Responding to my wish to separate out the views on same-sex marriage of under-30 “sectarians”
(evangelicals), Sherkat has kindly run the numbers. What they show, as
he points out on his blog,
is that the gap between this cohort and its non-evangelical peers is
actually greater than between sectarians and non-sectarians in older age
cohorts. So much for the myth of young evangelical liberalism on this
issue.

Up to a point. But it’s still the case that the under-30s are somewhat
more liberal on the issue than their evangelical boomer parents–and way
more liberal than over-60 evangelicals. So even though they look at
this point like over-60 non-evangelicals, the evidence is of a
liberalizing generational trend within the evangelical community. What
the data show is most segments of American society moving quickly (the
younger they are) towards acceptance of SSM, with a few–under the
influence of conservative religion–moving more slowly in the same
direction.

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