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This article is among many recently that have been citing Pew's ongoing research into political polarization. That's starting to bug me because although Pew pu
by thrownaway2424 10y ago
This article is among many recently that have been citing Pew's ongoing research into political polarization. That's starting to bug me because although Pew puts out a nuanced 100-page interpretation of their data, most news outlets can't be bothered with nuance. Of particular interest to me are underlying long-term trends that must necessarily be interpreted by Pew's method as "polarization". One of their ten questions to classify respondents into liberal or conservative bins is whether homosexuality should be accepted or discouraged. This question probably made as much sense in 1994 as a question about interracial marriage would have made in 1950. At that time interracial marriage was universally opposed by white people (96% opposed in a poll), but today it is universally accepted (87% not opposed in 2010). Acceptance of homosexuality is on a similar long-term trend. Many people were opposed to acceptance of homosexuality in 1994 for the same reason that 1950's white people were opposed to interracial marriage: those people were bigoted assholes. As those bigots get old and die the trend shifts dramatically to acceptance, and it's not going to shift back, ever. If you doubt this just look at the trends by respondent age. Practically all Americans under 30 years old are accepting of homosexuality.
So, given that long-term trend, it seems quite silly to say that liberals are now more consistently liberal, and that amounts to polarization. In the past there were people who were liberal on the environment or racial equality or other issues but were against gays, or were liberal on the environment and were against both racial and sexual equality. Those people are now dead. To call this polarization is to treat with moral equanimity the positions of tolerance and of hate, which isn't useful. There are not equally valid positions.
- paavokoya 10y ago>the trend shifts dramatically to acceptance, and it's not going to shift back, ever Although one could make parallels about Roman culture and homosexuality.. Once an empire fails, the religious vultures prey on the weak-willed and once again spread bigotry and hate (much like certain political candidates) as scapegoats for the failure of the empire.
- beamatronic 10y agoCan you turn this around and say that as long as the bigoted political candidates don't succeed, the empire hasn't fallen yet?
- bitwize 10y agoOne might say the Rpman Empire never really fell -- the locus of power just changed from Caesar to Jesus.
- grangerg 10y agoUmm... so you're saying that homosexuality is at the end of a civilization and religious vultures are at the beginning?
- pc2g4d 10y agoIn my view your dismissal of 1950's whites against interracial marriage as "bigoted assholes" is itself a bit of presentist bigoted-asshole-ism. If our approach to people in the past who held opinions we find detestable is to condemn them, how are we supposed to deal reasonably with people in our present who hold similarly detestable opinions? Is everyone who disagrees with you just a bigoted asshole? Is there no possible way to see such people as responding reasonably to the information they have, the situation they're in, and the pressures they're subject to? Sorry, I know it's not really relevant to the article. I just don't like the sense that everyone in the past who was racist or anyone in the present who's sexist or whateverist is just worthless garbage, or "bigoted assholes". People are more complicated than that. People holding opinions you hate can nevertheless be moral relative to their cultural environment, given the thoughts that made sense in their milieu. Forecasting the development of moral judgments decades or centuries before it happens and living according to that future standard is an impossible and pointless task. People should be judged according to the times they lived in, not according to our privileged, 20/20-hindsight present moment.
- j2kun 10y agoI like what you said, but I have to admit that it seems like all white people in the 50's were actively racist. Showing up to lynchings, keeping black kids out of school, government institutions barring black families from moving to suburbs. Where do you draw the line between "understandable," "reasonable" racism and bigoted assholes? At what point do they take responsibility for their actions? Verbal violence? Physical violence? Imprisonment? Murder?
- Torgo 10y agoThe next 25 years are going to be a total surprise for you.
- thrownaway2424 10y agoThe next 25 years are pretty much locked in based on the aforementioned opinions of under-30 Americans. You must have had a longer time scale in mind before you made that statement.
- dba7dba 10y agoYou never know. Once they get married and have kids, things change.
- thrownaway2424 10y agoThat's not what historical polling data indicates. Polls show that opinions move along with a birth cohort, not that they are standing phenomena of age brackets.
- dba7dba 10y agoPointing you to something another poster put up Homosexual acceptance in the US was higher in the 1920s than in the following decades until the late 1960s. Arguably, this cycles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history#1920s* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history#1920s*
- Animats 10y ago"it's not going to shift back, ever." Not necessarily. Homosexual acceptance in the US was higher in the 1920s than in the following decades until the late 1960s. Arguably, this cycles. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history#1920s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history#1920s