Gallup: Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There are some trends and numbers in here that are heartening, and some that are deeply troubling.

Also,

1. I'm assuming "extramarital affairs" refers exclusively to cheating and not open relationships/marriages, or even what Dan Savage would call "monogamish."

Adultery is adultery is adultery. I would hope most Americans would agree, but I don't believe I have the luxury of being surprised if I'm wrong. And

2. I'm surprised at the acceptability rate of pornography being so low. Sure, it's hardly a pleasant subject, but consider its levels of its popularity online, permeance in society, and economic impact. I think there are a few hypocrites in this polling sample.

As I'm pretty sure I've said before about this exact subject, believing that you have a habit that is morally wrong is not ipso facto hypocritical.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Adultery is adultery is adultery. I would hope most Americans would agree, but I don't believe I have the luxury of being surprised if I'm wrong.

Considering the social-libertarian leanings that this poll suggests, I have a feeling that you would get different results if you asked about consenting adults in a relationship having sex with other people if they have the explicit permission of their partner. I don't know if the approval rate would be very high, but it would probably be higher than 9%.

You probably would, yeah. Honestly, I kind of wonder how much that would differ based on whether or not the question was worded to include the phrase "consenting adults", which has started to strike me as something akin to the "it's my First Amendment right!" of sexual morality in terms of "what I'm doing isn't a serious felony, therefore nobody can criticize me"-ism.

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Agreed, but I'm not sure if there are THAT many people who consume pornography and feel totally disgusted by it. You can dislike it on principle, but I would be surprised if all of those people would use terms as strong as "morally unacceptable."
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You're definitely right that there's some hypocrisy going on here, but I know enough people who genuinely are disgusted with themselves for watching porn that I tend to assume at least slightly better of the public (on this particular question).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Adultery is adultery is adultery. I would hope most Americans would agree, but I don't believe I have the luxury of being surprised if I'm wrong.

Considering the social-libertarian leanings that this poll suggests, I have a feeling that you would get different results if you asked about consenting adults in a relationship having sex with other people if they have the explicit permission of their partner. I don't know if the approval rate would be very high, but it would probably be higher than 9%.

You probably would, yeah. Honestly, I kind of wonder how much that would differ based on whether or not the question was worded to include the phrase "consenting adults", which has started to strike me as something akin to the "it's my First Amendment right!" of sexual morality in terms of "what I'm doing isn't a serious felony, therefore nobody can criticize me"-ism.

Of course, "It's my first amendment right" is usually a defense for things that actually hurt people/a poor attempt at avoiding criticism, whereas "consenting adults" is a defense against arguments that typically boil down to "it's icky" in less childish sounding language.

Atlas Forum is one of the last websites I want to have this discussion on, and frankly America is one of the last countries I want to have this discussion in, so I'll just say that you and I have very different thresholds for what constitutes hurting people.

I also find is distutbing more people say abortion is okay than porn. Not that porn is really moral buy seriously how can someone say abortion is okay and porn is not? Odd. This is not about legality but moral acceptance. People are strange.

Scarlet touched on this already, but, yeah, while I don't fully agree with it, there's a strong feminist argument to be made that abortion should be accepted as necessary to women's social and economic equality and pornography should be rejected as incommensurate with it. A number of people I'm close to hold that position.

Millennials are not really a values group of people. They have the most out of wedlock babies in the U.S. generation, so this is not surprising. A lot of millennial women have 4 baby daddies in their lives. This is not surprising. There's a reason why this generation is the most whacked out, foolish generation in modern memory.

lol, classic bronz.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Adultery is adultery is adultery. I would hope most Americans would agree, but I don't believe I have the luxury of being surprised if I'm wrong.

Is it? You married? You know what arrangements couples have? You know anyone who's abusive partner refuses their consent for a divorce which stalls it in an uber-Catholic country and therefore their busy 'committing adultery' with the person who rescued from that abusive marriage? 'Adultery is adultery is adultery' is nothing more than a flippant observation from someone who's perpetually on the outside peering in.

Obviously there are situations in which culpability for a whole host of immoral behaviors can be diminished or absent. My point was that (in my belief) extramarital sex is intrinsically wrong regardless of who's agreed to allow whom to do what. Obviously there are different degrees of culpability, and offense given to different people or ideals has different saliences, but all I was saying was that I don't understand the act of extramarital sex to be qualitatively different based on who's agreed to let it happen. I'd have thought that would be obvious from context. I don't expect you to agree with me on this sort of thing and I don't know why you always seem so incensed when I don't agree with you. Please stop doing this. It's starting to feel like bullying.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm not shocked.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You're still reading an intimation into what I said that I clarified, or attempted to clarify, wasn't intended.

The fact that you remember that "issue" from eighteen months ago and I don't says way more about your attitude towards me than I could.

I haven't been "reading up in" a socialist Catholic theological "persona"; I've developed it myself and I'll have you know that in my actual relationships with other people it's made me more forgiving and allowed me to develop more sympathy for people who aren't like me. I'm sorry that doesn't come across in discussions on a political forum almost completely abstracted from what admittedly little ~adult life experience~ I do have, but I'm going to go ahead and say here and now that I'm not "better than this", I don't wish to be "better than this", and you're not going to make me "better than this" with your constant armchair criticisms of my personality or beliefs, which I "retreat" from because there is no point to engaging, BECAUSE WE HAVE ORTHOGONAL RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. So stop, please.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You're still reading an intimation into what I said that I clarified, or attempted to clarify, wasn't intended.

The fact that you remember that "issue" from eighteen months ago and I don't says way more about your attitude towards me than I could.

I haven't been "reading up in" a socialist Catholic theological "persona"; I've developed it myself and I'll have you know that in my actual relationships with other people it's made me more forgiving and allowed me to develop more sympathy for people who aren't like me. I'm sorry that doesn't come across in discussions on a political forum almost completely abstracted from what admittedly little ~adult life experience~ I do have, but I'm going to go ahead and say here and now that I'm not "better than this", I don't wish to be "better than this", and you're not going to make me "better than this" with your constant armchair criticisms of my personality or beliefs, which I "retreat" from because there is no point to engaging, BECAUSE WE HAVE ORTHOGONAL RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. So stop, please.

No. If you can't engage with what makes you uncomfortable, even where it pisses you the world off, then there's no point in you being here.

Welcome to ignore, jackass.