{"id":78,"date":"2008-07-08T15:17:31","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T15:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html"},"modified":"2008-07-08T15:17:31","modified_gmt":"2008-07-08T15:17:31","slug":"abortion-vs-homosexuality-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html","title":{"rendered":"Abortion vs. Homosexuality: The Evangelical Age Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When talking about social issues of interest to evangelicals, we tend to lump abortion and homosexuality together.  But the politics are actually different, especially among young evangelicals.<br \/>\nI asked John Green of the Pew Forum to do one additional slice of the data from their Religious Landscape Survey. Here&#8217;s what he reports:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>62.3% of white evangelicals overall are pro-life<\/li>\n<li>69.2% of white evangelicals under the age of 30 are pro-life<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Young evangelicals are even more pro-life than their parents.<br \/>\nHowever, on homosexuality, the pattern is reversed.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>65.4% of white evangelicals say homosexuality should be discouraged <\/li>\n<li>54.9% of white evangelicals under 30 believe homosexuality should be discouraged<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Young evangelicals are more accepting of homosexuality than their parents. This gibes with a Beliefnet survey we did earlier in the year.  We asked evangelicals what the most important issues were to them.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>63.9% of those over the age of 60 said ending abortion was very important<\/li>\n<li>66% of those 29 and under said  ending abortion<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, on homosexuality&#8230;.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>61.8% of the oldest group said &#8220;stopping gay marriage&#8221; was very important<\/li>\n<li>34% of the younger group said so<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Again, they&#8217;re totally in line with their elders on abortion, and veering away on homosexuality.<br \/>\nBoth surveys show the same thing: <strong>younger evangelicals are just as conservative as their parents on abortion but increasingly liberal on gay rights.<\/strong>   Of course there are many other factors that ought to shape Obama&#8217;s positions on these two issues (not the least of which is what he actually believes) But politically, what this suggests is that if Obama wants to win young evangelicals, it&#8217;s more important that he tack to the center on abortion than on gay rights.<br \/>\nUPDATE:  Just got this data from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.barna.org\/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Home\">Barna Research<\/a>, the respected Christian pollster:<br \/>\nThe percent of Born Again Christians who said  &#8220;homosexual lifestyles&#8221; are a &#8220;major problem&#8221; facing America:<br \/>\n<u>Age<\/u><br \/>\n18-41  &#8212;  35%<br \/>\n42-60: &#8212;  52%<br \/>\n61+:    &#8212;  71%<br \/>\nBut on abortion, once again the younger folks are just as conservative as their parents:<br \/>\n18-21 &#8212;  69%<br \/>\n42-60 &#8212;  72%<br \/>\n61 +   &#8212;  67%<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When talking about social issues of interest to evangelicals, we tend to lump abortion and homosexuality together. But the politics are actually different, especially among young evangelicals. I asked John Green of the Pew Forum to do one additional slice of the data from their Religious Landscape Survey. Here&#8217;s what he reports: 62.3% of white&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Abortion vs. Homosexuality: The Evangelical Age Gap - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Abortion vs. Homosexuality: The Evangelical Age Gap - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When talking about social issues of interest to evangelicals, we tend to lump abortion and homosexuality together. But the politics are actually different, especially among young evangelicals. I asked John Green of the Pew Forum to do one additional slice of the data from their Religious Landscape Survey. Here&#8217;s what he reports: 62.3% of white&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-08T15:17:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Abortion vs. Homosexuality: The Evangelical Age Gap - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Abortion vs. Homosexuality: The Evangelical Age Gap - Steven Waldman","og_description":"When talking about social issues of interest to evangelicals, we tend to lump abortion and homosexuality together. But the politics are actually different, especially among young evangelicals. I asked John Green of the Pew Forum to do one additional slice of the data from their Religious Landscape Survey. Here&#8217;s what he reports: 62.3% of white&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-07-08T15:17:31+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html","name":"Abortion vs. Homosexuality: The Evangelical Age Gap - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-07-08T15:17:31+00:00","dateModified":"2008-07-08T15:17:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/07\/abortion-vs-homosexuality-the.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Abortion vs. Homosexuality: The Evangelical Age Gap"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}