Same-Sex Marriage and Other Moral Taboos: Cultural Acceptances, Change in American Public Opinion and the Evidence from the Opinion Polls

Abstract

In June 2015, with a 5-4 decision in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states are required under the 14th Amendment to issue marriage licenses to people of the same sex and to recognize those marriages from other states. The Supreme Court, declaring that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to get married, ruled on the practice which was already legal in the majority of states, and provided the most significant nationwide expansion of civil rights in the U.S. since the 19 60s. 2 Same-Sex Marriage and Other Moral Taboos: Cultural Acceptances, Change in Ame...

Rights and Deliberative Systems

“…Judges seldom ventured far ahead of majority public sentiment; they led, and yet also responded to, currents of social deliberation on the matter (Yoshino 2015). Social perspectives changed rapidly from the 1990s, as each country shifted from having large majorities opposed to legalisation, to large majorities supporting it (Morini 2017). Courts at assorted levels in the states or provinces stayed approximately onside with public sentiment while injecting a relatively rationalist and authoritative set of perspectives into these public conversations.…”

“…Rawls (1997: 796) gives the example of how Catholic notions of religious freedom shifted in more liberal-democratic directions. Exclusionary views may also of course have non-theological origins, and for instance may stem from social conventions of often surprising resilience; however, these, too, in practice have been shown to be capable of change (Morini 2017).…”

Student Pharmacists’ Perceptions of Male Faculty Teaching Female-Specific Sex and Gender Health Topics

“…Sexual intercourse and disorders pertaining to the reproductive system may be considered a cultural taboo in the United States and other cultures (relative to other health topics like hypertension or dyslipidemia). 2,3 A 2015 study found that 32% of Americans considered sexual contact outside of marriage to be morally abhorrent, with 4% of respondents believing culture-pervasive promiscuity to be the most important problem with the state of current moral values. Though there is no definitively right or wrong way to teach any one clinical topic within a pharmacy curriculum, it is sensible for special consideration to be taken for the delivery of women's health topics as they are very frequently focused on the genitourinary tract or other secondary sex organs.…”