Recent Gallup polling shows that Americans are moving left on a whole slew of issues.

Courtesy of Gallup: 

Americans are more likely now than in the early 2000s to find a variety of behaviors morally acceptable, including gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage and sex between an unmarried man and woman. Moral acceptability of many of these issues is now at a record-high level. 

The upward progression in the percentage of Americans seeing these issues as morally acceptable has varied from year to year, but the overall trend clearly points toward a higher level of acceptance of a number of behaviors. In fact, the moral acceptability ratings for 10 of the issues measured since the early 2000s are at record highs.

Of course as you can see from the graphic Americans are not becoming more accepting of EVERYTHING.

Americans have become less likely to say that two issues are morally acceptable: the death penalty and medical testing on animals. But Americans' decreased acceptance of these practices actually moves them in a more liberal direction.

This change may have much to do with the fact that fewer and fewer Americans self identify as religious and are no longer accepting the definitions of morality forced upon them by their local church, temple, or synagogue.

And in another recent study researchers found that one of the main driving forces behind this new morality, the millenials, are not simply embracing the left due to their age:

"Unlike previous studies, ours is able to show that millennials' lower religious involvement is due to cultural change, not to millennials being young and unsettled."

In other words Americans are becoming freethinkers, and with that comes a less judgmental attitude towards others, a more personal sense of morality, and far less shaming for what happens between two consenting adults in the bedroom.

Damn, it is a good time to be alive!