Note: in this post, I will be addressing the views of young, unmarried women, who tend to be more liberal than married women. Married women are not being targeted in this post, because their views tend to be more pro-life and pro-marriage.
First, abortion. The latest Gallup poll shows that men are far more pro-life than women. Men are strongly pro-life by a margin of 8 points, 50-42. Women are more pro-abortion by a margin of 1 point, 47-46.
Second, marriage. Polls show that men are far more pro-marriage than women.
Excerpt:
A new national poll points towards a gender gap over same-sex marriage.
According to new numbers released Monday morning from Gallup, 50% of Americans say same-sex marriages should be legal. But break it down by gender, and 56% of women say same-sex couples should be legally allowed to marry, but only 42% of men feel the same way.
In addition, exit polls from the 2008 and 2012 elections revealed that about 70-80 percent of young, unmarried women voted for Obama, whose views on abortion are somewhere to the left of Kermit Gosnell. And Obama supports gay marriage. Men are more likely to vote conservative than young, unmarried women, especially married men.
Now some of you may find this data about men being good very surprising. According to many people these days, all young men do is look at porn, order in pizza and leave the boxes scattered around, play video games, binge drink, live in their parents’ basement, underperform at school, and fail to find jobs so they can man up and marry these pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage women. None of this bad performance is caused by institutionalized feminism, or the effects of feminism on the family. It’s all just bad, bad men being bad – so were are told. But somehow, despite reports that all men are losers, they seem to have better views on abortion and marriage than women.
What does it mean?
Think about what it means that a young, unmarried woman is pro-abortion.
Being pro-abortion means that a men and women should be allowed to have recreational sex before marriage, and then if a baby is conceived, then they should be able to terminate that unwanted pregnancy, and send taxpayers the bill. Pro-life doctors and nurses who don’t want to perform the procedure must be forced to do it, lest the selfish grown-ups feel offended. Pro-life organizations who don’t want to offer abortion-inducing drugs as part of their medical insurance must be forced to provide it, lest the selfish grown-ups feel offended. Pro-life taxpayers who don’t want to pay for the recreational sex risks of others must be forced to pay for them, lest the selfish grown-ups feel offended.
Now suppose a man is considering marriage to a young, unmarried woman. It’s likely that she supports abortion, given what polls show and what exit polls show. Now if a woman thinks that it is OK to kill an innocent unborn child in order to avoid being burdened with that child’s needs, even though she consented to the recreational sex that produced that child, then should the man marry her? I think that a man should not marry such a woman. After all, if a woman is willing to kill a baby in order to protect her happiness, then she will certainly divorce her husband to do the same. Husbands are much less innocent than babies.
Now think about what it means that a young, unmarried woman is pro-gay marriage.
Being pro-gay marriage means that two men and two women should be able to adopt children away from one or both of their biological parents and raise them. Churches who don’t want to perform the wedding ceremonies must be forced to perform the wedding ceremonies, lest the selfish grown-ups feel offended. Christian companies that don’t want to treat gay couples as married must be forced to treat gay couples as married, lest the selfish grown-ups feel offended. Christian taxpayers who don’t want to pay for the next generation of children to be indoctrinated to believe that marriage can be between two men or two women must be forced to pay for government to indoctrinate children to believe in redefined marriage, lest the selfish grown-ups feel offended.
Now suppose a man is considering marriage to a young, unmarried woman. It’s likely that she supports gay marriage, given what the polls show and what exit polls show. Now if a woman thinks that it’s OK to deprive a child of a mother or of a father and expose children to a notion of marriage that deprives them of stability, sexual faithfulness and permanence, then should the man marry her? I think that a man should not marry such a woman. After all, if a woman is willing to deprive a child of a mother or a father and of the interaction between a man and a woman cooperating in marriage, then she will certainly be willing to deprive any children she has with him of his presence, since she already believes that fathers are expendable and that the selfishness of adults trumps the needs of children.
The way forward
What can we do to fix young, unmarried women so that they are more pro-life and more pro-marriage, like men already are? Well, men are pro-life and pro-marriage because we read pro-life and pro-marriage books and because we watch debates on abortion and marriage. Men like to focus on things like logical arguments and scientific research. Men like to see pictures of the different development stages of unborn babies and read research papers about how same-sex marriage harms children and how welfare policies encourage women to have babies out of wedlock. Men are not inclined to decide moral views based on feelings, peer opinions and popular culture. In order to make young, unmarried women more pro-life and more pro-marriage, we should try to introduce them to more books and debates and scientific evidence, so that their views will change based on what is true, not based on feelings and peer pressure and cultural trends.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
This is an outstanding analysis of, and apologetic against, both abortion and gay marriage. Thank you for connecting the dots, and for the disclaimer at the beginning, pointing out that it is not intended for married women (or at leasy most married women).
LikeLike
Thank you. I am surprised that people don’t make sense of what is really going on, and who is supporting it.
LikeLike
Conversation with one of my editors over the draft version of this post:
I think that Jesus also used hyperbole with things like the camel and the eye of the needle to get his points across, too.
LikeLike
I think it’s also due to sex differences.
That is, women are going to care more about abortion than men do, in terms of being able to get one relatively easily if they need one, because men do not get abortions, and do not get pregnant. Note that I am not pro-abortion, I am pro-life, but I think this is the reason women are more pro-abortion when they are single (i.e., when they are not TTC, as the kids say these days) than men are — impact issue. I think that this needs to be taken into account when trying to change such young, single women’s views about abortion.
On the gay marriage issue, I also think this lies in the difference between the sexes in that men are much more repulsed by homosexuality among men than women are, generally speaking, by homosexuality either among women or among men. In part this is because some women are more “sexually fluid” than others are (and seemingly more than almost all men are), and in part because of the tendency of women to feel empathy and emphasize inclusion over rules. There was a decent article at patheos recently about the latter — that is, a tendency to emphasize inclusion and relationships over rules and order in itself — that underlies the largely female-dominated mainline churches’ approach to homosexuality and now gay marriage in the last couple of decades.
I get what you were trying to do, and I agree with your goal, but I think in trying to navigate the question of how to convince women in these areas, we need to understand why they think differently than men do in these areas. Yes, it’s programming, but that programming “takes” more in women than it does in men, and there are sex-based reasons for that.
LikeLike
One of my female friends posted this on Facebook:
But I think this is just because women tend to not study arguments and evidence. They tend to just accept the views of their peers, and that’s why they are unable to push their views, much to the detriment of unborn and born children, who must suffer the consequences of women’s unwillingness to study to be persuasive.
I think that going to college also pulls women hard to the secular left, because they tend to adjust their views to match the views of their professors and peers, who are more liberal, especially in the non-quantitative classes that women favor at college.
LikeLike
In part, yes, but also because women in general really care a lot more than men do about inclusion of others, peace with others, and so on — the social net, if you will — than men do, on the margins. Hence the concern she raised about “not wanting to impose” and not being comfortable with thinking in black and white — these are concerns motivated by the desire to smooth over differences in favor of inclusion, peace and maintenance of existing social relationships. Most women live in a web of social relationships and intricacy that informs their thinking and behavior in a way that we men would find unimaginable at best and intolerable at worst. It’s a biggish sex difference, really.
Both men and women care about relationships and empathy and avoiding social discord and so on, but when push comes to shove, generally men will sacrifice these if necessary for the sake of enforcing what is right and true, even if it causes discord and severs relationships, whereas generally women, when push comes to shove, will tend to sacrifice the definition of what is right and true and massage it in the interest of inclusion, peace and relationships.
This is just a very different orientation that the sexes have towards these kinds of issues, in terms of what has to “give” when there is an inexorable conflict. For men it tends to be relationships, inclusion and peace that have to give when to prioritize preserving these would require the compromise of what is right and true. For women it tends to be the definition of what is right and true which needs to give when to prioritize them would require the compromise of relationships, inclusion and social peace (hence references to “men thinking in ‘black and white’ too much” and so on). It’s a fundamental sex difference. There are outliers in each sex on this, of course, but they are outliers.
LikeLike
Women tend to do grace better, and men tend to do truth better. Truth without grace can be very harsh and sometimes self-righteous (I am guilty), but grace without truth – well, there we do have a more serious problem, IMO.
LikeLike
All true. The issue is that the latter position has basically taken over most churches.
LikeLike
So sad, yet so true. But, thanks to folks like you and Wintery, there does seem to be an awareness or recognition that this has happened to the churches – at least to many of the individual Christians with whom I am conversing. Keep up the good and difficult work, please!
LikeLike
“Well, men are pro-life and pro-marriage because we read pro-life and pro-marriage books and because we watch debates on abortion and marriage.”
I encounter very few men who do read these things, except in pro-life and pro-marriage forums. Out of the men I know face-to-face, in my home town, I know about four that actually read pro-life, pro-marriage material. One of those four is a pro-life activist.
LikeLike
Well, ALL the men I know do. Hmmmph. It’s not hyperbole, at all. It’s TRUE. ;-)
LikeLike
;-)
LikeLike
Excuse me.
I am a college attending young gal with a sort of hobby in apologetics, and I do not appreciate being lumped together with women who “don’t like logical arguments and evidence.” I live for the life of the mind, pal! I don’t care what the status quo is in the academy and I don’t accept things because they’re popular. Don’t you dare put me in the same category as my secular colleagues, my friend.
LikeLike
OK, I won’t! You must be one of the minority who I am not picking on, and good for you. :)
LikeLike
Banana, you are the exception that proves the rule. Please keep up the good work and spread the word – to both men and women alike!
The best engineer I ever worked with on spacecraft design was an outstanding conservative Christian woman – which complemented her conservative design tendencies quite well. She did not yield to any argument other than logic, and the safety of the crew was always utmost in her mind.
LikeLike
“In order to make young, unmarried women more pro-life and more pro-marriage, we should try to introduce them to more books and debates and scientific evidence, so that their views will change based on what is true, not based on feelings and peer pressure and cultural trends.”
The problem is, young women are not *willing* to look at the evidence, or dwell on the hard philisophical questions. You’re not battling gender here. You’re battling gendered culture. We girls are taught, pretty much from birth, that our value is in how we look, and following cultural expectations – ironically, even more so in our current “feminist” culture. When we have 2 yr old girls calling themselves fat and 6 yr old girls being hospitalized for eating disorders, the last thing you’re going to be able to do it convince young girls to think critically about things like abortion or marriage. They’re not supposed to “think” unless they think what our culture tells them to (whether it’s about abortion and marriage, or global warming and environmentalistm). They are supposed to be “smart” and go into the sciences and math because GRRRLLL POWER!!!!, but they must not deviate from scientism’s neo-Darwinian, Gaianist dogma.
The battle needs to be started with the culture that surrounds them. Our girls need to be taught that they are worthy because they are children of God, valuable as they are for who they are, not only if they are skinny enough, or wear “hot” fashions and make up and become sexually active at ever younger ages, or protest the “right” causes, etc.
By the time girls become young women, the battle is largely lost. I know too many adult women, now married with children, who have carried those cultural mores all their lives, and are now inflicting them on a new generation.
LikeLike
Excellent observation. I am might be able to add something to this and it is in regards to age, lack of foresight, study design, and nature of women.
IMO, the study was not high powered enough nor the demographics suited to correctly represent the population.
I believe a woman will have a tendency to be more pro-choice/unmarried in their 20’s given the media, society, opportunities, and education system (These all “scream” you can have your cake, ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream and eat it too and not gain weight and not work out and not eat sensibly).
Their viewpoints and outlook quickly changes once they get in their 30’s and their options and biological time clock.
The data supports that marriage number are down (even > number for women in their 30’s) and yet women complain ” where are the good men?”
In essence – it is the “bitter red pill” for women of the mass realization of consequences and men also.
~Shalom
LikeLike
Good post and terrific breakdown.
That said—and forgive me if you *have* said this, but as I’m anticipating my husband leaving work soon, which means I start dinner when I learn he is on his way and therefore skimming—the young woman who decides to have an abortion, or that an abortion is all right, also heavily discounts the opinion of the man, who may want to keep the child; this seems disrespectful to me, and is one heck of a reason not to marry any such woman (and has there ever been a legal proceeding in such a case? I’d be curious). Of course, our culture teaches that men either don’t have intelligent opinions and/or that men’s opinions aren’t worth a hill of beans, so…
Moreover, I think women are, as you have often noted, more easily influenced by the culture and their peers. This, of course, goes all the way back to the Garden; Paul, too, warned of “weak-minded women”, if I recall correctly. We are, as a sex, more likely to believe others’ lies, either out of our natural people-pleasing nature (which can be a good thing aimed correctly!) or just because, as has been said before, young single women are often more interested in trifling things and revolt at the mere idea of actually picking up, say, a book on apologetics. (Not always, but often, sorry.)
LikeLike
Thank you. I am sort of saying these things to be provocative because young men seem to be getting beat up all over the place and we need to remind ourselves when we get it right. I do think that some of this problem is the absence of fathers from the home, and young women not having fathers as a brake on their natural inclination to pursue happiness and to be sociable. That problem started with no-fault divorce, and it’s only been made worse by generously subsidizing welfare programs for single mothers.
LikeLike
Real provocation must be heavily laced with truth. ;)
Your point about absent/ejected fathers and their being replaced by the government is quite true; fathers tend to be not only protective of their girls, but more logical, and able to help daughters see all sides of things. Despite being subsidized, I think many single mothers are overwhelmed in some respects, and just want their daughters to be “happy”—again, not entirely bad, but what makes us happy is not always healthy, much less right.
LikeLike