A recent poll suggests that one-in-six Canadians view extramarital affairs as morally acceptable.
According to a poll conducted by Research Co. on moral issues in Canada, 16 per cent of respondents indicated that having an affair involving a married person is morally acceptable while 71 per cent felt it was morally wrong. A further 13 per cent indicated that they weren’t sure.
Men (22%) were more likely to find affairs morally acceptable and 21 per cent of those 55 and older felt it was morally acceptable, the highest of any age bracket. Quebec (21%) had more respondents than any other province or region in Canada indicating that affairs were morally acceptable while Saskatchewan/Manitoba (6%) had the lowest.
The online poll, which was conducted between May 7-9, asked 1,000 Canadians whether they considered a range of moral issues and topics including cloning animals, divorce, abortion, pornography and paedophilia, to be “morally acceptable” or “morally wrong.”
When asked whether polygamy was morally acceptable or unacceptable, 19 per cent of respondents felt it was morally acceptable while 63 per cent felt it was morally wrong. As with extramarital affairs, men (20%) and those in Quebec (22%) were more likely to find it morally acceptable while women (18%) and those in Saskatchewan and Manitoba (84%) were most likely to find it unacceptable.
According to other results from the poll, the majority of respondents found use of contraception (75%), divorce (73%), sexual relations between an unmarried man and woman (69%), having a baby outside of marriage (69%), physician-assisted suicide or death (61%), sexual relations between two people of the same sex (59%), and abortion (55%) to be morally acceptable.
The majority of respondents said that cloning humans (69%), suicide (60%), illegal drugs (66%), and medical testing on animals (57%), were morally wrong.
There were some topics, however, where respondents were more divided.
For example, on the question of buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur, 36 per cent felt it was morally acceptable while 43 per cent felt it was morally wrong and 22 per cent weren’t sure. When it came to pornography, 52 per cent indicated it was morally acceptable, but 31 per cent felt it wasn’t and 17 per cent weren’t sure. Gambling had the exact same results and while 54 per cent felt prostitution was morally acceptable, 30 per cent felt the opposite and 16 per cent were unsure.
Although capital punishment hasn’t been abolished in Canada for decades, 40 per cent of respondents said they found the death penalty morally acceptable while 21 per cent said they weren’t sure. Support for the death penalty was highest in Alberta (nearly 50%) and the lowest in Quebec (34%).
There was one topic that the overwhelming majority of respondents could agree on: paedophilia.
According to the poll results, 86 per cent said paedophilia was morally unacceptable, with the strongest support against paedophilia coming from women (87%) and those in Saskatchewan/Manitoba (96%).
Still, 4 per cent of respondents indicated that paedophilia was morally acceptable and 10 per cent didn’t know. British Columbia (13%) had the highest number of respondents indicating they didn’t know or were unsure of anywhere in Canada.
CHEK News
