More interesting than a comparision to 1983 (so society is more individualistic now than it was back then. Such a surprise.) would be comparison to a a few years ago – you know, to see how attitudes have changed (or not) since the bubble burst.

God is a ‘sky fairy’

Homosexual relations are up to the people involved.

Pre marital sex is probably a good thing.

Getting to the bar is OK. Checking your football coupon is OK too.

Daily Mail readers are nuts.

Seething hatred for the opposition is something we learned from Mary Whitehouse.

Just saying.

Quick suggestion here, if you ever get around to signing up with a dating website, don’t bother using the acronym GSOH.

I’d like to know your rationale for why 11% of people oppose pre-marital sex, but a whopping 34% say sex between two men or two women is wrong. I cannot fathom any rationale but prejudice for the huge difference between these two numbers.

The rationale cannot have anything to do with religion (at least not Christian religion), because there is far more biblical evidence to suggest people should get married* than to say that homosexuality is wrong.

* although we can argue about the nature of what marriage is in this context: personally I would say it’s a public witness of a religious commitment between 2 people and God, but not necessarily a legal institution sanctioned by the state. Christian marriage could as easily be two people praying that they were committing themselves to share their lives together, then e-mailing their friends telling them that’s what they’d done, as a ceremony with pomp and circumstance.

You then go on to refer to God as a “sky fairy”, and when referring to the 34% who still think homosexual relations are wrong your answer is that a good flu pandemic would sort that out. For liberals who claim to love peace, the blood spills over your lip at the thought of certain peoples with certain ideologies being wiped out.

Then there’s the bad attempt at humour concerning the 11% who still oppose pre-marital sex. The writer finds that hard to believe and suggests that in reality most of them only oppose it if there is some biological reason; or that it would make the ceremony longer which presumably would prevent people from getting to the bar sooner or checking the latest football scores.

Finally there is the reference to Daily Mail readers and their half life which didn’t quite make sense because there was no previous reference as claimed, but its clear that you not only dislike Mail readers but liken them to some kind of lower life form.

The seething hatred in many liberal writers seeps through the mask of delusion. The one that says – we just want the world to be a better place where everybody can just get along and live the way they want to live – which is in fact a big lie. The liberal outlook for a better world includes the complete eradication of those who oppose their policies. As Copenhagen demonstrations have indeed demonstrated they only believe in democracy as long as it yields what they believe in. As soon as it doesn’t they try to take over by force, defying police lines, breaching security, climbing on other peoples cars with no regard for the damage they are doing. All because they can’t get there own way.

This kind of behaviour is like children in a pram. Wah wah wah! I can’t get my own way so I’m going to stomp and shout and scream, generally becoming obnoxious until I do. When success is gleaned they walk around with Cheshire cat grins proud of their manipulative accomplishments. The smile belies a pride that suffocates the guilt of how they have reached their goal.

Grow up Unity, and learn tolerance, to accept people you disagree with, not just despise them.

Shout in a loud voice at all these chav types particularly DM readers.

Make sure their daughters have plentiful access to abortions and MA pills to stop em breeding.

Get them all on benefits or in the public sector so it’s not in their interests to kick up rough (very important that).

Generally mock said chavs by ridiculing their ancestry and feelings of worth and identity, except (equally important) when they’re being sent out as cannon fodder to some third world hellhole to protect our liberal way of life.

Have a good sneer at them for stupidly going where no liberal would dare.

Ban Christmas.

Feel good about oneself.

One always does.

I think you’re probably right and that much of the change does stem from people being less inclined to define themselves as, in particular, CofE as a simple default position.

No, the author (me) just has a very dark sense of humour…

The pandemic gag can be applied to any number of scenarios – pensions is always a good one – but in this context its merely a wry reference to an ongoing process of social change.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by libcon: :: Looks like the conspiracy is working just fine… http://bit.ly/6LWdpu...

Surely we all accept universal human rights. But show me evidence that universal human rights exist. Belief in each of those is simply a belief, but you wouldn’t shut people up for espousing those, presumably because you agree with their beliefs. I propose that your intellectual integrity is weak.

“there’s probably nothing much that couldn’t be quickly sorted out with a decent flu pandemic.”

I missed this on first reading the article. It would be good if lots of people among a specific demographic of my compatriots died so that average support for my political agenda can increase. Did the author support Milosevic, by any chance?

Since the mainstream denominations are, if anything, even more liberal than the general population, it’s hard to see how a decrease in the membership of such denominations can be claimed to be at the root of increasing liberalisation.

It is not lack of religion that shapes attitudes but the social conditioning that individuals experience as they are processed through the ‘educational’ system. After almost half a century of intensive Gramscian cultural marxism and incessant related propaganda the surprising finding is that as many as as a third of the population have so far managed to evade taking on the ‘correct’ memetics.

The recent stats I’ve seen show only a slight decrease in church attendance, with a massive Anglican drop-off compensated by a rise in evangelical attendance, especially in majority-black churches. What seems to be the case is that fewer people are identifying as Christian by default just by virtue of being “in a Christian country” but who never go to church or exhibit other signs of faith.

Wonderful news (but hardly unexpected) on the abortion & LGBT fronts.

No, you didn’t.

NatCen are a not-for-profit independent research organisation who sell reports like this to cover their costs.

Even if you’ve all got me personally wrong, in roughly the same period we’ve had the growth of CCTV, the database state and increasing amounts of legislation, regulation and restriction on individuals liberties. In the past decade the amount of liberty which I personally and subjectively experienced has decreased massively, and people generaly are massively less tolerant than they used to be. That’s what I care about, not mass surveys (which are notoriously prone to experimeter effects) on subjects which have little real effect on the majority of people.

I havn’t seen anything in the press on anti-abortion, and a quick google doesn’t bring up anything conclusive. I’m interested. Could you point me in the right direction please.

Thanks
Steve

Towards some authoritarian quasi-mystical eco-bollocks on past experience.

‘I strongly welcome the support for gay rights, and for abortion rights; but I hope that in an important sense this does NOT mean that Britain is becoming a more liberal society. A society that leaves people free to do whatever they want so long as it doesn’t directly harm other autonomous people. Because that way lies nemesis. For society, and the ecosystem…’

Thought so.

‘I find Unity’s preconception that we ought to welcome the reduction in religious belief unwelcome. I worry that what this reduction actually involves is a rise in materialism, and a drop in community engagement, in fact less of most of the things we actually need…’

It doesn’t follow that community engagement falls because of a lack of religion; on the contrary it is easier to engage with the community if this engagement is not mediated through men in frocks who have voluntarily disengaged from the community in order to speek on behalf of the sky pixie.

‘Great, so minority views are now illegitimate.’

Minority views that are arise from evidence, rational argument and a sense of common humanity are entirely legitimate; not so those that depend upon the authority of Bronze Aged texts and their interpretation by racists, misogynists, homophobes, terrorists or kiddie fiddlers.

It’s the 21st Century, GOD SAYS SO is not an arguement.