Gallup released the findings of their annual “Values and Beliefs” survey, which found that on many social issues Americans have the “most left-leaning” views to date.
Approval of divorce, same-sex relationships, having a child out of wedlock, and polygamy, have either tied past record high support or broken the record for acceptance. Record highs noted in their findings include support for birth control (91 percent), divorce (73 percent), same-sex relationships (63 percent), and pornography (36 percent).
“Americans continue to express an increasingly liberal outlook on what is morally acceptable, as their views on 10 of 19 moral issues that Gallup measures are the most left-leaning or permissive they have been to date,” said Gallup’s report. “No issues show meaningful change toward more traditionally conservative positions compared with when Gallup first measured them [in 2001],” it added.
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“On an absolute basis, Americans are most likely to view birth control, divorce and sex between unmarried people as morally acceptable. At least two-thirds say each of these is OK.”
Meanwhile, a Lifeway Research poll revealed that 81 percent of Americans are concerned about declining moral behavior in their country. “We are shifting very fast from a world where right and wrong didn’t change to a world where right and wrong are relative,” Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell said. “We are not all on the same page when it comes to morality. And we haven’t reckoned with what that means.”
“We are living in an age of great wickedness. Multitudes are enslaved by sinful customs and evil habits, and the fetters that bind them are difficult to break. Iniquity, like a flood, is deluding the earth. Crimes almost too fearful to be mentioned, are of daily occurrence. And yet men professing to be watchmen on the walls of Zion will teach that the law was designed for the Jews only, and passed away with the glorious privileges that ushered in the gospel age. Is there not a relation between the prevailing lawlessness and crime, and the fact that ministers and people hold and teach that the law is no longer of binding force?” Selected Messages, Vol. 1, page 219.