Most noteworthy for me is the fact that more Americans think that porn (52%) and homosexuality (39%) are wrong than spanking children (23%) and being ultra wealthy (18%).
🤡 country
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/19/what-do-americans-consider-immoral/
Wow people don’t realize how morally wrong it is to have billionaires. I guess we’re surrounded by morons
My family’s from the South. I have seen some shit you wouldn’t believe.
But 4-in-10 finding homosexuality “morally wrong” is jaw dropping, to me. Another 23%, just “acceptable.” In 2026?
WTF.
I thought homophobes were dying out, but apparently not.
“Morally acceptable” and “not a moral issue” combine into the greater “not morally wrong” category. Personally I’d put it in “not moral issue,” but I don’t assume any I’ll will on the part of people saying it’s “acceptable”
You should look at the 2024 California same sex referendum. Lots of counties voted no, including Merced and Fresno.
Americans are staggeringly conservative
sadly thanks to the pedophile-in-chief… homophobia has made a resurgence in vocal hate groups.
As a dane, this explains a lot with all the weird stuff you hear about the US these days.
I honestly didn’t realize that beating children was still so popular.
As a parent of two very strong willed kids, I will say that spanking (distinct from beating) has to be at least on the table. It’s not the go-to, but the fallback if all else fails, and it does represent my failure to reach them, but sometimes it’s the only thing that gets them to understand how serious something is.
In contrast, their (ultra Christian) grandma would call me soft, she used to go straight to spanking without warning, she felt that you shouldn’t threaten, just do, and they’d learn soon enough. I would much rather threaten a spanking than actually do it… And it works, at this point I haven’t spanked either kid in a couple years, though I have threatened it maybe twice in the last year.
Spanking doesn’t work, and it’s actively bad for your kids
I cannot fathom wanting your kid to be worried that you might ever hurt them
Thank you, that resource is fantastic - so much stuff to read!
Sincerely, fuck you. As a person who experienced beating (and other physical and psychological abuse by multiple family members).
Even if you (in your subjective opinion) beat your child just the right amount, you will probably overstep the boundary at some point. My dad used to occasionally beat me, sometimes he had a reason (which I figured out from context or was told from someone else, I was never explained what I did wrong) and sometimes, I feel like he didn’t. He once tried to suffocate me with the sofa cuishoning (the only reason I survived was because I tilted my head enough I was able to breathe), and I still don’t know why he chose to do that.
I also had to come to school with a visible bruise around my eye (and was afraid the social services would be alerted, as at 13 I already knew that, as an Autistic, I wouldn’t be treated well).
There was also some psychological abuse from my mother, which I won’t write about here because this is turning into a disorganized rant (but I feel like she enjoyed my pain, while my dad didn’t).
I don’t think I learned anything from being abused, apart from being quiet and avoiding confrontation whenever possible.
Also, “bare ass” spanking (which I haven’t experienced) is sexual abuse and no one could convince me otherwise.
YOU are normalizing even worse types of abuse, but somehow people are fine with it.
it’s the only thing that gets them to understand how serious something is
No, also spanking is child abuse (for all the people upvoting this shit).
Or you know, you could break the generational trauma. Just cuz you don’t do it as much as me ma did doesn’t make it right.
The classic: “At least I don’t beat you with my belt, like my dad did.”
I believe your morals are morally wrong.
I would love to see how the abortion and death penalty categories overlap.
Very little. (Unless you mean anti abortion and pro death penalty, that Venn diagram is a circle)
America is a fascinating place to me
Less people think being gay is wrong than having an abortion?
How progressive
I think I’m heading back toward gambling being morally wrong. I mean, it’s not, but it can be self-destructive, and willingly work with immoral entities - most companies that profit from gambling are exploiting people’s weaknesses to harm them. That’s a whole lot of immoral all over a mildly amusing activity
Gambling in the micro is not morally wrong. Games between friends with stakes and the like is perfectly fine.
Running a casino or sportsbook is almost certainly exploiting problem gamblers in a way that is unequivocally morally wrong.
It’s not just damage. It seeds corruption, as is plain as day with Polymarket now.
I do believe it has crossed the line to “public hazard”
Imagine bankrupting a casino when most of your customers are addicts 👀
The only thing worse than legal gambling is illegal gambling.
Addicts are addicts, they can’t be helped and must help themselves. We all must learn to control our dopamine receptors, they are batshit crazy.
I don’t even know if that’s true in the same way that it is for a drug user. Making drugs legal and safe is a good for society. Making gambling legal has made society worse in terms of bankruptcies and financial stress.
Gambling addicts definitely need support but allowing problem gamblers to be taken advantage of is something that legal gambling does that legal recreational drug use does not
Gambling is addictive and can ruin lives.
Addiction ruins lives, like practically everything that triggers dopamine, gambling can be very addictive.
Addicts are going to find an addiction, it’s part of their wiring. You can change your addiction to another less harmful addiction, or rewire yourself with a lot of work.
That’s not really true. Anyone can become addicted to something. There’s not some “addict wiring” that some people are born with and some aren’t. Obviously some things increase your risk factor for addiction, like having ADHD or a traumatic childhood, but even those are correlations, not causation.
I really don’t understand how people can reconcile this kind of data with a positive opinion of humanity
40% of people saying ‘spanking children is not a moral issue’ is probably the worst datapoint here. At least 4 in 10 people are fully just animals blundering around operating on instinct and following what feels good. And that’s not even counting the other people whose idea of morality is just ‘what is my visceral reaction’ who had a visceral reaction.
“Don’t think of them as human beings, think of them as Americans.” - (Fallout quote)
This is why when people talk about AI not really being intelligent, but just glorified word association, I say, is that really any different from the average person?
The submission says that this is a list of moral priorities, like it’s a list of what the American people think is most immoral to least immoral.
But it sounds like the data is listing what things are most widely agreed on to be immoral, to least agreed upon. Which is not the same thing.
The US population has some messed up opinions
When I’m her death, and suffering intolerably, it’s immoral for me to check out 2 weeks early? They’d rather see me continue suffering
A fetus has a genetic abnormality that will ensure the child will suffer for years and then die a horrible death? Sorry, abortion is morally wrong! The baby will have to suffer!
Come to think of it, most of these fucked up opinions are religion driven. Imaginary Jeebus said it was wrong, so that settles it!
Can’t afford a baby? Doesn’t matter, the baby must be born, it would be immoral to abort. Once the baby is born, though, fuck that baby, we don’t care, we won’t help you raise it you slut, you should have controlled those sinful urges!
The US is such a fucked up place
How is eating meat not morally wrong? Or not a moral issue?
Like genuinely does anyone understand how someone could think that?
Do you think cats are immoral? They will most certainly suffer if not die if fed a vegetarian diet.
It’s not a stretch for someone to think animals eating animals is not a moral issue and it’s not a moral issue for humans, another animal, to do the same.
If you hold humas to a higher standard then I applaud you for your conviction but I think this survey shows we aren’t really above animals
It’s about the scope of the question.
Eating meat has been natural to humans and their ancestors for about 3 million years. But we have never processed, presented and eaten meat in the way and on the scale that we are doing it today.
I have a milk cow and it dies of old age. Would it be morally wrong for me to eat it? Just throwing the meat away is morally right?
It’s not a question on how the animals are treated. It’s just the morality of eating meat.
Sure but 99.99% of store meat is not this. Its factory farmed animals stacked in pens living in their own piss and shit their entire lives just before they are slaughtered young
Yes, and we can argue all day long about the morality of that specific way of raising animals for meat, but that doesn’t touch the question of whether or not it’s moral to eat meat in general.
Okay? So could you explain it to me then?
The downvotes on this are both funny and telling. I like it so its good. Asking if its bad is bad.
I’m actually starting to see the point in a weird way. If they think about as critically as a dog or a cat maybe it doesn’t make sense to hold their decisions to a higher moral standard. We don’t call it immoral when non-human animals rape other non-human animals because they aren’t capable of the level of thought required to conceptualize moral decisions. But, uh, neither are significant amounts of humans apparently.
I’m not entirely sure, but I have heard the argument that we kill everything we eat to live.
I’ve had someone try to tell me that plants feel pain and scream when they die.
Okay dawg, but I know I’d rather mow my lawn than mow over a field of pigs.
Out of sight out of mind.
You also save plants by eating plants directly instead of indirectly via animals
I’m not entirely dismissive of the argument. I do think it has a point. Why do pigs get to live? Because they look vaguely like us? Fuck you wheat! You eyeless, legless monstrosity! I don’t care how much you enjoy swaying in the wind and basking in the sun. You’re literally toast!
Everything wants to live and is afraid to die. But I do agree dying screaming pigs is much more unsettling than millions of wheat stalks getting slaughtered by a combine.
The logical next question becomes: why do you get to live? Everything wants to live and is afraid to die. You aren’t special.
This line of argumentation leads to nihilism at its conclusion: nothing matters, everything is permitted, kill whatever you want.
It’s food. We have to eat to live.
I can eat you therefore kiling and eating you is not morally wrong or a moral issue.
Are you saying that a person is the same as food that is readily available? Not really smart are you?
Rare to see someone so incapable of critical thought lmao
My logic sounds absurd when you apply it to a different example? why would you use a different example, that makes it sound dumb
it’s fine to eat because it’s food and it’s food because it’s fine to eat. simple as
You’re a fuckin moron. It’s rare to meet someone that thinks they are intellectual when they are threatening a person’s existence to prove a point. Which isn’t a point. It’s a threat and a shitty one at that. Because I would kick the living shit out of you if you dared to say it to my face.
So fuck off. And shut the fuck up you weak minded idiot.
Plenty of people don’t eat any meat and live just fine?
And why does it matter if a person does? Food availability and nutrition has so many variables. Including financial capabilities.
What about spanking my mistress?
Is she taking birth control? That’s the more objectionable part to some people.
I am very interested as to how they make these decisions. What framework leads them to believe these things? What is their reasoning here? I understand that it might not be reasoned, but if it is reasoned then it may be fascinating to know how these conclusions were reached.
I get porn might not be healthy, especially porn addiction. But I do not get why it is morally wrong.
The industry is exploitative.
It’s a good argument but somehow I suspect Americans find it morally wrong for other, less logical reasons such as religion or prudishness.
