The Unbearable Lightness of Religious Freedom

Indiana Governor, Mike Pence, a reliable conservative
according to the American Conservative Union, which gave
him a 100% rating in 2012.

A couple of days ago Indiana Governor, Mike Pence, signed the controversial "Religious Freedom Restoration Act." Indiana now joins nineteen other states that have passed similar laws. Reactions have been swift--from the NCAA's "concern" to threats by cities and corporations to boycott the state because of the implications regarding LGBT rights. The law does not mention homosexuality, or any terms invoking LGBT issues, and Governor Pence insists that the law is not about permitting discrimination but rather the prohibition of state laws and rules that force people, organizations, and corporations to violate their religious beliefs. It is aimed at the Affordable Care Act, not a category of people. As he stated in a press release after the signing the law (in private, curiously):

One need look no further than the recent litigation concerning the Affordable Care Act. A private business and our own University of Notre Dame had to file lawsuits challenging provisions that required them to offer insurance coverage in violation of their religious views.

Joe Carter of the Gospel Coalition, an orthodox Christian evangelical organization, provides a useful summary of similar legislation and related Supreme Court decisions, and argues that the Indiana law is not "anti-gay." Like Governor Pence, he relies on Notre Dame--a consistent source of conservative Catholic views on social issues (so ecumenical of the evangelicals!)--to argue that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act does not give anyone a 'license to discriminate.'"  Carter goes on to blame "the media" for hysterically misrepresenting the law.

But even the irascible Janet Brewer, governor of Arizona, vetoed similar legislation a month ago because of its anti-LGBT implications (see The Atlantic's excellent analysis of that veto here).  No matter how much Governor Pence and his allies might poo-poo the discriminatory aspects of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the law's supporters acknowledge that it's a about allowing Hoosiers to discriminate against LGBTers based on religious beliefs. As reported by The Blaze, Glenn Beck's online right-leaning news site:

Conservative groups say the Indiana measure merely seeks to prevent the government from compelling people to provide such things as catering or photography for same-sex weddings or other activities they find objectionable on religious grounds.

Sad how that word "merely" blithely dismisses a significant minority population, denying it the 14th Amendment's "equal protection" clause.

But an Indiana University law professor says not to worry, noting that

courts generally have ruled that the government has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination and that this interest precludes the recognition of religious exceptions. Even in the narrow setting of wedding-service providers, claims for religious exemptions recently have been rejected in various states, including states that have adopted the RFRA test. A court could rule otherwise, protecting religious freedom in this distinctive context. But to date, none has.

"Generally?" "Various?" Hardly an overwhelming put-down of the Indiana law--though the last line provides some comfort for those of us who don't think of members of the LGBT community as second-class citizens (see here for a map of state level LGBT policies).

Mildred and Richard Loving, 1965, denied equal protection
under the law until the landmark Supreme Court decision
Loving vs. Virginia in 1967.

Mark Silk, editor and blogger for the Religious News Service, is more certain of the ultimate outcome. He cites the Supreme Court's 1967 Loving vs. Virginia decision striking down laws banning mixed race marriages and notes a 2014 federal appellate court's declaration that Indiana's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. As with mixed race couples, the judicial message to states is that same-sex unions are protected by the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. That is, photographers, caterers, wedding planners, won't get to deny services to same-sex couples on religious grounds.

If the Supreme Court doesn't end discrimination against the LGBT population in the US, time will. As revealed in a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), the generational cohort we label millennials, those between 18 and 35 years of age, perceive homosexuality (and presumably all the gradations between homosexuality and heterosexuality) differently than white evangelicals. 55% of millennials say that homosexuality is "morally acceptable/depends on the situation" while 38% declare it "morally wrong," compared to 20% of white evangelicals who accept homosexuality with 78% finding it morally wrong.

Robert Jones, CEO of PRRI, sums up the findings on issues of homosexuality and other sexual morals in this way:

Millennials seem reluctant to make blanket black-and-white moral pronouncements about issues they see as complex,” said Jones. 

They don’t only make legal allowances for circumstances, they also make moral allowances for people in difficult circumstances. It’s more about empathy than it is about autonomy.

Ah, complexity and situational ethics--both anathema to religious fundamentalists. But in a couple of decades, the millennial generation will be climbing into positions of decision-making power vacated by the aging or dead baby-boomers.  Or as the Religious News Services puts it:

...the influence of white evangelicals on public opinion in the future may be muted by their small — and aging — numbers. White evangelicals are the oldest of the major religious affiliations, with 49 percent of them age 50 and older.

And this principled stand by many (certainly not a principle shared by all) white evangelicals, their argument that they are entitled to discriminate against the LGBT population, is not winning many converts among the millennial generation.  According to a Pew survey, 16% of the US population is religiously unaffiliated, and about a third of the unaffiliated are under the age of 30. And as Robert Putnam and David Campbell observed in their magisterial work, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us:

In the 1960s religious observance plummeted. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s a conservative reaction produced the rise of evangelicalism and the Religious Right. Since the 1990s, however, young people, turned off by that linkage between faith and conservative politics, have abandoned organized religion entirely. The result: growing polarization.

Abandoned church, Detroit, 2013

Well, at least this time we don't have the spectacle of governors blocking schoolhouse doors to gays, or shouting "Homophobia now, homophobia tomorrow, homophobia forever!"  Still, no matter how innocuous the legal language, a law that sanctifies the unequal treatment of a category of people in the name of freedom is not only unjust, but mangles the meaning of freedom. To paraphrase an old saying, one's freedom to swing a bible ends just where another's nose begins.

Governor Walker vs. the Eggheads

It's a curious thing. Higher education in the US has expanded dramatically since WW II. About 2.3 million Americans were enrolled in 1947 compared to 20.6 million in 2012. In terms of the percentage of total US population, a move from 1.6 to 6.6% (National Center for Education Statistics). But this expansion seems to have done little to reduce anti-intellectualism in this country--what Richard Hofstadter called a “...resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life" (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 1963, p. 7). We could add a resentment of scientific findings that contradict cherished beliefs and material interests. Another strain is the campaign, with us since the creation of land-grant colleges in 1862, to confine higher education to churning out better workers, managers, and technicians to staff our economy.

Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, and his allies are proponents of that campaign. In the latest budget for the Wisconsin university system, Walker proposed a cut in spending by $300 million over the next two years, the equivalent of a 13% cut. Quite a hit, though not really surprising given Walker's anti-public sector stance.

Cagle.com

More disturbing, to me anyway, was that the budget proposal also included new language in the state code governing the university system. Here's how Inside Higher Ed summarized the proposed change:

In that draft of the governor's budget, gone from state code was the commandment that the university “search for truth.” Gone was the exhortation to “improve the human condition.” Gone was the charge to “extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses.” 

Instead, Walker, a Republican, inserted a new benediction: “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

At https://02varvara.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/
wisconsin-on-verge-of-blowup-due-to-tea-party-ignorance/

Way back when, we're talking about a century ago, there were many Wisconsin Republicans associated with the Progressives (such as Robert La Follette)--a movement to make government cleaner (that is, refashion government and politics to make them free of early 20th century equivalents of the Koch brothers), and make government more effective. This "Wisconsin Idea" meant that one of the central missions of the state's university system was to produce "specialists in law, economics, and social and natural sciences [who] would produce the most effective government" (Wisconsin Historical Society).

This Wisconsin Idea in the realm of academia, the notions of a constant search for truth, and that government should and could improve the lot of all under its purview, is what Governor Walker tried to quell. But he's backed off, after much pushback, One of his spokespersons said it was simply a "drafting error," though Walker had previously touted his revisions (see Politifact on this reversal).

Why is reducing the overall mission of the Wisconsin university system's mission to “meet the state’s workforce needs" ill-advised? In pragmatic terms, it implies the eventual transformation of institutions like the University of Wisconsin-Madison from a top-tier research universities to vocational mills. Moreover, it disregards how many graduates of the system will leave the state for jobs elsewhere (common in the Midwest), and the number of out-of-state or international students enrolled its system. State academic systems are not isolated. They are interwoven with regional, national, and international patterns of university or college enrollment. To say that the state's higher education should be about the "state's workforce needs" reveals an ignorance (perhaps willful, or feigned) of the nature of academia today.

At http://www.tildee.com/UlwKij

On idealistic grounds, well, we're back to the old argument of the purpose of higher education (there's a nice summary of this debate here). Is it to focus on skills associated with current labor market demands, or improve the cognitive abilities of students, or is it to produce critical thinkers with the capacity to keep on questioning and learning after graduation? I don't think these are mutually exclusive missions.

For example, my university requires students to take general education courses, trying to ensure that students get exposed to a variety of inquiries, content, and approaches to learning. A while ago I worked with GVSU alum who had majored in Spanish. He recalled taking a philosophy class, and thinking at the time that it was a waste of his time. He now was glad he had taken it--it had made him more aware of the social and intellectual origins of his own beliefs, and also more understanding of those who might not share his beliefs. Most of the students in my introductory course on Latin American Studies are majoring in pre-professional programs (Biomedical sciences, Engineering, etc.). And we have surprisingly lively and thoughtful discussions about the poetry of the Aztec ruler Nezahualcoyotl, 19th century paintings of trains in Mexico and what they might be telling us about notions of progress and modernity, about movies dealing with Argentina's traumatic "dirty war," topics that may be distant from their future careers. I have no idea of how much of this material will stick with them after graduation (I'm musing about all that I don't remember from my undergraduate days). Hopefully, though, work in my course has carved some new cognitive pathways in their brains that may used for learning about the cultural heritage and historical foundations of different peoples (with an assuredness that such learning is crucial).

Back to Governor Walker. Why would he have such a narrow vision of higher education? There is his instinctive hostility to the public sector, noted earlier. And he is part of a GOP faction inimical to the production of knowledge that doesn't sit well with its predispositions--such as former Senator Jim DeMint, who worked to cut funding to National Public Radio, or Senator John Cornyn's repeated efforts to slash National Science Foundation funding for social science research.

At http://ianchadwick.com/blog/anti-intellectualism-the-new-elitism/

Perhaps he is also working out issues from his own college experience--an acrimonious campaign at Marquette for student government president his sophomore year, ending in defeat. And then dropping out with a year to go, with an unremarkable GPA of 2.59, and never finishing his degree. Maybe he shouldn't have attempted a triple major in political science, philosophy, and economics. Maybe it was an acute case of senioritis (Politifact).

Lord knows I'm aware of the many problems in US academia, from skyrocketing tuitions, or the exploitation of adjunct professors, to its apparent function of replicating rather than reducing socioeconomic inequality. So we need to continue this conversation about university reform. Unfortunately, it seems Governor Walker doesn't want a conversation, just a radical reduction by fiat of higher education's complicated mission.

Patriotic Providentialism

Earlier this year there were rows in the Michigan Statehouse over compelling public schools to abide by the Common Core standards.  Senator Colbeck "expressed concerns about a possible lack of local control over what is taught in Michigan schools."  This same Senator was the primary sponsor of three measures recently passed by the Michigan Senate that instruct our public schools how to teach civics.  I guess "local control" is a very flexible principle.

I'm a political scientist, and am all for bolstering instruction on our country's political system, but these measures seemed to be based on a presumption that public schools aren't already teaching civics.  Indeed, Senator Colbeck "conceded that Michigan's current high school curriculum does a good job of covering the topics envisioned in his bill, but said he believes that this additional instruction is necessary" (you can find the Michigan Department of Education's civics curriculum here).

What is this "additional instruction?"  Well, it's really just an injection of religion and a conservative understanding of our country's political history, á la the faux historian David Barton, I'm guessing.  It's no surprise that the group backing this legislation, Patriotweek.org, passes on lesson plans from The Providence Forum, an organization committed to the following idea:

The Doctrine of Providence declares that the world and our lives are not ruled by chance or by fate, but by God. The Providence Forum demonstrably acknowledges that the Providence of God continues to be at work and calls us to action.

Senate Bill 120 is not so forthright about its political theology, but tells schools that it cannot

. . .censor or restrain study or instruction in American history or heritage or Michigan state history or heritage based on religious references in original source documents, writings, speeches, proclamations, or records.

Have Michigan public schools engaged in routine censorship of religious references in political documents?  I can find no news or report on this supposed perfidy (though if someone out there has plausible evidence, I'd love to see it).  This language invents a problem.  Thankfully, pushback from educators forced Colbeck to drop this language that would have encouraged public school teachers to use sectarian documents as part of civics instruction:

. . .school districts may post documents and objects “of historical significance in forming or influencing the United States or its legal governmental system” and explicitly allows for “documents that contain words associated with religion.”

This law also implies that "original source documents," presumably the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, among others, are chock full of religious references.  They're not--as Senator Colbeck and other "patriots" should know.  That said, I'm all for talking about religion as one element in a fascinating political history, but not as an occasion to paint a picture of Jesus present at the founding of the nation (and I imagine he would have felt a little uncomfortable among all those deists who denied his divinity).

John McNaughton (Mcnaughtonart.com)

Senate Bill 121 mandates schools to "designate and observe 1 week each year as 'Patriot Week," during which curriculum will focus on what is already in the civics curriculum--US foundational documents, political principles, ideas such as the "social compact" and "rule of law," and so on.  Moreover, students are to get the lesson that all of our nation's war making has been about "liberty."

Instruction in the sacrifices made by millions of military personnel and their families in the defense of liberty starting with the Revolutionary War and progressing to current conflicts.  Discussion should address the historic and modern-day significance of Veterans' Day, Independence Day, and Memorial Day.

I have no issue with honoring past and present members of the military, nor with studying the origins and meanings--not one meaning, as the text implies--of patriotic holidays.  But it is facile to equate all US military actions with the "defense of liberty."  Were we defending liberty while butchering Filipinos in what might be called the US's first counter-insurgency war (1900-1913)?  How about military interventionism and occupations in the Caribbean and Central America in the first third of the 20th century?  Or we could think of Vietnam, or, more recently, Iraq, where "liberty" became the cause only after we couldn't locate Iraq's WMDs.

Patriotism doesn't have to be about chest thumping (the US is "the greatest nation in world history," spouts Patriotweek.org).  It doesn't have to an unquestioning stance towards the military and US military actions.  Nor am I arguing that political and military history should be one long guilt trip.  Lessons in patriotism should include sober reflections on how the US has used its power, and the costs of war.  We should want informed students, not uncritical ones.

Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut, 1972 (acquired here)

Senate Bill 423 is a selective mash of lines drawn from the US Constitution and other national and state-level foundational documents.  Seems so redundant to be telling schools to teach students about things like separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, etc, when it's already in the curriculum (whether they are taught or learned well is another matter).  But I think the point of this law is really in the first "core principle" on which public school teachers are to focus.

(A) The core principles of the Declaration of Independence, including, but not limited to, the following:
    (i) We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

This instruction is lifted from Patriotweek.org's playbook, which is based on the idea that rights and liberties come not from government, nor from action by social movements demanding certain rights and liberties, but from God and its creation.  For example, in its explanation of the "First Principle" of equality,

The Founding Fathers embraced the Judeo-Christian understanding that the Creator created all individuals, that each person arises from His handiwork, and that every person embodies His blessing. Regardless of physical, mental, and social differences between individuals, each individual is equally precious in His eyes. While this First Principle originally arose from a belief in the nature of the Creator, the laws of nature lead many to the same conclusion.

At a very, very general level, the argument that the founding of the US rests on a Judeo-Christian understanding of the world is correct (though we'll have to ignore all the anti-semitism in the US history, and that the term "Judeo-Christian"wasn't popularized until the early 1950s).  However, it's questionable that a Judeo-Christian understanding of the world was the crucial factor behind the US's "exceptional" origins.  By the same reasoning, we could say that understanding was also responsible for fascist horrors in Italy and Germany, two countries also resting on the bedrock of Judeo-Christian ideas.  Association is not causation.

I suspect the other thing driving this legislation is the standard conservative jeremiad in which 'we've lost our way, and need to strip away all the extraneous stuff we've wrapped around our origins.'  For some Christian conservatives, this is the "sola scriptura" argument.  For political ones in Michigan, it's the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, the US Constitution, parts of the Bill of Rights (SB 423 mentions Amendments 1, 2, 9, and 10, omitting 3-8), and the Michigan Constitution.

A lot has happened and changed since the late 18th century.  The world today would likely mystify our founding fathers.  Many were brilliant and we should study them and their works.  But we shouldn't sacralize them, nor turn foundational documents into a holy canon.  If God and nature were behind the "First Principle" of equality, certain social groups still had to struggle mightily to win that equality, against others--including agents of local, state, and federal government--who thought they had divine and natural law on their side.

Patriotweek acknowledges that our nation took some time to grant women and African Americans political equality, and that this "First Principle" is still a work in progress.  But it's telling that Patriotweek does not give a nod to other social groups who have suffered from inequality, e.g., Native Americans, Latinos/as, the disabled, and the LGBT community.  Hagiographic lessons on patriotism are inevitably myopic.

To my mind, real patriots can celebrate our country's achievements, and recognize its flaws.  Real patriots aren't so insecure that they must take the arrogant position that the US is "the greatest nation in world history," and that God is on its side.  Real patriots can love their country without such idolatry.

You say you want a polarization...well, you know...

A recent Pew Survey reports growing partisan polarization over the Bush and Obama years.  That is, over time, a growing number of people identifying as Democrats or Republicans strongly disagree with positions held by those of the other party.  For example, in 1987 23% fewer Republicans than Democrats agreed with the statements "The government should take care of people who cannot take care of themselves" and "The government should help more needy people, even if it means going deeper in debt (social safety net)."  This year there is a 41% difference.

From "Partisan Polarization
Surges in Bush, Obama Years"

And as you can see in the chart to the left, partisan gaps have grown greatly over issues of the environment, and immigration.  These changes result not from growing Democratic support for the environmental regulation and comprehensive immigration reform, but because of sharp declines within the GOP ranks for these positions.

Conversely, the growing divisions over religiosity and social conservatism (i.e. "family values" positions) are due to changing attitudes among Democrats.  For example, in 1987 86% of Demos agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about marriage and family." That number dropped to 60% in 2012.

The survey does not explain why this polarization has occurred.  One reason could be the decline of our two main parties, their weakening ability to pull in new supporters and hold on to their present ones.  Though the numbers bump up and down raggedly over the past twenty years, the percentage of people identifying as Republicans has dropped from 31 to 24% while Democrats has inched down from 33 to 32%.  Independents have surged, from 29 to 38%.

This may mean that those who do join a party, or remain it, are more likely to be stalwart supporters of key party positions--the Pew survey does say that people within each party have become more "ideologically homogenous."  However, majorities in both parties, particularly the Republicans, are unhappy with their party's advancement of their traditional goals (71% of GOPers, and 58% of Demos). What do we make of that--having more like-minded people in the party means a more dysfunctional organization?

CNN pundit Fareed Zakaria blames four things: 1) redistricting, which creates safe seats for many House members, who then need only appeal to their base to get re-elected rather than reach out to the center; 2) small groups of party activists who take over the primary campaigns, pushing candidates to more extreme positions; 3) Congress's "sunshine laws," which opened up committee deliberations to the public, though in practice it opened it to those who pay the most attention to the legislative--well-financed lobbyists, whose carrots and sticks make it hard for bipartisan, compromise legislation; and 4) the new media, which feeds off and fuels polarization.

Sensible reasons, though we've had safe seats for generations--most incumbents win reelection (over 80% since 1964 in House races, see "Reelection Rates Over the Years" at opensecrets.org).  So I'm not sure why gerrymandering matters so much more now.  As for the second reason, I think Zakaria is really talking about the impact of the Tea Party in GOP primaries, and that begs the question (as Zakaria himself says) of what explains the rise of the Tea Party, and whether it's a symptom of polarization, or one of its causes (or both?).  I find his third and fourth reasons more convincing, though people have been able to find media material--conspiracy theory stuff--to support their extremist positions before the internet (think of the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings back in the 1850s, or the John Birchers a century later).  Still, the internet's speed, its delivery of news and opinion that match one's predilections, and its sheer glossiness, probably leads some (or many) to confuse hype with authenticity and content.

I guess where I'm headed here is that I remain mystified over the origins of polarization. Maybe because I am a part of it, and have contributed something to it with this blog which has been very critical of some conservative positions and people, and of Christian fundamentalism, among other things.  It's not that my views have gone further left.  I score the same on political ideology surveys as I did in my early twenties.  And I argued with people I disagreed with back then--it was the beginning of the so-called "Reagan Revolution," accompanied by the rise of the "Moral Majority."  Maybe I'm glossing the past, but I don't remember a lot of acrimony in those arguments. I don't remember the anger, despite, or disgust that I feel today about certain beliefs, movements, and public figures.  I thought as I aged I would mellow, either becoming more centrist and pragmatic along with my fellow baby-boomers, or learning how to deal with political differences with more equanimity, more charity.  But I've become more strident, more disposed to defend my positions and criticize those of others.

I could say that the Bush years radicalized me, including the start of my academic career in a small liberal arts college with numerous vocal neo-conservative faculty and students, in a very conservative part of Indiana. It was if the world around me was daring me not to say anything.

Or maybe I'm just the flip side of the Tea Party folks. Repeatedly disappointed by their party's inability to rein in spending, or move on social issues, they got tired, irritable, especially when the Democrats seemed like a juggernaut immediately after the 2008 elections, taking the presidency and enjoying majorities in both the Senate and House (boy, that juggernaut turned out to be an empty shell).

Similarly, I endured eight years of Reagan and four more of Bush, Sr.  Lots of disappointment during the eight years of Clinton, starting with the failed effort to reform healthcare, and ending with his lies about an affair (though I hardly think that merited an impeachment circus).  And then eight years of Bush, Jr., who for me was far worse than Reagan. The Iran-Contra scandal, as stinky as it was, doesn't stack up to two wars, one in Afghanistan that turned into an ill-advised nation-building exercise; the other in Iraq based on false pretenses (and I'm still flummoxed by all the people around me, especially Democrats, who initially went along with it).  Finally, Obama encouraged high expectations, but ran into the wall of GOP filibusters, and then the turnover of the House to Republicans in 2010.  And though his administration does not use the term "war on terror," it has continued many of the Bush era practices in prosecuting this war.

I realize, of course, that relatively few people share all my views on economic, social, and foreign policy.  And given that I'm far more attached to the ideas of egalitarianism and communitarianism than freedom and individualism, I'm bound to be disappointed in a country that celebrates the latter far more than the former.

Or perhaps I'm just caught up in one of the cycles of US history.  We've had polarized moments before.  There was that civil war.  Strife over labor rights in the decades around the turn of the 19th century.  Vast disagreements over whether to enter what we now call the First World War.  Then the civil rights movement and Vietnam.  Maybe we think our particular moment is unprecedented because we're living in it.  Maybe it's a collective senility--it's never been like this before!

But if it's a cycle, that's cold comfort.  These are noisy, angry times, and disheartening for this political scientist. And I am a part of that noise and anger.  In response to a local Republican candidate's email, I responded: "I will never vote for a party who selected Sarah Palin as a VP, and that panders to anti-science loonies and the Christian far right."  Yeah, I'm polarized, but not happy with how I'm dealing with it.

Political Snapshots of Young Voters

A student wondered the other day whether younger voters were more likely than older ones to be liberals and Democrats.  So I decided to check it out. According to the General Social Survey (GSS), there's been a notable shift from 1980 to 2010 among both under and over 30 people--from "Not Strong Democrat" to "Strong Democrat."  But also note that in both years the under 30 crowd is less polarized than the older voters, and is more likely to be independent.  In other words, age, at least at this level of generality, is not a very strong predictor of party affiliation.

18-30 1980 2010 Difference from over 30 population Strong Democrat 5.8 12.6 -7.0 -4.6 Not Strong Democrat 26.4 20.6 0.9 3.4 Independent, Near Democrat 16.0 16.0 2.8 2.9 Independent, Near Republican 10.9 10.0 2.5 0.8 Not Strong Republican 14.7 13.9 -0.2 -0.3 Strong Republican 3.3 4.2 -4.5 -4.3 Independent 22.3 21.6 5.5 4.3 Other Party 0.5 1.5 -0.1 0.8 over 30 1980 2010 Strong Democrat 12.8 17.2 Not Strong Democrat 25.5 17.2 Independent, Near Democrat 13.2 13.1 Independent, Near Republican 8.4 9.2 Not Strong Republican 14.9 14.2 Strong Republican 7.8 8.5 Independent 16.8 17.3 Other Party 0.6 0.7

We find a similar pattern in people's ideological stances.  There's more polarization in 2010 in comparison to 1980, and in 2010 the 18-30 year-olds are slightly more likely to identify as moderate, liberal, or extremely liberal.  I don't think there's enough difference here in ideological identification to say that "millennials" are significantly different from their elders.

18-30	1980	2010		Difference from over 30 population
Extremely Liberal	2.3	4.8		-0.3	1.3
Liberal	12.9	15.7		6.3	3.7
Slightly Liberal	23.9	10.6		13.1	-1.0
Moderate	35.0	40.6		-7.0	4.9
Slightly Conservative	14.2	11.4		-4.9	-2.1
Conservative	9.1	11.4		-4.5	-5.1
Extremely Conservative	1.3	2.7		-2.4	-3.1
Don't Know	1.3	2.4		-0.3	-0.6
over 30	1980	2010
Extremely Liberal	2.6	3.5
Liberal	6.6	12.0
Slightly Liberal	10.8	11.6
Moderate	42.0	35.7
Slightly Conservative	19.1	13.5
Conservative	13.6	16.5
Extremely Conservative	3.7	4.3
Don't Know	1.6	3.0

But we should keep in mind that what it means to be "liberal" or "conservative" may shift over time.  For example, again based on GSS data, a third of 18-30 year-olds in 1980 identifying as "liberal" or "extremely liberal" also thought homosexuality was "always wrong."  In 2010 that figure was down to about a fifth.  The acceptance of homosexuality has also grown among conservative and extremely conservative 18-30 year-olds, and in both ideological camps in the over 30 crowd.  But note, too, that the gaps between the ideological camps have grown wider, particularly among those over 30.  It may well be that younger voters have the reputation of being more liberal because homosexuality is not an issue for so many of them.  But growing acceptance of homosexuality among 18-30 year-olds has not meant they're migrating to the Democratic party, nor are they repositioning their ideological identities to any great extent.

18-30 1980 Homosexual relations are:	Liberal and Extremely Liberal	Conservative and Extremely Conservative
Always Wrong	33	68
Not Wrong At All	48	19
18-30 2010 Homosexual relations are:	Liberal and Extremely Liberal	Conservative and Extremely Conservative
Always Wrong	18	55
Not Wrong At All	69	32
over 30 1980 Homosexual relations are:	Liberal and Extremely Liberal	Conservative and Extremely Conservative
Always Wrong	56	81
Not Wrong At All	25	9
over 30 2010 Homosexual relations are:	Liberal and Extremely Liberal	Conservative and Extremely Conservative
Always Wrong	25	72
Not Wrong At All	66	18