Ask the Expert: Ruy Teixeira on the End of the Culture Wars

What does it mean that the culture wars are ending?

The culture wars are something that have been with us for quite awhile. The term term was first coined by an academic in the early 1990s to refer to polarization that he said was taking place in the United States between those with more conservative and those with more liberal or progressive social views, and this polarization define politics and in fact crowd out debate on substantive issues. So what it means to say that the culture wars are declining is that the American electorate is evolving in such a way that it is losing interest in defining politics in that way. People don't want to fight about culture wars issues. People are less concerned about that; fewer people have conservative cultural views and that is taking sort of the wind out of the sails in the culture wars in our society and moving us toward a different kind of politics.

What demographic trends are spurring the end of the culture wars?

There are a variety of demographic trends that are pushing us toward an end of the culture wars. One really important one is the rise of the millennial generation--those born 1978 and after. People in this generation have a far different view of these cultural wars issues than older generations, particularly the oldest generation. They generally lean heavily towards social tolerance. For an example, on an issue like gay marriage, they are actually for legalizing gay marriage where as other generations are not. Another change is the decline of the culturally conservative white working class and its replacement by minorities, particularly Hispanics, and relatively progressive white college graduates. Other changes are the rise of professionals, the increasing numbers of single women, and several other things besides, and all of them point in the same direction, toward fewer people with conservative cultural views and fewer people who think it is important to vote and act politically on that basis. So all of that undercuts, all of those demographic changes reduce the mass base for something you might call the culture wars.

What issues are experiencing the greatest shifts in public opinion?

Gay marriage is still not a majority support issue in the United States, but this is one of the clearest examples of something that is being radically transformed by demographic change, particularly generational change -the rise of this millennial generation. Right now, support for gay marriage is running about 41-42 percent; it's going up about a percent point a year, and what the means is that sometime around the middle or end of the next decade, we are going to have a majority support in this country for legalizing gay marriage.

Stem cells is another good example. Stem cells started out as not a majority support issue at all. Now, it really is. Now we have almost a consensus in favor of stem cell research, and of course, that it partially what President Obama was responding to when he liberalized the rules governing stem cell research.

Yet another thing that is being affected by demographic change is views on immigration. We have the rise of groups like--well Hispanics obviously have a different perspective on immigration than more conservative white voters, but the millennial generation again has a far more open and positive attitude toward immigration than the rest of the population. So, I think that's another change we are seeing as a result of demographic shifts.