In the wake Barack Obama’s resounding victory on a socially liberal line and the unprecedented success of gay marriage in the referenda in Maine and Maryland, we’re going to hear calls for the abandonment of social issues. As a Christian, I do not think ceaseless talk about homosexuality is the best way to spread the gospel of love. As a citizen, I view a culture of divorce as a greater problem for the common good. If I had my bones, I would have socially conservative candidates act like Robert McDonnell in his race for Virginia’s governorship: Hold the line, but do not rhetorically escalate. Quietly move forward a culture of life.
That said, abandoning social issues will do no great favors for the Republican party. As I’ve said before, the General Social Survey shows that young voters—who through the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s were the most pro-choice cohort—became the most pro-life cohort around the year 2000 (even more pro-life than senior citizens). This difference in opinion is massively amplified by an “intensity gap” between pro-life and pro-choice young people. A 2012 NARAL survey found that 51 percent of pro-life voters age 30 or younger feel abortion is a very important issue in determining their vote while only 26 percent of their pro-choice peers feel the same way. Pro-life young people not only outnumber pro-choice young people in aboslute terms, they overwhelm two-to-one in terms of commitment to the issue, a result so depressing for pro-choice activists that it prompted Nancy Keenan, NARAL’s head, to resign.
The winds are blowing in a different direction on same-sex marriage, to be sure: 37 percent of young Republicans favor gay marriage, up from 28 percent eight years ago (yet still far below the 63 percent support among young people in general). The headline numbers do not tell the full story. At least before yesterday, same-sex marriage historically receives less support—about seven points less—at the ballot box than on opinion polls because voters who oppose same-sex marriage are reluctant to admit their opposition to an interviewer. But is support for same-sex marriage uniformly overstated? If respondents lie because they feel social pressure to support same-sex marriage, those who feel the most social pressure (i.e., young people) are likely to be the cohort in which support is most radically overstated. Same-sex marriage proponents have learned to mistrust opinion polls, but have failed to absorb the lesson that polls of young people are likely to be the least reliable of all.
Gay marriage has its own intensity gap, a fact that underlines how polls systematically overstate same-sex marriage support. An ABC/Langer Research Associates poll found that 65 percent of conservatives reacted in a strongly unfavorable way to Obama’s same-sex marriage announcement while only 52 percent of Democrats responded in a strongly favorable way. Some of those Democrats just don’t feel strongly about the issue; others are the people who really disagree with Obama but won’t admit as much to pollsters. The 13-point difference reflects a basic imbalance in the debate: opposition to same-sex marriage is much firmer than support for it, and proponents are going to have an increasingly difficult time converting those who have held out this long. The hope that a national debate on same-sex marriage will inevitably advance its cause is also cast into doubt by the fact that during campaigns on same-sex marriage questions, we haven’t seen a net shift in opinion one way or the other. In short, we should not be surprised to see the increase in youth support stop when the issue leaves the headlines (or when young people move off campuses and into the suburbs where there is less social pressure in favor of the elite consensus).
As per usual, the inevitable calls to abandon social issues will have more to do with the preferences of individual pundits than a sober reading of the facts.
Update: Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, posts a chart at National Review showing that social issues, “ran better than the GOP headliner in the eight states listed, with the exception of Florida.”
November 7th, 2012 | 9:15 am
[...] Is it Time to Abandon Social Issues? – Matthew Schmitz, First Thoughts [...]
November 7th, 2012 | 10:09 am
Matthew Schmitz –
Well, that didn’t happen in Maine, Maryland, Washington, and Minnesota this year. Seven points of difference would have flipped the outcome in all of them. Two points would have done it, even, in a couple cases. Overall, the polling seems to have been pretty accurate, and certainly didn’t undercount opposition much, or overcount support.
E.g. in Minnesota, polling showed 45% for-52% against-3% undecided, and the vote came out 51% against. Or in Maryland, with 49% for, 39% against, 12% undecided. And the vote came out 52% to 48%.
The evidence against a net shift you cite is from 2010, but it seems things have changed a bit in the intervening two years.
November 7th, 2012 | 10:50 am
Assisted Suicide lost in Massachussetts: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/11/07/backers-mass-doctor-assisted-suicide-concede/oXZDcgOUbqwhlqzb63FSPO/story.html
November 7th, 2012 | 10:58 am
Here’s a thought experiment. What if the Republicans maintained its current pro-life positions but gave up on marriage? Would this erode the base or broaden it? Game theory would suggest this if such a strategy wins more votes. But of course, would a move to the center of social issues win more votes?
November 7th, 2012 | 2:33 pm
If the Republicans deem the marriage issue a political loser, the Republicans then become useless insofar as I am concerned. I will not abandon opposition to genderless “marriage” even if, like legalized abortion, it becomes the law in all 50 states.
November 7th, 2012 | 3:04 pm
[...] Matthew Schmitz: In the wake Barack Obama’s resounding victory on a socially liberal line and the unprecedented success of gay marriage in the referenda in Maine and Maryland, we’re going to hear calls for the abandonment of social issues. As a Christian, I do not think ceaseless talk about homosexuality is the best way to spread the gospel of love. As a citizen, I view a culture of divorce as a greater problem for the common good. If I had my bones, I would have socially conservative candidates act like Robert McDonnell in his race for Virginia’s governorship: Hold the line, but do not rhetorically escalate. Quietly move forward a culture of life. [...]
November 7th, 2012 | 3:13 pm
It’s time to change how social conservatives fight for marriage. We should fight transhumanism and postgenderism and genetic engineering of designer children, and fight to preserve natural reproduction and equal reproduction rights.
November 7th, 2012 | 3:34 pm
John Howard,
Why don’t you start by opposing in vitro fertilization?
November 7th, 2012 | 4:12 pm
The problem with discussions like these is that there is a difference between what should be done because it is right and what makes sense politically. For true social conservatives, dropping opposition to same-sex “marriage” is not an option. For Republicans, however, there is a winning strategy in dropping opposition on the marriage question and some other “social issues” and strengthening its pro-life position. That alone, however, may not be enough. The party should also consider embracing immigration reform and shedding its extreme libertarian elements, both of which would strengthen its appeal with Catholics.
November 7th, 2012 | 4:30 pm
Well, I do oppose IVF. But that would be a very difficult place to start, since so many people have used it and been born from it, and there is perhaps a right to use it within the penumbras of medical privacy and marriage rights. But there is no right to reproduce with someone of the same sex, or to change sex and reproduce as the new sex. We should start with banning that, because no one uses it yet, and everyone agrees it would be ridiculous and unethical and dangerous, so it would be easy to ban. Then, maybe it will be easier to ban some other unethical practices like gamete donation and surrogacy and maybe IVF too.
The incremental approach is proven, trying to ban everything all at once is a non-starter.
November 7th, 2012 | 5:49 pm
“The party should also consider embracing immigration reform and shedding its extreme libertarian elements, both of which would strengthen its appeal with Catholics.”
Absolutely, the party should kick out the Libertarian state’s rights atheist materialist elements, and return to it’s abolitionist roots of protecting human dignity and equality.
Stop worrying about abortion and birth control for a while and fight to preserve natural reproduction rights and equality.
November 7th, 2012 | 6:32 pm
I don’t know where they come up with those stats about young folks being pro life but if you look at the election data they must have been surveying people on the moon.
And any politician damned fool enough to oppose IVF for any reason had better look for an honest living. You saw what happened to poor Mourdock. What happened to him would nothing compared to anyone espousing that position. No one opposes it who has any influence and to oppose it is to lose all influence.
November 7th, 2012 | 8:32 pm
I agree Chuck, trying to ban IVF would be very unpopular and unreasonable. I’m not sure why David Nikol raised the issue. It’s one thing to believe, like the Pope does, that IVF hurts human dignity and leads to commodification, and quite another thing to say we should prohibit it. I don’t think we should prohibit IVF, even though I oppose it. Same with sperm donation and surrogacy. But I DO think we should call for prohibiting genetic engineering of children and attempting same-sex procreation using stem cells or some other method, and transgendered reproduction. Those things would just be too expensive and unethical and are totally unnecessary, and there is no right to do it, unlike having a baby with your spouse using a medical procedure like IVF. One is medicine to enable people to do what healthy people have a right to do, and the other would be manufacture. One makes progeny, the other would make products, children of a lab sequence, not of a mother and father.
November 8th, 2012 | 1:54 am
Good article, you’re one of the few people that really get it regarding the social pressures to support gay marriage when you’re young, especially in college. Having graduated from college 5 years ago, it has been a relief to be out of that environment where that issue seems to be unavoidable, popping up in conversations often. The pressure is tremendous to support it and it’s extremely difficult to take a stand against it, or else people will look at you like you’re worse than Hitler. It’s especially difficult with all the young single beautiful people at college and you think “if they think I’m like a racist bigot, I’ll never get their phone number.”
November 8th, 2012 | 12:16 pm
John Howard –
It seems like many people on this site oppose divorce – particularly no-fault divorce laws – but it would be very hard to fight now… so they were focusing on same-sex marriage. See, e.g., the comment thread here.
Is this yet another strategic retreat?
November 8th, 2012 | 12:49 pm
It’s strategic, but not a retreat. It’s the same as how gay rights activists took what they could get with DP’s and CU’s back in the 90′s, rather than demanding marriage back then. It’s called an incremental approach, and it works.
November 8th, 2012 | 12:51 pm
Ray
It seems like many people on this site oppose divorce – particularly no-fault divorce laws – but it would be very hard to fight now… so they were focusing on same-sex marriage. See, e.g., the comment thread here.
Is this yet another strategic retreat?
Or is a better term ‘strategic substitution’? Divorce is supposedly a huge threat to marriage, yet ‘defend traditional marriage’ almost always means in the political setting attacking gay marriage which is something like 3% of all marriages at most. IVF is attacked here, yet the political movement has been to oppose research on discarded IVF cells concentrating on the ethics of such research while almost totally ignoring the discarding part…(in other words, it’s ok if an IVF clinic flushes 50 fertilized eggs down the drain each month, but if 3 out of those 50 are used in any type of research that’s a big deal). Even abortion tends to buzz around side issues like partial birth abortions or late term abortions which have great emotional aand propaganda impact but in reality are a minimial portion of all abortions….which is incoherent if you take pro-life rhetoric seriously…an abortion at 9 months should be treated no differently than one at 1 month…in fact making a big deal of late term abortions actually makes a pro-choice argument for Roe which leaves early term abortions untouched (which is the vaste majority of abortions) leaving only late term ones subject to regulation.
The pattern seems to be here that ‘social conservatives’ generally means people who pick on issues that are ‘hot button’ but have little to do with the actual morals of ethics of society.
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