time with teenagers and college students, including a few trans and non-binary kids, and they seem to be getting along fine, regardless of the opinions of their grandparents. Being confused about cultural shifts is normal. It takes power hungry politicians to turn it into hate.
@Gustopher:
This is so weird and ahistorical of a claim that I assume I am missing something?
A bar I used to frequent had a trough. If you needed to urinate you used the trough. Fuck that, I used the toilet stall. HHH Metrodome had the biggest urine trough I’ve ever seen. Dozens of yards long. Nope!
I am occasionally shy. If someone is about near I sometimes cannot pee. Cannot release the set of muscles required to empty my bladder. It’s a thing I am often incapable of doing even if my bladder is full and needs emptying. I’m pee shy sometimes.
It’s like communal showers as used to be the case in boys’ locker rooms at school. Basically enforced social nudity. Seriously, wtf?
Please tell me communal showers are no longer a thing. That’s just fucking weird.
Never went into the girls’ locker room but I assume it was the same. So sorry, ladies.
I am an inherently private person. I don’t want to be naked in front of anyone unless there is sex involved. I wandered onto a nude beach in Jamaica once by accident. I looked straight ahead walked down the shore. Your genitalia is your business and I don’t care to see unless we are in a romantic relationship.
Someone I met on the plane was on the beach. She hallooed and called me over. I waved back and approached. She was naked as a jay bird. I looked only at her eyes and nothing else. Only her eyes existed in my head.
We hooked up later but the nude beach thing was not the reason. An organic “I’m on vacation hook up.” In my head, at least.
The locker room scam is egregious. I’m in the camp that teens should not share a communal shower together. It’s weird and creepy and kinda cultish.
Normally, I am quite non-conformist as a rule and should be okay with public nudity, but I’m weirdly puritanical about public nudity. It doesn’t suit me. If it can be prevented it should he in my book. Not my business. I very strongly prefer not to see your genitalia.
High school gym class and high school sports forced me to endure communal showers. I hated that. I assume most folks do. It’s an extremely invasive right of passage. You are basically required to shower naked in front of your peers in a weird Spartan social experiment. But only half, only the boys.
Yeah, I did not like that. Hated that. Did it anyway. Wish I had not.
Looking back I should have objected and made a big deal about that. Wish I would have. There is no point to it beyond authoritarian obedience. Do what you’re told. Stupid tradition that serves no purpose.
Not comfortable with public nudity. Won’t look. You can’t make me. Not my business.
I’m all for private nudity, otherwise, when it is appropriate. I enjoy that a lot and embrace that completely.
I think of myself as a nonconformist generally, but I am not cool with public nudity. At all. Freaks me out. Not my thing.
@Gustopher:
Lol more horseshit.
Some here like to tell ridiculous bold faced lies about the left. It’s astonishing how many anti-Trumpers have that in common with Trump and his acolytes. Full of hot air, content-free complaining, and outright lies — sound and fury signifying nothing.
@charontwo:
I honestly don’t remember a time since 1980 when it hasn’t.