The Pew Research Center documents increasing acceptance of homosexuality in a new study. The people who most oppose homosexuality, not surprisingly, are "staunch conservatives." In answer to the question "Should homosexuality be accepted or discouraged by society?" staunch conservatives say
Accepted 22% and Discouraged 68%.
What I find most interesting in this study is that "libertarians," who in most political issues are allied with the conservatives, differ dramatically on this issue. They answer
Accepted 71% and Discouraged 19%.
The anti-liberal voting bloc, which had such success in the last election, is an alliance of opposites. This is nowhere more clearly shown than on the issue of the social meaning of homosexuality.
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They are opposites on social issues, true, but on economic issues they line up pretty well. And economic issues were primary in 2010 and likely to be primary in 2012. And on national security issues, you have a lot of debate over how best to defend ourselves which probably does not follow a strict libertarian/conservative divide.
I think the uniting factor for the right is liberty. In its application to social issues, however, there are differences in its application. A libertarian would probably tell you a person's social and cultural choices are his or her own business, and certainly not the government's. A conservative would probably agree most social and cultural choices are not the government's business (abortion and gay marriage being special cases for slightly different reasons), but would assert that a non-coercive cultural consensus helps preserve order in society without government action, thus preserving liberty (subsidiarity) and that a libertarian position invites disorder and thus government action.
Abortion is different because an unborn child is a human entitled to legal protection which is greater than the mother's liberty interest.
Gay marriage is different because government is inherently involved in recognizing marriages and thus must make a moral/cultural choice.
In either of these exceptional cases, the conservative would say that, in these cases, the law cannot avoid making a choice between competing interests.
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