On Monday, Gallup published their annual Values and Beliefs survey, which details the beliefs of American’s on 21 specific issues. The organization started their annual Values and Beliefs survey in 2001 and has helped detail American’s beliefs ever since.
As expected, the year’s study revealed that Americans believe that gay and lesbian relations are morally acceptable. However, an unexpected study showed that pornography and polygamy are also morally acceptable.
The study revealed that America is split on whether or not abortion is morally wrong, half believing it is wrong, the other half thinking it is fine.
The study revealed that a majority of Americans believe that gay and lesbian relations are morally right, at a record high of 67 percent. Last year only 63 percent of American adults stated that they believe gay-lesbian relations are.
The Gallup survey also revealed a few shocking points surrounding family values in America.
The results stated that 76 percent of American adults believe that divorce is morally acceptable. The number climbed from 73 percent in 2017.
Shockingly, 43 percent of American adults also stated that they believe pornography is morally acceptable. Last year, in 2017, only 36 percent of American adults stated that they believed pornography was morally right.
Possibly the most shocking of all: 19 percent of American adults believe that polygamy is morally acceptable — only went up by 2017’s 17 percent.
Gallup’s Andrew Dugan noted that the increase in acceptance in pornography was due to the number of unmarried people in the United States.
“This year, the percentage of nonmarried individuals who find pornography morally acceptable rose 15 points to 50%,” he wrote. “Acceptance of pornography among married individuals, at 35% this year, is essentially no different from last year’s 37%. Meanwhile, 67% of men aged 18 to 49 this year say pornography is morally acceptable, a 14-point increase from last year,” Dugan wrote.
Despite these shockingly scary numbers increasing, there was one social view that virtually stayed the same from what it was in 2017. In 2017, 49 percent of American adults believed that abortion was morally wrong, while the 2018 survey decreased to 48 percent. The number of Americans that are impartial to abortion, and believe its “OK” was 43 percent, which was the same as 2017.
The survey also asked Americans what their beliefs on things like alcohol and marijuana are. 78 percent of Americans believe that there is nothing wrong with drinking alcohol, while 65 percent say that marijuana is just “OK.”
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Gallup has never included questions regarding alcohol and marijuana before so there is no prior data to compare.
This study interviewed 1,024 American adults and was completed from May 1-10. You can see the rest of the results here.