People like to say that American culture has a puritanical streak: one that entails, among other things, a certain haughty piousness, instilled by the killjoys who reached New England's shores in the 17th century. Yet the Pew Research Center, in a pair of reports released last month, asked participants in various countries about a host of moral issues'and found few in the United States that were widely condemned. Spanking children' Doctor-assisted euthanasia' Clear majorities said they weren't morally wrong. Gambling' Marijuana use' Compared with respondents in many nations, Americans were notably permissive. The poll also revealed clear political divides: Republicans were much more likely to oppose homosexuality and divorce, for instance, and Democrats were more likely to reject the death penalty and extreme wealth. Only one behavior, in fact, received near-unanimous disapproval: infidelity. Ninety percent of Americans said that a married person having an affair is morally wrong,...
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