Support Among Young Americans Increases for Gay Marriage But Declines for Abortion

This is kind of interesting:

The institute calls this a "decoupling of attitudes." Support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights have traditionally gone hand-in-hand, and that's changing. Though young people today are "more educated, more liberal, and more likely to be religiously unaffiliated" than their parents--all factors traditionally correlated with support of abortion rights--they are not actually more likely to support abortion.

Here's one explanation for the decoupling: Youth support of same-sex marriage does not reflect an embrace of progressive values, but rather an expansion of conservative ones. Over the past several decades, the mainstream gay rights movement has aligned its priorities with fundamentally conservative institutions: Gays and lesbians want the right to get married, adopt children, and serve in the military. These family-friendly, all-American demands appeal to the conservative base, and work in direct contrast to the lingering stereotyping of gays as promiscuous Communists. Today, support for gay marriage is nearing 50 percent among even the most conservative of American youth, likeRepublicans and white evangelical Christians.

Reframing abortion rights as a family value is a trickier sell. Though about one-third of women will abort a pregnancy in their lifetimes--a figure that spans age, ideology, and religion--many who have undergone the procedure remain in the closet. And the increasing acceptance of gay marriage among conservatives may not help the cause. After all, the anti-abortion movement has now found a key ally in gay Republicans.

I think there's another reason why support for abortion is declining among young people - the Roe Effect. This is the theory that as pro-abortion parents off their potential offspring, there are necessarily more kids born to families that are anti-abortion. The pro-abortion forces are in effect taking themselves out of the gene pool.

And if they ever find the so-called "gay gene", you can bet gays will suddenly become a lot more anti-abortion than they are now.