The Pew Research Center does ongoing surveys of the American public, and I’ve frequently used the results of the Center’s studies. Like the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the Pew Center is independent and unbiased. And that’s an important characteristic when tackling a subject like morality, because opinions on certain practices are often very strong.
Morality rests on a doctrine of right and wrong. It is a guide to proper and correct behavior. It involves judgments that are often based on religious beliefs, and immorality is often seen as a threat to the common good. Writing for the Pew Research Center, Jonathan Evans and Manolo Corichi state: “We asked about behaviors that are, at least in part, morally debated in society today.”
The authors said that they did not include things that virtually everyone would find immoral (like cannibalism or murder) or that people would universally find to be acceptable (like picking up litter or returning a found object to its rightful owner). They wrote, “… finding that Americans think many things are morally permissible doesn’t mean the public thinks everything is morally permissible.”
Marital infidelity
There was one item on the list that a majority of Americans — regardless of politics or religion —judged to be immoral: having an extramarital sexual affair. The authors point out, “Nine-in-ten U.S. adults say that married people having an affair is morally wrong. As expected, when survey results were broken down by gender, 91 percent of women found extramarital affairs to be morally wrong, and 89 percent of men agreed with that determination.
The report doesn’t attempt to explain the reasons for people’s opinions, but I’ll hazard a guess. For many, if not most, people, marriage originates with a solemn oath of fidelity, taken in a place of worship or before a Justice of the Peace. Therefore, a married person who has an extramarital affair is not only “cheating” on a spouse, he or she is also breaking a sacred vow. I believe that nothing else on the list is bound as extremely as fidelity within marriage.
Pornography
Possibly because of the First Amendment’s promise of freedom of speech (and expression, which was later added by a Supreme Court decision), pornography is difficult to define. In 1964, when trying to decide the outcome of Jacobellis v. Ohio, Justice Potter Stewart said, “I don’t know what pornography is, but I know it when I see it.” Yet 52 percent of those surveyed said that it is morally wrong. Fifteen percent opined that pornography is morally acceptable, and 32 percent believed that it is not a moral issue.
(Please note: Total percentage for this and other categories seldom add up to 100 percent because of rounding numbers and the fact that some respondents may choose not to respond to certain items.)
Abortion
In the United States, there has been a century’s-long debate about whether abortion should be legal. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion before fetal viability. This decision struck down anti-abortion laws in many states. In essence, the Court (in a 7-2 decision, Roe v. Wade) recognized a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
However, in 2022, the current Supreme Court, in deciding Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, stating that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and that abortion is illegal. According to the Pew survey, apparently 47 percent of respondents agree with the most recent decision. Twenty-one percent think that abortion is morally acceptable, and 31 percent indicated that it is not a moral issue. In this case, when looking only at political party affiliation, we see a dramatic split. While 71 percent of Republicans find abortion to be morally wrong, only 24 percent of Democrats share that opinion.
Political divide
More than any other issue, it is abortion that exhibits a strong division between our two political parties. But it’s not the only issue. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, while only 20 percent of Democrats share that view.
When we look more closely at the issue of pornography, we see that 65 percent of Republicans find it to be morally wrong, but 39 percent of Democrats agree. Members of the GOP are also more likely to oppose divorce (33 percent) as compared with Dems (13 percent).
When we turn the tables, we find that 48 percent of Democrats believe that the death penalty is morally wrong, but just 20 percent of Republicans agree. Thirty-five percent of Dems indicate that spanking children is morally wrong compared to 12 percent of Republicans. And 29 percent of Democrats think that it’s immoral to be extremely rich (e.g., to have more money than one can possibly spend, hence the expression, “obscenely rich”), but only 7 percent of Republicans share that viewpoint.
Seeing ourselves
The authors point out, “There is also a divide between the two partisan camps on whether Americans, as a whole, are morally good.” The survey instruments, based on a nationally representative sample of adults, reveal that 54 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents rate the morality and ethics of Americans as very or somewhat good. Democrats are less pleased with the nation’s behavior. Only 40 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents share that assessment.
As I looked through the other, seemingly innocuous categories, two drew my intention because I would have thought that they fit into the “universally acceptable” niche. However, eight percent of those surveyed had the opinion that using contraceptives was morally wrong, while 41 percent found that to be morally acceptable, and 51 percent believed that it was not a moral issue. And finally, apparently eating meat is a moral issue for some people. Four percent of the people sampled say that it is immoral, but 41 percent believe that eating meat is morally acceptable and 54 percent think it is not even a moral issue.
Next week, I’ll report how the views of our young adults compare to the elderly.
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Jim Glynn es Profesor Emérito de Sociología. Se le puede contactar en j_glynn@att.net.