Tag Archives: generational divide

The debate over same-sex marriage tends to get defined in ideological terms based on religious conviction or conservative political leaning, but a new paper by Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips of Columbia shows that age may, in fact, be a more salient distinction when it comes to differences of opinion on gay rights. (See PDF of paper here) While figuring out there is a difference between the opinions of older and younger people isn’t rocket science, many of us don’t realize just how vast the difference is.  The graphic below illustrates the views on same-sex marriage of people 65 and over (blue diamonds) and people 18-29 (red squares): Ryan Sager of True/Slant rightly points out that this chart tells us … More >>