Pew Research:  What Do Americans Consider Immoral?

People were asked whether a variety of activities are morally wrong.  They missed some activities that normal people1 consider to be morally wrong, such as:

  • Painting over wallpaper, rather than stripping the wall.
  • Fraudulently dressing by stuffing a bra with tissues or a sock in the trousers.
  • Using glue traps for mice.
  • Deceptively serving non-alcoholic beer or decaffeinated coffee
  • Calling anything milk that didn’t come from the tits of a mammal.

This is turning into  a list of grievances, so let’s go to the Pew survey results.

A different Pew Research survey found that 1 in 5 Americans don’t believe in God or a ‘universal spirit’.   What does ‘morally acceptable’  mean to those people?  I could say to ‘us’, since I’m in that camp. 

Only 2% of Americans think it’s morally acceptable for a married person to have an affair.  That’s encouraging.  Even if some double digit percentage of married people have affairs, at least they know it’s wrong, so their is room for redemption.

Follow-up questions would be interesting.  52% say that viewing pornography is morally wrong.  What about viewing saucy photos in the bra section of the JC Penney catalog or topless indigenous women in the National Geographic magazine? 

Jimmy Carter’s ‘lust in my heart’ attitude must come into play, because if it’s okay to buy a bra, it must be okay to look at the catalog and those Ubangi women are sporting flapjacks which aren’t appealing to most men.

If viewing pornography is morally wrong, what about being in porn or the distribution of porn?  If people were pressed on the question, I bet it comes down to men are bad and women are exploited.  Would Democrats or Republicans be more likely to treat women as competent adults who like sex or view OnlyFans as a utilitarian method to make the most money with the least effort?

The partisan breakdown says that 20% of Democrats view homosexuality as morally wrong. 

Drill down into that.  Most people don’t care what you do, they just don’t want to hear about it.  Be as flamboyant as you want, but stop with the books in the middle school library celebrating the teenager who learned to suck dicks in the bathroom at the bus station and the sexual deviant parades.

I got it.  I forgot about Black folks and Hispanics.  Many are Democrats and they aren’t down with the queer stuff.

Democrats and Republicans agree, at about 16%, that drinking alcohol is morally wrong.  What’s that about?  Evangelicals and Mormons for the Republicans, but there aren’t enough Muslims to explain the Democrat side.

I’d also be interested in the rationale for it being morally wrong to be extremely rich.  It should make a difference how a person became extremely rich.  Elon Musk built the space flight and electric car markets with innovative technology that benefits everyone.  JK Rowling got young people to read substantive books.  Bill Gates brought computers to the general public by building Windows to run on generic computers so it’s cheap and easy, and he gave away billions of dollars. 

Is Bill Gates a bad person?  Yes.  That was rhetorical.  Instead of supporting ill-conceived initiatives, he could have improved Windows and MS Office.

1 By ‘normal people’, I mean me, but I’m sure other people have specific issues that they consider moral.