Responding to my wish to separate out the views on same-sex marriage of under-30 “sectarians” (evangelicals), Sherkat has kindly run the numbers. What they show, as he points out on his blog, is that the gap between this cohort and its non-evangelical peers is actually greater than between sectarians and non-sectarians in older age cohorts. So much for the myth of young evangelical liberalism on this issue.

Up to a point. But it’s still the case that the under-30s are somewhat more liberal on the issue than their evangelical boomer parents–and way more liberal than over-60 evangelicals. So even though they look at this point like over-60 non-evangelicals, the evidence is of a liberalizing generational trend within the evangelical community. What the data show is most segments of American society moving quickly (the younger they are) towards acceptance of SSM, with a few–under the influence of conservative religion–moving more slowly in the same direction.