ABC News Is Gleefully Reporting…
That 58% of Americans now support gay marriage. This provokes two observations:
1- Morality isn’t subject to a vote.
2- The fact that the ‘majority of americans’ approve of ‘x’ is meaningless. The majority also approved of Japanese internment camps and those camps and the internment of Japanese Americans was nothing but immoral.
Such statistics almost always hide a much more complex story (and slight alterations to the wording of such questionnaires tend to yield surprisingly varying results). For instance, is a distinction being made between ‘supporting’ same-sex marriage and ‘not opposing’ same-sex marriage? Is 58% of the public really excited about the prospect of same-sex marriage and actively pushing for it, or are many just losing will or nerve to oppose it, disillusioned with the moral hypocrisy of some leading opponents, wishing that the issue would go away, and unable to see why allowing same-sex marriage would prove costly for society?
Believing that legalizing same-sex marriage is the best option open to us in the current undesirable situation is a far cry from really being positively in favour of it in general. However, I believe that this is where many in the population find themselves.
The “majority” argument, as you know, is a logical fallacy. But said (and sad) fallacy may be the result of when religious people used the “holy” language of Latin to instill in careless minds the lie that “Vox populi, vox Dei”… Well, ths may be a shock to some, but Vox populi IS NOT vox Dei. 58% answered to a poll and probably answered, as they often do in these polls, the socially accepted answer rather than their heartfelt convictions. I can ask any question I want in a way that it yields the answer I desire…