Tag Archive for: millennials

Shocker: Gen Z’s Support for Same-Sex Marriage Falls Precipitously

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Gen Z is said to be the most LGBTQ generation in American history, but a new poll shows young people’s support for a pillar of the sexual revolution has fallen precipitously.

Gen Z’s support for same-sex marriage has plummeted by 11 percentage points in two years, according to a new survey released last Thursday by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life. “At one time, the issue of same-sex marriage sharply divided Americans by age, with younger adults expressing the most intense support and older Americans far more opposed,” states the survey. “There is some indication that this generational gap is contracting, with Gen Z adults expressing lower support for same-sex marriage than they once did.”

Gen Z now supports same-sex marriage by a 69% margin, but “[a]s recently as 2021, eight in 10 (80 percent) Gen Z adults reported supporting same-sex marriage,” the poll notes. “There is no evidence of a similar drop among any other generation.”

America’s youngest generation, Gen Z is defined as those born since 1997. The Supreme Court discovered the “right” to same-sex marriage in the Constitution only in 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Gen Z would be the generation most likely to have been raised by a same-sex married couple.

“Today, Gen Z adults are not much more supportive of same-sex marriage than are baby boomers,” says the poll.

In fact, Gen Z is less likely to support same-sex marriage than their older siblings, the millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996). The survey found 73% of millennials back redefined marriage, compared with 69% of Gen Z, 65% of Generation X, and 61% of Baby Boomers.

Overall, 66% of Americans support same-sex marriage, while 31% somewhat (13%) or strongly (18%) oppose redefining marriage, according to the survey.

The numbers came as a surprise even to those who study the subject intently. The often-erudite Brad Wilcox, professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, replied with one word: “Whoa.”

“I didn’t have ‘Gen Z supporting same-sex marriage less than Millennials’ on my 2023 bingo card,” said another commentator. Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias acknowledges that “we now have a good amount of evidence that Zoomers are gonna be more conservative than Millennials” but writes off the same-sex marriage finding as a “statistical fluke.”

Yet the poll would fit with other polls showing the LGBTQ agenda losing support:

Gen Z’s reduced support for same-sex unions does not come from their rejection of homosexuality; younger Americans are the most likely to say they identify as something other than heterosexual. Roughly 3% of all Americans identify as gay or lesbian, but 23% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ — four times higher than Generation X. A whopping 31% of Gen Z women identify as lesbian, bisexual, or “something else,” the study states.

That sexual “fluidity” impacts Gen Z’s left-leaning politics, AEI said. “Sexual identity is strongly associated with political ideology, especially among younger Americans. Young liberals are far more likely than political moderates or conservatives to identify as something other than heterosexual,” the study notes. “Nearly half (48 percent) of liberal Gen Z women and 29 percent of liberal Gen Z men identify as gay or lesbian, bisexual, or something else. Just over half (51 percent) of liberal Gen Z women identify as heterosexual or straight, compared to 69 percent of liberal Gen Z men.”

Politics also impacts one’s view of whether same-sex attraction is a choice: 67% of liberals believe sexual attraction is innate, inborn, and immutable, while 51% of conservatives say environmental factors hold the greatest influence over sexual preference. Most Gen Z women (54%) say sexual orientation is fixed and genetic, compared with just over one in three (38%) of Gen Z men.

Experts cautioned that the surface-level numbers do not explain the reasons that moved Gen Z’s hearts.

“There is really no way to tell from these data why their support has declined,” Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of The Ruth Institute, told The Washington Stand. “It is possible that this is not uniquely about declining support for same-sex marriage: It could just be declining support for marriage itself. No firm conclusions are possible, based on what we see here.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Gen Z Traded Church For ‘A New Religion,’ Faith Leaders Say

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  • A recent study found that 48.5% of Gen Z identifies as non-religious, atheist or agnostic, and religious leaders have a lot of thoughts about the reasons behind the decline in faith.
  • Gen Z’s mental health has declined along with their faith, as recent studies found that Gen Z reports the highest level of mental illness and suicidal ideation compared to other generations. 
  • “[I]t’s not that Gen Z isn’t religious, it’s that they picked a new religion,” Joshua Mercer, co-founder of the CatholicVote, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Nearly half of Generation Z does not identify as religious, according to a new study, and religious leaders that spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation said the trend is not surprising because they have substituted church for “a new religion.”

Data published this week by the Cooperative Election Study found that 48.5% of Gen Z identifies as either agnostic, atheist or nonreligious, a 3% increase from the previous year and another study from last month found that only 31% believe religion is “very important.” While the data did not delve into what has caused the rift between young people and religion, several experts that spoke with the DCNF had similar ideas about what is behind the split.

“[I]t’s not that Gen Z isn’t religious, it’s that they picked a new religion,” Joshua Mercer, co-founder of the CatholicVote, told the DCNF. “They have fervent beliefs and rituals, they have their symbols and sacraments, and they definitely purge their ranks of ‘blasphemers’ or anyone insufficiently dedicated to their faith. Look at how every corporation rushes to embrace the rainbow flag every June and look at how people adorn their social media platforms with symbols to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Covid vaccination, Ukraine, or climate change. They are definitely evangelizing, [i]t’s just not Christianity.”

Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at the Family Research Council made similar observations but also pointed out to the DCNF that the withdrawal from the church by younger generations has been happening for a while.

“I think the reality is that those who were identifying as religious were doing so more for cultural reasons than out of theological conviction,” Backholm said. “As the culture becomes more hostile to Christianity, for instance, and it’s not popular, you are seeing people not do so when there is not a social reason because a lot of their identity wasn’t theological in the first place.”

As faith has declined for Gen Z, so has mental health, as recent studies found that Gen Z reports the highest level of mental illness and suicidal ideation compared to other generations. In 2022, a study revealed that 42% of Gen Z reported being diagnosed with a mental illness and 70% said that their mental health has gotten worse since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joseph Capizzi, executive director at the Institute for Human Ecology, told the DCNF that “loneliness, despair, unhappiness, and declines in worship and belief are connected.”

“This is something people have known for centuries, long before the rise of social science. For instance, Christians have long believed that hope requires more than material progress,” Capizzi said. “Believing in ‘progress’ — which is always ambivalent — cannot be a ground of hope; it will lead to despair. Instead, we must have experiences of great love to give our lives meaning. That can help explain why in an age of unprecedented material affluence we have so much hopelessness.”

Backholm agreed with Capizzi, saying that while mental health is a “complex question” the two things were “absolutely” related. He explained that in recent years the message “follow your heart” has backfired on Gen Z especially because they have “thrown themselves into that effort more zealously than any generation before them.”

“Gen Z has believed that following your heart will make you happy and they are just proving that it does not,” Backholm said.

The solution to the decline, according to Backholm, is to stop trying to “market Jesus” to young people who are actually “craving authenticity” and “purpose.” While Capizzi restated that “belief isn’t going away” but going to a different place and encouraged churches and people of faith to draw Gen Z to faith by giving them the space to encounter the love that they are “seeking.”

“As Pope Francis always reminds us, Christianity is first an encounter with a person, Christ,” Capizzi said. “People have to be drawn to faith by encountering love. Otherwise, our age of despair and loneliness will continue indefinitely.”

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Nearly A Third Of Americans Rank Evangelicals As The Most Unfavorable Religion: POLL

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

FORMER REP. BOB BARR: ‘The Dumbest Generation’ Grows Even Dumber

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In 2008, Mark Bauerlein wrote “The Dumbest Generation, How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.” Judging by events in the intervening dozen years (and especially in recent months), it appears that assessment was premature and perhaps even too kind.

Bauerlein correctly identified overreliance on the internet and social media (then still in its infancy) as the primary culprits for Millennials losing their ability to think, learn and communicate coherently. What his analysis perhaps did not anticipate is the number of adults who have come to encourage, empower and support Millennials in these efforts. It is almost as if adults in government, the news media and academia are competing with Millennials for the title.

Consider, for example, the issue of providing college students with “safe spaces,” where they can shelter from the horrors of people, ideas and principles they consider “offensive.” The students may be the ones pushing for these accommodations, but it is the adult college administrators who cave in and make it happen.

Young protesters in Seattle may “occupy” a sector of that once-respected city; they may scream “police brutality” and call for the police department to be “defunded.” Their  demands, however, would amount to little were it not for the city’s clueless Mayor Jenny Durken, who lauded the young occupiers as “patriots,” and her namby-pamby police chief, Carmen Best, who decided that barricades which had protected one of her department’s precinct headquarters should be removed as a “gesture of trust” to the mob.

While adult elected enablers of today’s young mobs predominate in west coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, counterparts are found across the country. New York’s dynamic duo of Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly praise and encourage the demonstrators, even as they offer virtually no support for police who are left to deal with the looting, arson and violence in the streets. Meanwhile, Cuomo’s narcissistic brother, CNN commentator Chris Cuomo, muses on air that protesters need not be either polite or peaceful.

On the ground in Seattle’s mob-occupied zone, a collegiate-type “safe space” was set aside, but only for individuals with “black ancestry” or who “have experienced oppression because [they] are black.” In an interesting role-reversal, news reports noted that this open-air “Black Healing Space” was enforced against non-black interlopers by young whites.

The profound historical and cultural illiteracy of these young mobs repeatedly is confirmed by actions such as their indiscriminate destruction of public statues simply because they are, well, public statues. Reasoning with demonstrators who have shown themselves incapable of distinguishing between statues of musicians like Stevie Ray Vaughan and those memorializing Confederate civil war generals would be an obvious waste of time.

In Lincoln County, Oregon, officials decreed that black Americans do not have to wear medical masks otherwise required for all citizens, because requiring African Americans to do so would in some way perpetuate “racial stereotypes.” Truly, there would be little point in arguing with adults spouting such nonsense; they have thrown in with the children.

The depth to which these “adult Millennials” and their “true Millennial” cohorts have descended in their drive to protect themselves (and our country) from reality, is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the wrath just recently directed against “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling.

Rowling’s “sin” was to publicly explain that only biological women menstruate, not men who had “transgendered” to women. Adult detractors were not only angered by Rowling’s refusal to kowtow to the New Age gender orthodoxy; they reportedly were deeply “devastated” by the horror of her words.

One such person is a teacher at the highly regarded Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Devin Michelle Bunten. Ms. Bunten penned a New York Times op-ed declaring that people, like Rowling and President Trump, who employ terms such as “male” and “female” are “erasing” transgendered individuals and simply perpetuating what she considers our disgraceful social “patriarchy.”

With adult teachers at institutions of higher learning like MIT spouting such nonsense, it is hardly surprising we have now two generations of illiterate snowflakes who cannot distinguish between Stevie Ray Vaughan and Stonewall Jackson.

COLUMN BY

FORMER REP. BOB BARR

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

86% of Millennials Believe Presidential Candidates Ignore Them

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NEW YORK, NY /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The vast majority of recent college graduates believe that the current presidential candidates are not talking about the issues that matter most to them, according to a new survey of millennials by GenFKD, a non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting economic understanding and financial literacy to college students and recent graduates.

millenial app iphone

Millennials account for 36 percent of eligible voters, the largest demographic in the 2016 election, according to ThinkProgress.  Despite their voting power, 86 percent of those 18 to 34 say this year’s presidential candidates are not addressing them or their key issues they care most about.

  • Jobs and economic growth (19%)
  • Climate change (14%)
  • Health Care (11%)
  • Student Debt (10%)

“It is very disappointing that the presidential candidates are ignoring a vital demographic group and the issues that matter most to millennials,” said Justin Dent, president and co-founder of GenFKD. “With an uncertain economy and international instability, millennials are more engaged than ever in the upcoming election, yet they are left out of the discussion.”

GenFKD polled 752 millennials through Survey Monkey to determine which issues most concern them and if they felt their concerns were being adequately acknowledged in the national debate.

“Millennials are clearly concerned about the economy they will inherit, and the opportunities available to them,” said Christopher Koopman of the Mercatus Institute at George Mason University.   “Unfortunately, political candidates have a strong incentive to support special interests over the causes that matter most to young people. There is a danger in doing that because millennials are concerned, active, and engaged.”

“Until now, there have been less than a handful of millennial issues addressed in hours and hours of debates and interviews,” said Dent, a student at the University of Maryland. “We’re worried about jobs and graduating into a nation of the underemployed.”

About GenFKD

GenFKD is a non-partisan peer-to-peer organization that utilizes editorial content and grassroots organizing to engage millennials on economic and financial public policy and basic pocketbook finance. The non-profit organization seeks to utilize its expansive social following and network of 28 college chapters to present critical information relating to jobs and the economy in a way that is informative, approachable and useful.

About The Survey

The GenFKD “Millennial Sentiment” survey was conducted online December 15-22, 2015, among a national sample of 752 adults between the ages of 18 and 34. Respondents for this non-probability survey were selected using a SurveyMonkey Audience. As the sample for the survey self-selected for participation, sampling error cannot be calculated.

RELATED ARTICLE: Six Years Later, 93% of U.S. Counties Haven’t Recovered From Recession, Study Finds

Dear Millennials, the Dems are Screwing You

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At what point does the millennial generation wake up and realize that their love affair with the Democratic Party has been one-sided? While the Democrats have benefitted enormously from millennials’ overwhelming support of their brand in national, state and local elections, the affection has gone unrequited. Granted, the Democrats talk a big game about the youth of America, but it’s what they’re actually doing to younger Americans that matters. In nearly every significant policy arena the modern, far-Left Democratic Party is pushing policies that will undoubtedly jeopardize the futures of young Americans working hard to make a better tomorrow.

Conservative activist, former Reagan administration official, and nationally-syndicated radio host Mark Levin’s new book Plunder and Deceit is a thorough examination of the ideological and legislative assault on young Americans. The book uses extensive data points and a second-to-none analysis to make the case that the modern Democratic Party’s allegiance to liberal ideology on the social front, and to tax-and-spend economics on the fiscal front, is selling out young Americans. It is a must-read for young Americans who are looking to escape the Democratic Party’s deceptive, focus group tested talking points and looking to find the truth.  Additionally, the book is a must-read for Americans of all ages who want to understand, and be able to explain to open-minded young Americans, the danger we are in if we fail to correct our course.

What is perhaps most disturbing about this disconnect between what the modern Democratic Party says to young Americans, and what it does to them, is that it’s not simply that the Democrats are failing to help the youth in our society, but that they are deliberately harming them. After reading Levin’s book and being reminded of the grave economic future being created by the Obama administration, their congressional allies, and weak-knee’d Republicans too cowardly to fight back, I wonder where young Americans think the money to pay off the growing national debt, which is equal to the value of everything the country produces, is going to come from? There is no significant difference between annual deficits, accumulated government debt, and taxes coming out of your pocket, absent the time preference. And the modern Democratic Party prefers to burden young Americans with the debt and spending they are accumulating right now, rather than to govern responsibly, due to their continued quest for the consolidation of government economic power. This allegiance to the broken economics of unsustainable government debt, is not just failing to provide young Americans with the promised “hope and change,” but it is unquestionably doing significant damage to the potential prosperity of young Americans hoping for a bright economic future.

Facts matter and the facts are not on the side of the modern Democratic Party. The laws of both arithmetic and economics dictate that all debts both public and private must be paid. Those debts are either paid by the debtor, who fulfills his obligation to pay back the debt, or the creditor, who unwillingly pays the debt himself when he fails to receive the money he loaned back from the debtor. There is no third way, these are the only options. With these hard facts in mind, it’s clear there are only a couple of options for young Americans going forward if we do not begin to control the federal government’s profligate spending. The first option for young Americans is a future of confiscatory tax rates so high that they will choke off any chance that they can live economically prosperous lives in an increasingly shrinking private sector future. Our unsustainable and growing national debt, with its entitlement promises and grim discretionary spending outlook, will strangle private sector opportunity in favor of public sector thievery.

The second option is just as disturbing for young Americans. The federal government can simply ignore its accumulated debt obligations and fail to repay its creditors, both foreign and domestic. This disastrous scenario would destroy the economic credibility of the world’s greatest supporter and dramatically increase the cost of debt in the future. Young Americans need to understand that this means that their car loans, their home loans, their credit card interest rates, and any other attempt to finance their lifestyles, or their futures, with debt will be dramatically more expensive than it was for their parents. You can thank the big spenders in elected positions in our government for this disparity between what your parent’s lifestyle was, and what yours is going to be.

Yes young America, you are being screwed, big time. It’s easy to make the faux “tough choices” to pile on government debt today, when cowardly politicians, and their silent opposition, anchor the costs of those “tough choices” to my children and yours, who will pay for them for decades.

For the sake of the country and its future, I am hoping that Levin’s book becomes the centerpiece of a long overdue national discussion about what our real “priorities” are as a nation. I refuse to accept that the greatest country in the history of mankind, when confronted with the hard facts in Levin’s book, will choose the route of a profligate present, and a bankrupt future for their children, rather than a responsible present and a prosperous future.

RELATED ARTICLE: Nearly Half of Millennials Say the American Dream Is Dead. Here’s Why.

RELATED VIDEO: Why the GOP Sucks at Courting Millennials: ‘The Selfie Vote’ Author Kristen Soltis Anderson

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review.

Reason-Rupe Poll: ‘Millennials Aren’t Liberals, They’re Social Liberals and Fiscal Centrists’

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“Since 2004 millennials have been voting increasingly Democratic in presidential elections” says Reason-Rupe polling director Emily Ekins. “But, despite all this, millennials are no more likely than Americans over 30 to say they are Democrats. Instead they are three times as likely to say they are independent and half as likely to say they are Republican.”

This is new information from the most recent Reason-Rupe poll that took a magnifying glass to the millennial generation’s voting habits and thoughts about politics.

“Millennials aren’t liberals, they’re social liberals and their fiscal centrists and their social attitudes are what is largely defining their political identities and driving their voting behavior,” says Ekins.

Watch the video to hear Ekins delve deeper into these results:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/a8G45FR58R4[/youtube]

 

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of Forbes.