The Patriot Post® · The Pollaganda Effect: Culture Edition

According to a new Pew survey, an interesting disparity exists on views regarding government-mandated accommodations for same-sex couples, facility “rights” for transgender individuals and contraception funding. Forty-eight percent say “businesses that provide wedding services should be able to refuse to provide those services to same-sex couples if the business owner has religious objections to homosexuality” as opposed to 49% who say conscientious objectors should be forced to violate their faith.

The results were similar for transgenders: 46% adhere to the view that the gender-disoriented “should be required to use the public restrooms of the gender they were born into” while 51% disagreed. However, when it comes to birth control, just 30% say “employers who have a religious objection to the use of birth control should be able to refuse to provide it in health insurance plans for their employees” whereas 67% approve of forced funding.

The irony is that these issues all fall under one overarching question: Is forcing religious Americans to violate their faith morally permissible? That a disparity exists at all shows the survey recipients are oblivious to the non-distinction. At its core, there is no difference contextually in what they are being asked. That’s how the pollaganda effect works — and why our rights should never be determined by polls.