A recent Gallup poll confirms what has been clear for quite a few years. The primary reason America is embracing same-sex “marriage” is not because we are more tolerant. It is because we are less moral.

Before you scream, “Homophobe!” please look at the evidence with me.

I’m not discounting that many Americans embrace same-sex relationships because they have an LGBT friend or loved one. To them, this is simply a matter of acceptance. Of love, equality, and fairness.

In that sense, America has become more “tolerant.” Much of the motivation is positive (although I heartily disagree with the outcome). We just want to be nice, accepting, and non-judgmental.

But there’s no question that our embrace of same-sex “marriage” is part and parcel of our slide toward sexual anarchy and away from biblical morality.

Part of a Bigger Shift

In Outlasting the Gay Revolution (pp. 58-65), I analyzed Gallup polls from 2001, 2013 and 2014. We now have a current poll released May, 2018. The downward trend continues, as expected.

In 2001, 40 percent of Americans found gay and lesbian relationships “morally acceptable.” By 2013, it had jumped to 59 percent. Today it stands at 63 percent.

But again, we must put this in context.

According to the 2013 Gallup poll, “Americans have generally become more tolerant of a series of moral behaviors over the past 10-12 years. This trend is particularly evident in views of gay and lesbian relations and having a baby outside of wedlock.”

Notice those two categories: “gay and lesbian relations and having a baby outside of wedlock.”

According to the 2014 poll, “On a list of 19 major moral issues of the day, Americans express levels of moral acceptance that are as high or higher than in the past on 12 of them, a group that also encompasses social mores such as polygamy, having a child out of wedlock, and divorce.”

So, the shift towards acceptance of homosexual practice (as indicated in the poll) is part of a shirt toward acceptance of “polygamy, having a child out of wedlock, and divorce.”

Clearly, the shift toward the embrace of same-sex relationships falls within the category of a shift away from morality. In fact, in recent years, the headlines repeating these Gallup polls tend to be a repeat the same theme: “New Record Highs In Moral Acceptability.”

This really means “New Record Lows.”

New Lows

Let’s compare American acceptance of homosexual relationships with acceptance of a number of other morally controversial topics:

• Divorce (from 59 percent in 2001 to 73 percent today)
• Having a baby outside of wedlock (from 45 percent in 2001 to 62 percent today)
• Heterosexual sex outside of wedlock (from 53 percent in 2001 to 69 percent today)
• Polygamy (from 7 percent in 2001 to 17 percent today, up from 14 percent in 2013).

As the 2018 Gallup report notes,

Americans continue to express an increasingly liberal outlook on what is morally acceptable, as their views on 10 of 19 moral issues that Gallup measures are the most left-leaning or permissive they have been to date. The percentages of U.S. adults who believe birth control, divorce, sex between unmarried people, gay or lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage, doctor-assisted suicide, pornography and polygamy are morally acceptable practices have tied record highs or set new ones this year. At the same time, record lows say the death penalty and medical testing on animals are morally acceptable.

Did I say the trend was continuing? Even porn is becoming popular.

Before You Boast …

Back in 2014 Gallup noted, “a few widely condemned actions, such as polygamy, have become slightly less taboo. Five percent of Americans viewed polygamy as morally acceptable in 2006, but that is now at 14%. The rise could be attributed to polygamist families being the subject of television shows — with the HBO TV show Big Love one example — thus removing some of the stigma.”

But of course! The same media that helped to remove the stigma surrounding homosexual relationships has helped remove the stigma of polygamy, polyamory, and incest. (This is all documented in Outlasting the Gay Revolution.)

So, before you boast about how enlightened America has become — how tolerant and diverse — put things in their proper context. Acceptance of homosexual relationships is part of our larger acceptance of divorce, pornography, sex between teens, sex between adults out of wedlock, and children born out of wedlock.

Is this really something to boast about?