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Moral Issues

How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics

Moral Issues

How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics

A new perspective on how beliefs about abortion and gay rights reshaped American politics.

Many believe that religious and partisan identities undergird American public opinion. However, when it comes to abortion and gay rights, the reverse may be closer to the truth.

Drawing on wide-ranging evidence, Paul Goren and Christopher Chapp show that views on abortion and gay rights are just as durable and politically impactful—and often more so—than political and religious identities. Goren and Chapp locate the lasting strength of stances on abortion and gay rights in the automatic, visceral emotions that the media has primed since the late 1980s. Moral Issues examines how attitudes toward these moralized issues affect, and can sometimes even disrupt, religious and partisan identities. Indeed, over the last thirty years, these attitudes have accelerated the rise of the religious “nones,” who have no religious affiliation, and promoted moral sorting into the Democratic and Republican parties.

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234 pages | 26 halftones, 7 line drawings, 20 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2024

Chicago Studies in American Politics

Political Science: American Government and Politics, Political Behavior and Public Opinion

Reviews

“Compelling, convincing, and controversial—but for the right reasons. Goren and Chapp demonstrate that attitudes on abortion and LGBTQ rights are stable, and that these beliefs can shape religious and political behavior such as party identification. Through the sheer amount of data collected and the warts-and-all transparency with which it is presented, the authors leave no stone unturned.”

David Campbell | coauthor of "Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics"

"Chapp and Goren's outstanding analyses show that there are still some limitations on the power of partisan messages to change Americans’ underlying attitudes. Indeed, Moral Issues makes an important contribution to our understanding of US politics by convincingly demonstrating that opinions about abortion and gay rights have helped reshape voters' deeply held partisan attachments."

Michael Tesler | University of California, Irvine

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Tables

Chapter 1. Moral Hunches
Chapter 2. The Theory of Moral Power
Chapter 3. Moral Messaging
Chapter 4. Moral Emotions and Attitude Stability
Chapter 5. Stand Patters, Switchers, and Collective Opinion
Chapter 6. Moral Issues and Religious Disaffiliation
Chapter 7. Moral Issues and Party Change
Chapter 8. Abortion, Gay Rights, and American Politics

Acknowledgments
Appendixes
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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